Mainstream 'Education' - A Universal Truth

Hello Folks!

How we are 'moulded' by our family and their values and our respective societies, including education, often determines our own core values as adults. Unless we have the innate desire and grow the courage to begin to see ourselves more objectively; how much of 'you' is not really 'you' at all, but a walking re-action to the above.
Undoing this destructive aspect of our history that obliterates visions, authenticity and subsequently a better and more fulfilling outcome for our life does require getting real with ourselves to break from the drone mentality to the beautiful, individuals we are at essence.
And yes, much of it is helped en route by our mainstream education which I prefer to call first-order brainwashing. Below, a piece by Michael Tellinger which speaks about that.

In magic, madness and mystery
Shellee-Kim

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From ubuntuparty.org.za

Current Situation and the UBUNTU Plan of Action


Our school system, and how we continue to teach our children, is largely responsible for our mental and cognitive conditioning that prevents most of us from breaking free from many years of indoctrination. Some researchers have called this “the left brain prison” that has been imposed on us over the most important and formative years of our lives. The sad thing is that most of us never get out of this prison for the rest of our lives and many of us end up defending this prison.


“State schools are failing and government mandated education forces everyone to learn the same and often useless material despite the unique interests and learning styles of each individual. The curriculum is designed more to serve the purposes of corporations and the government than those of the student.” www.thrivemovement.com


Restructuring our education system is probably the most critical thing we have to do if we want to liberate ourselves from the prison matrix and the never-ending struggle for survival. It is through the current education system that we become the prison guards to the very prisons that have captured our own immortal souls and our humanness.


We look around us, at how things work, how things are done, and how we live from day to day, and we believe that this is the norm – that this is how things are done – that this is progress and we are part of this never-ending wheel of progress. And yet life gets tougher every year, every month, every week. But we believe that maybe if we hang on for a little longer, things will get better.


After more than 120 years of enduring the current education system, we are all products of this system and we are all equally tuned and calibrated by this system to endure its consequences – without any questions. Most of us now believe that this is the norm – and that this is the best way of educating ourselves and our children – and that there is no better way – because if there was the authorities would have implemented it.


We see the education system as giving ourselves and our children a chance in life. The better our education, the better our chance of having a successful life – getting a good job – having a good career that will earn us a lot of money. It is ironic that the indicator of success among living breathing human beings is not their ability to love others, compassion, creative achievement, contribution to society, but most of the time the emphasis is on money, as an indicator of our success.


We quickly forget that we are all born equal and we should all have a wonderful life, not dependant on the level of education that we can get for our children. And so, without most of us giving it any thought, the schooling and education system becomes the first tool of separation and division among all of us from the first day of school.


Remember that history is written by the victors, and our education is manipulated by those who impose their control on our society. The victors have a vested interest in holding onto power and therefore teaching their conquered subjects whatever it takes to stay in power. Those who do not comprehend this statement at this point will begin to comprehend it as the layers of deception are removed from our lives.


We are forced to place our children in schools at the age when they are most vulnerable to outside suggestion and influence – in the hands of strangers, who get their instructions and teaching manuals from some invisible department in the government. These teachers, most of whom have honourable intentions, have to follow orders and teach what they are told in the style and fashion they are told to teach it. If they do not follow these orders they get fired from their teaching job and lose their income and become undesirable as teachers in any other official educational institution.


For twelve years of our lives we are made to sit in classrooms, separated from mother nature, while we are forced to cram information into our heads, so that we can regurgitate it during an examination – so that we can get an ‘A’ on our school report – so that our parents can brag to their friends and so that we can try to impress our future employers – so that we can get a good job and earn as much money as we can – because we had good marks at school in subjects that we will never ever use in our daily lives and probably never use for the rest of our lives.


If we can regurgitate this information really well, we are allowed to go to university where the indoctrination and brainwashing reaches even higher levels. Those who are privileged enough to reach these levels take on a certain level of pride and arrogance, because they see themselves as special. Because they have worked hard and regurgitated well. And by being able to regurgitate, they have elevated and separated themselves from the masses.


And so, without realising it, the graduates become the quiet promoters and defenders of the system that creates hierarchy and separation amongst humanity.


From the first day of school we are exposed to academic competition and a hierarchy of intelligence that we are taught to conform to. When we do not understand the subjects or if we do badly in our exams, we are laughed at, mocked and reprimanded to work harder. We are told that if we do not get our “act together” we will amount to nothing and that we will end up on the street – that nobody will give us a job and that our lives will be a disaster. All this, so that we should excel at school in the subjects that are of little use to us in life.


