Classroom Talk
Winter 2002 Archive
About several of you . . . and the Sweet Sixteen. ;-) Posted by John on March 21, 2002 at 18:06:36:
Oh, thank-you, Deirdre. That feedback has helped me to get oriented. Perhaps we can just look over the span of teachings about this question, and
see where each of us seems to fit in.
I'm sorry, Douglas, but I'd like to hold off on responding to several things with you, if I may. And this piece of the lesson plan that Deirdre has
brought in is right in with the flow of the things I'm trying to explain and teach around here at this moment. And the same with you, Student John.
You say you are "impatient." Talk to half of your classmates around here about what they've had to go through about that. As you can see, I've got
my hands full right now. It's always that way in Classroom Talk. I've *always* got more to do than possible! And I'm always trying to find a way of
weaving it all together into a methodical, coherent, step-by-step—heh-heh—coaching plan.
This doesn't leave you out, and it doesn't leave out others who aren't posting much now, Rakesh, Eon, Suz . . . Eddie, recently, perhaps stepping aside
from some personality challenges in that absence. Whether you are posting or not, I remember all of you who have invested a lot of time around here,
every time when I'm coaching. I know when I'm talking to Eddie and Sally and Pauline and Douglas. Of course, the question is if they know when I'm
talking to them. The more they each learn to recognize of their own conditioned make-up, the more often they will pick up on my coachings with
them. Now, relating with your grandson, John . . . . .
How about this? Just practice studying out what he's like for a week, without tangling with him about anything, if you can help it. Just see what he's
like on his own, when he isn't being told what to do. Turn him loose, so to speak. It does seem like his behavior is rebellious. Perhaps he's just going
through a phase. It's *possible* that he is copying your own behavior with him and giving it back to you. Maybe he is playing you back to your Self.
Check that out, and see if it may be so, or obviously isn't so.
If you reject him being who he wants to be, then he rejects you back. Doing that may be "justice" from his young point of view. Before attempting to
make changes in the situation between you two, spend a week trying to become more familiar with the personality types of you both. Wake up and
just watch what's going on. What is the person doing here? What's obvious? *How* are they doing what they are doing? — And find this out:
what does he do when he isn't being provoked for a week? What is he like when he is free?
One possibility *might be* that he might turn off the water tap on his own, when he isn't being told that he has to do that. I wonder if you have "a
long list" of the things he does wrong. That would be a Judge side of you, if so. And he may rebel about those all things simply because you are
tellling him what he has to do about them. Give him a chance to take charge of his own life and guide his own life, if you can.
Okay . . . . . (looking around the room), Deirdre to Douglas:
>Considering the "many selves" theory is it possible for you to make room for the potential of John's interpersonal approach.. it might actually mesh with the intrapersonal..
I laughed and laughed. You sound like you actually understand what Douglas is talking about, Deirdre! What I was going to do, Douglas, was make
a gentlemanly plea for you to define "interpersonal" and "intrapersonal" in—puh-leeze!—fifty words, or less. For all I know, there might not be any
conflict between your ideas on that and the ideas of the awareness game here. I wasn't aware that I was excluding the "intrapersonal" in using my
term that way. I don't know what you mean by that? What's the distinction? What's the rub?
The quotation of mine that you cited, was "the awareness game is designed primarily for interpersonal relating between people." I could have said
everything I meant to convey there without even using the term "interpersonal." All I meant to be telling John then was that the awareness game is
designed primarily for relating between people . . . but it also works in relating with objects and programs like golf.
So where's the beef? Can't you just explain in a few words what your problem with the awareness game training is? Why the big production?—
presenting your college credentials, and somebody else's published theories, and somebody else's poem? Geeze. I wish you'd write a damned poem
of your own! What are your own personal thoughts and feelings about this training? Where does the methodology of the awareness game go wrong
for you?
Frankly, I'm very skeptical about "giving permission" for another long poem by somebody else. From past experience, it doesn't seem likely that's
going to be very productive in the furtherance of the things we are studying here. But if it is *the only way* to make your point, Douglas, have at it! I
have to be open-minded, I suppose. I can't deny you your artistic freedom to do it your own way.
If you'd care to make a mindfulness exercise out of it, for the fun of it . . . . . I'd suggest you interrupt the poem after every verse , or every so-many
lines, and tell us in your own words what the point of that part of the poem seems to be to you (and maybe along the way, tell us what you see this
having to do with in the awareness game training.).
God, I'd probably *love* your next classical poem, Douglas, if you'd do this . . . . . almost as much as I'd love to see a poem by *you*!
When I look at your postings nowadays, I have a particular "gloss" for doing that. I look at the parts of your postings that seem to express "the
surprising, and fascinating brand new Douglas." And I look at the parts that seem to express "the same-old same-old Douglas." I see a lot of you in
both of those views these days.
I see the new Douglas in your pausing and reflecting about posting another classical poem, your hesitation—based on your experiences here in this
classroom. I see the old Douglas in calling attention to your credentials, and the same old game of wanting to teach some other more intellectual class
in Classroom Talk, instead of focusing your time and energy on the experiential class that is actually being taught around here.
I don't mind if students bring up other teachings and show how they fit in with what we are doing here. And I don't mind if students bring up other
teachings that *refute* what we are doing here. What I mind is having teachings brought up that I can't make heads nor tails out of, without
providing a bridge of communication that teaches me, on the spot, how to have experiential understandings of whatever these learned Folks' lectures
or their poems are about. I don't have time to go to Harvard or to Cambridge to catch on to these other theories. If you can't or won't help me to
catch on to what I'm supposed to get out of it, Douglas, your lectures are way over my head.
I've got another little exercise or game to recommend for you, Douglas, when you are contemplating the postings you are about to post in Classroom
Talk. It focuses on "Substance" and "Image." Look at the lines you post, the things you say, and the things you quote, and ask: "Is this substance?
Or is it for image?" When you are sharing your own experiences, that is substantial. Like when you reflected about posting another poem, that has
substance. It relates with us, person to person about that. When you recite the prestigious schools you've attended, and the prestigious classical
authors you're familiar with—without explaining your own point—that seems to be for image, to me. Do you see what I'm driving at? That paints the
image of Douglas, the classical scholar, without putting any substance in.
If all the energy that Con Artists in the world pour into cultivating and portraying their image, day after day, if all that energy were eventually put
into doing the substantial things that they are actually capable of, instead, the substantial creative things that they *could be doing* with their lives,
those people would reach the very heights of everything that they've got in them to do.
This kind of image-building activity is just a plain waste of energy, and it distances other people from us. For instance, if one keeps on putting long,
unexplained classical poems on a bulletin board that is not dedicated to classical poems, but to some other subject instead, eventually most of the others
on the board stop opening those postings. Image-building is, per se, Self-isolating.
Well . . . . . Deirdre, my friend. You're pushed to the back of the bus again. I apologize. But I'm sure you'll heartily agree with me that my best move
at this moment is to get right on over there to my television set and watch my homeboys, the Arizona Wildcats basketball team, take on a tough
Oklahoma Sooners team in the Sweet Sixteen. These young Arizona players have come a long way since being unranked at the beginning of the
season. And I hope this is going to be a real exciting game.
Love y'all. Ha!!! Eddie! I bet you're rootin' for the Sooners!!! May the best team win!
Coach
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