Sandra Dodd

I saved this but don't remember where I first posted it.
Last night I was feeling uncomfortable about the tone of all these
discussions, but I do believe that parents must become unschooling
parents, and that makes the difference.
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" Your sense of self will cease unexpectedly. "

I got this "fortune" from a Neopets "Island Mystic." It's a column
A, column B, column C random construct, I'm sure, but I thought it
was interesting.

Just this morning while doing dishes I was thinking about the simple
but serious dilemma involved with discussing unschooling, which is (I
think, this morning) that some people want to do it without changing
themselves or their families or their relationships and others
believe that the change is what does it altogether.

And I was thinking about philosophy (the idea of it) and spirituality
(the reality of the effect of spirituality) and was thinking about
the brain research that says there's a place in your brain that is
stimulated during meditation or prayer, and that the sense of being
one with the universe has a physical (physical meaning biochemical,
so physical on a cellular level) reality.

Probably feeling "one with" one's children is some of that. Probably
the difference between feeling adversarial (separate and "right" or
martyred or resentful) and feeling that you are your child's partner
and ally has something to do with that part of the brain.

And if so, this all probably has something to do with Howard
Gardner's intrapersonal intelligence (knowledge of self) and the
proposed-but-not-fully-accepted intelligence being referred to as
metaphysical or spiritual.

Then my dishes were clean and I stopped thinking about it, until I
was playing Neopets and wondering whether the unexpected cessation of
one's sense of self was a bad thing, or maybe kind of a good thing.

Sandra
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Links that might help:
http://sandradodd.com/unschool/gettingit
http://sandradodd.com/peace/newview
http://sandradodd.com/seeingit



[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]

Ren Allen

'Then my dishes were clean and I stopped thinking about it, until I
was playing Neopets and wondering whether the unexpected cessation of
one's sense of self was a bad thing, or maybe kind of a good thing."

In Zen practice, that's called enlightenment.:)

Ren
learninginfreedom.com

Sandra Dodd

On Jan 17, 2006, at 10:01 AM, Ren Allen wrote:

> 'Then my dishes were clean and I stopped thinking about it, until I
> was playing Neopets and wondering whether the unexpected cessation of
> one's sense of self was a bad thing, or maybe kind of a good thing."
>
> In Zen practice, that's called enlightenment.:)

=====================

Not The Big One, but a little twink, maybe. <g>

Sandra

Ren Allen

"Not The Big One, but a little twink, maybe. <g>"

Maybe with other practices, but with Zen, that IS it.
You can do a lot of other explanations (and it takes all that to
really understand Zen) but at the crux of it, it's the art of
"nothingness".

Here's something Osho said about it:

"Dhyana means a state of no-mind--no concentration, no contemplation,
no meditation, in fact--just silence, a deep, profound silence where
all thoughts have disappeared. When there is no ripple in the lake of
consciousness; the consciousness is functioning just like a mirror
reflecting all that is--the stars, the trees, the birds, the people,
all that is--simply reflecting without any interpretation, without
bringing in any prejudices.

The state of "no-mind" or loss of self is the ultimate in enlightenment.

But it takes a whole lot more explaining to get that core of Zen.

And I'm talking about Zen as pure Zen...not the religion.

And I didn't mean to go OT....

Ren
learninginfreedom.com