From the first day at school we are exposed to continuous stress in many forms. The stress and pressure to succeed – to be the best – to get to the top. We are made to believe that this is all normal and part of life and that competition is good and that this is the way things are done in life.
The stress of passing exams and not failing, is one of the most cruel forms of subtle mind control we can imagine. We willingly expose our children to this cruel system of stress for most of their young lives. It is this subconscious stress, that finally spills over and becomes the cause of antisocial behaviour experienced by many teenagers.


We send our children to psychiatrists, feed them drugs like Ritalin and punish them for failing or behaving badly, not realising that it is the system, and not our children, that is out of our control.
We never stop to think about this indoctrination because we believe that this is the norm in life – because it comes from higher levels of the pyramid of hierarchy and authority. We do not question it and simply accept it – and plan how we will become “successful” in life. These subconscious scars stay with most of us for the rest of our lives.


By now we should all clearly see that the current education system does not work. It has nothing to do with true learning skills for life and inspiring children to follow their dreams and to use their god-given talents to give true meaning to their lives.


But instead our education system has everything to do with continued indoctrination and subtle mind control of young minds to follow orders, obey authority, and even fear authority. To believe in a pyramid of hierarchy that controls all aspect of our lives and to follow orders given by a higher authority in this pyramid of hierarchy.


All of this is done under the pretence of freedom and personal choice that does not actually exist because if we do not conform to the controls of the establishment, we will be seen as opponents of the system. In some countries it is now compulsory to send your children to school, to submit them to this inhumane treatment. Parents that do not conform will be charged and prosecuted under the legal system that upholds these laws and treatment of our children.


In an attempt to teach us about our origins as human being, spirituality and our immortal souls that all come from the same source of the divine Creator of all things, we are taught about man-made religions, that divide us even more. Religious division that has cause most of the conflict and suffering on our planet. And so the suffering continues, deeply buried beneath many layers of deception, our own ignorance and external mind control.


Most of the things we are taught in school is theoretical information with very little, if any, practical knowledge of how to do things, how to create things, build things, fix things and how to think outside the box – because that would be seen as being antisocial and not conforming to the norm of society – in other words: the normally accepted behaviour of those who have already been indoctrinated by the education system to stay within the boundaries of the matrix. These boundaries of accepted norms include every sector of our society, especially the commercial, financial and political sectors, that have somehow taken control of our planet.


Please ask yourself: What exactly does our education system provide us with when we leave school, other than a piece of paper or a degree that makes us feel special, and makes us believe that we will find a good job. Our education has nothing to do with learning, but everything to do with preparing us to get jobs and have successful careers. And what do jobs do? They allow us to earn money.
In the end, it is all about money. And therefore, those who control the money will continue to control the education system.


It is a well documented fact that governments have been manipulating and controlling the content of school textbooks for the distinct benefit of those in power, so that they can maintain their control over the people. For example, the majority of research in the medical field that is consequently included in the medical textbooks is funded by pharmaceutical companies who fund the printing of the textbooks. We are taught exactly what they want us to believe so that we can regurgitate their deception to others. The young minds that come out of medical school know very little about diagnosing and healing; about resonance and the laws of nature and how all disease can be cured and has been cured in the past because it is a result of in-coherence or being at dis-ease with nature and mother earth.


Schools have become prisons for young minds who want to create and explore without restriction. It is up to us to change it.


A NEW Way of Learning – For a New World
......... to follow.
Posted by Michael Tellinger at Sunday, January 20, 2013

Eight Signs You May Be Living A Courage Based Lifestyle

Before It's News)

Z, Contributing Writer
Waking Times
1. You are an advocate for changing fear, as opposed to fearing change

By transforming fear into courage, you understand that power is merely a stopgap that must be expiated, lest it corrupt absolutely. For any action to count as courageous it must first come from an understanding that the current situation has changed so drastically that the requirements for courage must change along with it. You understand, as Anais Nin did, that, “Life shrinks or expands in proportion to one’s courage.”

