Daily Prayer

 http://bit.ly/hXkTbo links to a video on "reel wisdom" - I am reminded that my life is exactly what I have created. It is formed 100% by the choices I have made. There are limitless possibilities. My choices have the power to limit my full potential or my ability to create a path back to Oneness. Which way to turn may not always be readily discernable. I must quiet my mind so that I can allow my inner wisdom, Spirit to guide me toward the light. In this land of dualistic reality (which doesn't really exist but that's a topic for another post) I am constantly shown both the light and the dark - the light is love and the dark is a cry for love or fear. Fear can cloud my clarity and lead me astray. What is there to be afraid of? Death? Not really as it is inevitable and it is only death of the flesh not of Me. Pain and suffering? Ah yes, but if I allow myself the idea that these are illusory and that they only exist to validate the existence of the Ego, I can release their apparent power over my experiences. These are patterns that do not serve me and I pray for strength, courage and insight to release them and to follow the light back home.

Learners as co-instructors/ Instructors as co-learners

In 1984 Bloom and his colleagues discovered that there is a significant gap between student potential and achievement in formal educational settings. In one-on-one tutoring, an average student out-performed 98% of  those in classroom settings. He gave the academic community a challenge -

"I believe an important task of research and instruction is to seek ways of accomplishing this [academic success] under more practical and realistic conditions than the one-to-one tutoring, which is too costly for most societies to bear on a large scale. This is the “2 sigma” problem. Can researchers and teachers devise teaching-learning conditions that will enable the majority of students under group instruction to attain levels of achievement that can at present be reached only under good tutoring conditions?.... If the research on the 2 sigma problem yields practiced methods (methods that the average teacher or school faculty can learn in a brief period of time and use with little more cost or time than conventional instruction), it would be an educational contribution of the greatest magnitude" [quoted from abstract Open for Learning: The CMS and the Open Learning Network by Jon Mott and David Wiley http://www.ineducation.ca/article/open-learning-cms-and-open-learning-network]


Technology seemed the obvious solution to meet the challenge. Thus, the learning management system or course management system was born. The abstract cited above is insightful and explores the limitations of uni-directional distribution of knowledge in the traditional educational paradigm. Technology in the form of CMS or LMS has done little to change this formalized distribution of knowledge - the control of what is taught and how it is assessed is all in the hands of the class administrator.  Furthermore, the learning is restricted to a time code - when the class is over, the learning stops. This is more efficient, but this article argues and I can't help but agree that this model limits student curiosity and creativity, thus their ultimate potential.


Education should facilitate discourse through encouraging participation, self discovery and various forms of creativity and problem solving. I have been a follower of shamanic practices for years and one of the things that I have learned is how our language and concepts about how things should be fixes them in time limiting their full potential in a universe of limitless possibilities. By tightly defining the content to be learned by the student and containing the field of learning to a time black, rather than building in choice that promotes curiosity and personalization of the learning, we are fixing the parameters of the learning field. In essence, current technology builds a container as limiting as the walls around a classroom. I love the notion brought out in this abstract that we are setting students up for greater success in life in general if we set up our learning environments to support learners as co-instructors and instructor as co-learners and encourage the on-going growth of the shared knowledge long after a course has ended. Let's face it, when we go out into the real world, the problems and potential solutions are limited only by our lack of imagination and creativity. I know that I have learned a lot from my children - it matters not that they are nearly 30 years younger than I nor that I am more "educated".

Building a healthy community through life-long learning

What is the essence of learning? For the past 25 years I have been engaged in educational publishing in higher ed. I spent the last twelve years of that time period as the editor for student success. Most people in my generation don't realize that there is a course offered for freshmen in college to help them learn how to learn, how to be successful in college. Many schools focus on very basic skills - how to read actively by taking notes in your text and highlighting; how to organize your notes; how to manage your time; how to manage your finances; etc.. While these basic skills are essential for success, I would argue that they are just the tip of the gigantic college completion problem. At the end of the day, these basic skills should be the responsibility of the student and their K-12 educators. College should be the next level of learning that moves students successfully into graduate level work or into the knowledge economy. While the current administration is promoting an aggressive college completion agenda, it seems to me that if we want a healthy economy in the future, we should focus not so much on the number of graduates, but rather the quality of their ability to learn and solve real problems.