Here’s the thing: We are all afraid. We’re afraid of losing our privilege, afraid of imprisonment, afraid of repression, afraid of being the bad guy, and afraid of doing the wrong thing. Most of all we’re afraid of losing face in front of our peers. But when the fear of remaining the same outweighs the fear of change, your fear will be transformed into courage and your inertia will be transformed into action. A courageous person understands this. They have transformed their lives into an open-ended adventure. They have trumped fear with courage. They have trumped inertia with action. It all begins with the acceptance that nothing remains the same, and then being proactive about what it means to change.
2. You have decided to become a “well-armed lamb”

In Matrix-terms you have taken the red pill. You have chosen the pain that comes from knowledge over the bliss that comes from ignorance. And in the face of entrenched political parties, you have gleaned the wisdom from Benjamin Franklin’s statement, “Democracy is two wolves and a lamb deciding on what to eat for lunch. Liberty is a well-armed lamb contesting the vote.” You seek to consistently contest immoral, unhealthy votes, while continually seeking to arm yourself with increasingly more knowledge. Autodidactism becomes you. Self-knowledge and the ability to unlearn, de-school, and deprogram outdated modes of acquiring knowledge become paramount in a world of repression and suppression.

A courageous person learns how to use the “shoulders of giants” as springboards into higher states of knowledge. Only self-education has the power to pluck the plank of hypocrisy from the eye of blind allegiance; be that allegiance to the military, the police, or to xenophobic, patriotic pride. Here, education is autonomous, having little or nothing to do with monetary reward or “getting a job.” For an autodidact the pursuit of knowledge is an act of courage itself; knowledge is gained for the sake of knowledge, as opposed to the typical pursuit of titles, money, and careers. A well-armed lamb doesn’t seek titles, rank, or fame, because he/she understands that “people don’t follow titles, they follow courage.”
3. You have the ability to question authority

You can discern the difference between the virtue of dissent and the vice of anger. You understand that insurgency, the rarest and most courageous of acts, is seldom distinguished from rage, the most common and myopic. The subjugated role of the slave and the soldier puts this concept into perspective. Slaves, like soldiers, do what they’re told. Soldiers, like slaves, ask no questions. Both slaves and soldiers are spoon-fed their orders and their blind obedience keeps the whole violently, exploitative machine going. Most slaves, upon waking up from their slavery, will experience anger or rage when they discover that servitude has come at the expense of their freedom. Similarly, most soldiers (if they can get over their pride), will experience anger or rage toward a corrupt chain of command when they discover that what they were “fighting for” was a lie.

But, what if a slave decides to rise up and catalyze the entire notion of slavery? What if a soldier decides to turn the tables and question the chain of command? What usually happens is the slave gets shot and the soldier gets placed into a military prison, but with intelligent, forthright persuasion (ie. MLK, JFK, and Ghandi), one can change the world for the better. And if the fear of death or imprisonment should discourage you, see sign number one. To avoid death and prison, see sign number two.
4. You consistently fight to think outside of the current condition

You have the courage to push the envelope and emerge as a free being. If, as Robert Green Ingersoll suggested, “the intellectual advancement of man depends on how often he can exchange an old superstition for a new truth” then is it not also true that the evolution of man itself advances depending upon how often he can exchange outdated, parochial methods of governance with new, more holistic methods? And doesn’t this further suggest to us that personal growth depends upon how often we can stretch comfort zones, break mental paradigms, and think outside of the current box? In other words, is not growth the ability to courageously “move past” precondition in a healthy way?

Here’s the thing: all people are born into a condition. Whether it’s an environmental condition or a cultural one, people do not choose the condition they are born into. A courageous person constantly seeks to remold, adapt, and/or overcome their current condition; especially when it comes to perceptual condition. When people care more about how they are perceived than about what is threatening them, unhealthy reasoning abounds and irrelevant, outdated systems become entrenched. But if people can care more about what is threatening them than about how they are perceived, healthy reasoning becomes paramount and a healthier world becomes a possibility.
5. You live moderately so that others may moderately live

You have simplified your lifestyle, recognizing that a lightness of being allows for greater freedom of expression. Knowing that excess, hoarding and stockpiling are critical reasons why the world is in such disrepair, you purposefully and proactively shed any and all unnecessary baggage. You realize that once basic needs are met our desire to accumulate more “stuff” actually undermines our happiness.

You know what constitutes true courage is the openness and adaptability of your spirit, realizing that courage and adaptability are inseparable. With this understanding comes a plasticity and adaptability to change that those who live complex, materialistic lifestyles cannot know. The freedom gleaned from this “lightness of being” opens up one’s third eye, thereby transforming the ego-centric My-World into the eco-centric Our-World, while also revealing how nationalism creates divisive patriotic value distortions. You have the ability to transform boundaries into horizons, understanding that living a simple life blurs the lines drawn by governmental institutions. You live deliberately so that others may deliberately live. This means that your life is lived with flexible, conscientious, proactive intention as opposed to rigid, mindless, reactive tension. And you become a prime example for how to live courageously.
6. You have the ability to become a freedom unto yourself

By trumping inertia with direct, courageous action, you have become a force of freedom. The natural progression of inertia is nihilism, which eventually leads to tyranny. It is only by acting courageous in the face of inertia, that one thwarts the would-be tyrant within. Like Audre Lorde said, “The true focus of revolutionary change is never merely the oppressive situations which we seek to escape, but that piece of the oppressor which is planted deep within each of us.” In order not to allow their inner-tyrant to get ahold of the reigns, you have clipped the yoke of the status quo, knowing that had you not done so you would have just become another run-of-the-mill pawn in someone else’s game.

You understand the need to redefine the concept of courage itself, realizing that the courage your forefathers used may be outdated within the current zeitgeist. You appreciate that we are all unique and that courageous people are deliberately and intentionally unique, realizing that there is a purpose to their uniqueness. You have become a freedom unto yourself because you have tuned into your own uniqueness and you allow it to blossom, thereby redefining courage for your particular place in time. The fruit harvested from this blossoming will serve to nourish your spirit for the rest of your life, and will give you the aplomb needed to withstand the vicissitudes of change.
7. You have accepted that life is pain

You understand that suffering is a side effect of love. But you choose to love anyway, despite the pain. You have learned to suffer well, grasping that there is an art in suffering that only the happiest people know. You can whistle happily, and you can suffer happily, but unless you do something there is no happiness. Embracing the pain of life may seem crazy, but to the courageous person it’s mother’s milk. Like Nietzsche wrote, “There is always some madness in love. But there is always some reason in madness.”

You realize that comfort can lead to believing that being human is easy. Pain can lead to a wake-up call, or it can just hurt, but it can never lead to believing that being human is easy. And so you choose pain over comfort and find courage there. Accepting that pain is the hard center of love, you embrace it, soften it, and transform it into wisdom. It is this wisdom that will carry you through life’s vicissitudes and make you stronger for it. “Because consciousness must involve both pleasure and pain, to strive for pleasure to the exclusion of pain is, in effect, to strive for the loss of consciousness,” wrote Alan Watts. “The greater part of human activity is designed to make permanent those experiences and joys which are only lovable because they are changing. Music is a delight because of its rhythm and flow. Yet the moment you arrest the flow and prolong a note or chord beyond its time, the rhythm is destroyed. Because life is likewise a flowing process, change and death are its necessary parts. To work for their exclusion is to work against life.” A courageous person never works against life.
8. You are willing to be wrong



There’s an old African proverb that says, “Through mistakes one becomes wise.” You understand this, but you further understand that only by learning from mistakes and capitalizing on the knowledge gained will it bear fruit. This potential for wisdom is a courageous person’s goal. You understand the ironic paradox of right/wrong: that you’re more likely to be right by admitting that you’re more than likely wrong than if you were to declare that you’re more than likely right. This is because of human fallibility. Nobody is perfect. You accept this and, through much trial and error and perseverance, you roll with the punches of your own fallibility and therein discover your capacity for courage. Like Saint Augustine wrote, “fallor ergo sum.” I err, therefore I am.

By examining your sense of certainty in cases where you turn out to be objectively wrong, you can learn to think differently about your conviction in situations where you feel subjectively right. This takes an enormous amount of courage, because admitting that our worldview might be wrong, or incomplete, is one of the most challenging things a human being can do. There is always room for improvement. Having the courage to be wrong gives you the courage to admit when you arewrong. In the end you leave yourself open to further realizing your potential for truth. The secret of life is to appreciate the joy of being wrong about a great many things. Like the great Rollo May said, “We must be fully committed, but we must also be aware at the same time that we might possibly be wrong. Our commitment to an idea is healthiest when it is not without doubt, but in spite of doubt.”
About the Author

Z, a former Navy Intelligence Specialist turned philosopher, is the author of Birthday Suit of God and The Looking Glass Man. His works are inspired by the great philosophers of the ages and his wide awake view of the modern world. His recent works can be seen here and also found at Z’s Hub.

This article is offered under Creative Commons license. It’s okay to republish it anywhere as long as attribution bio is included and all links remain intact.

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2013-01-18 13:05:29

Source: http://www.wakingtimes.com/2013/01/18/eight-signs-you-may-be-living-a-courage-based-lifestyle/