What skills will set students up for a lifetime of continual & engaged learning? Do we really want to define student success by grading memorization skills, i.e., the ability to retain information long enough to regurgitate it on a test? Wouldn't it be more meaningful and interesting to help students develop not just the ability, but the desire to question facts they encounter, to dig deeper to discover the why, where, when and how of those facts? In this age of information, with a deluge of data to ingest, organize, reflect on, synthesize etc., aren't we obligated to set up our learning environments whether online or on-site in such a way to teach students higher order thinking skills. Furthermore, any skills taught in a vacuum without application are doomed to a very brief shelf life.

Why are students disengaged in education? No doubt there are numerous reasons, but I would bet that if they were learning something personally meaningful, they would engage that internal motivation center. You can't teach motivation, but you can create an environment in which students develop their innate sense of motivation. In my estimation, the problem-based model in which students are working independently and together in teams to solve real world problems that resonate with their interests is an excellent way to inspire learning. Mandating that the outcomes focus on communication, critical and creative thinking, and collaboration will also set students up for continued success in the workplace.

Success is not the opposite of failure, rather failure is a tool that, if used properly, ultimately fosters success. Focusing on grades and allowing students to earn failing grades is counter productive. But, that's another topic for another post.


"Failure is only the opportunity to begin again, only this time more wisely." - Henry Ford

Ho'oponopono

Dr. Len is a modest, beautiful light Being. Ho'oponopono is an ancient Hawaiian healing practice that Dr. Len has reintroduced through his work as described in the book Zero Limits. Essentially, the premise is that one assumes 100% responsibility for the world they experience. Our sole/soul purpose on this Earth, according to Len, is to clean up our subconscious - to free ourselves from our memories that keep us in a seeming eternal cycle of pain and suffering. How? If I acknowledge that I am 100% responsible for how I experience the world, then if I am triggered by someone or an event, I look inside myself to understand what in me is causing me to experience this thing. If I recognize that my experience is the result of data points or memories locked in my subconscious, then it follows that by erasing the data points I become free from my memories that have this situation or person fixed in my experience. As the data points are erased and my memory is free of this pattern, what I am experiencing must therefore change.

At the end of the day, there is only love. Sounds perhaps unrealistic. But, Dr. Len used a practice of Ho'oponopono or forgiveness when involved with a psychiatric clinic for the criminally insane and the result was near 100% transformation of the patients. My philosophy - you don't have to understand it (it's quantum healing physics) and if the answer to the question "what if it were possible?" yields only positive possibilities, what's the harm in developing a forgiveness practice that could change the world - literally?

So, the steps are simple - when something or someone triggers me and knocks me off my peace meter (neutrality), I engage it by turning within.  "I love you" - memories or data points of this experience that would have me believe there is something wrong - I love you. "I'm sorry" - I'm sorry for using my memories to hold you in this place of suffering. "Please forgive me" - forgive me for believing in separation and creating this seemingly real place of pain and suffering. "Thank you" And with that to allow the memories to be erased and the mind to be cleaned and healed. The event should no longer hold the charge and by virtue of that shift transmutes to pure love.

Choosing our emotions

Excerpt from

Choosing Your Emotions Instead of Letting Them Choose You by Laura Munson

And my answer is: no one can cause you to have an emotion. It's playground politics all over again. No one can "make" you mad or feel guilty or cry or laugh. Physically, yes, a black eye is a black eye. But emotionally, it's always a choice. I read somewhere recently that we have around 60,000 thoughts a day and something like 75-80 % of them are negative. That doesn't surprise me one bit. We have chosen to become emotional victims and I think it's because there's a pay-off to it. We get to be right. We have told ourselves a story a long time ago that we are powerful when we________. Or conversely, not powerful when we are not__________. And then we let those equations run our lives and determine our perceptions and reactions so that we can prove our story true. Our inner critic screams, megaphone to our heart: "See, I told you the world sucks. I told you you would fail. I told you you are powerless."


But  what if we chose to see that our real power is in loving ourselves, even when we are at our worst? That we are enough. What if we turned that inner critique into a cheerleader? What would happen? My answer: we would find the freedom of the present moment.


for full article - http://www.huffingtonpost.com/laura-munson/choosing-your-emotions-in_b_845897.html

Heart Path

"It is miraculous. I even have a superstition that has grown on me as a result of invisible hands coming all the time - namely, that if you do follow your bliss you put yourself on a kind of track that has been there all the while, waiting for you, and the life that you ought to be living is the one you are living. When you can see that, you begin to meet people who are in your field of bliss, and they open doors to you. I say, follow your bliss and don’t be afraid, and doors will open where you didn’t know they were going to be" Joseph Cambell