The Soul of Learning

rituals of awakening, magnetic pedagogy, and living justice

Mary Keator, Vajra Watson

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2021
• Print ISBN: 9781032053462
• eBook ISBN: 9781000512731
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Education
• Subtopic: Education General

The Soul of Learning is a groundbreaking book that bridges together cultural work, contemplative practices, and ancient scriptures. Inside each chapter, readers are challenged and inspired to come face-to-face with themselves as they encounter teachers in all forms—from spiritual sages to critical theorists, from prophets to poets, from hip-hop rappers to reggae artists. This book is multifaceted and multidisciplinary. It models the essence of education by offering multiple entry points into holistic learning: somatic, aesthetic, emotional, intellectual, ethical, relational, and spiritual.

The Soul of Learning embodies a pedagogical disruption in pursuit of personal sovereignty. What process must we go through to reimagine ourselves in relation to each other and the world around us? This book offers a semblance of an answer. As a way to bring the sacred into schooling, Keator and Watson courageously connect spirituality, activism, and education through curated readings, guided activities, and intentional exercises. It's a ready-to-go syllabus and hands-on workbook all in one! Altogether this book is revelatory and provides innovative ways to teach and learn, lead and live. The Soul of Learning documents a transformative journey, through the interiority of our being into a revolutionary call for collective belonging.

1

Meditation on Education

DOI: 10.4324/9781003197164-1

What would an education of the soul look like?

~ Kabir ~

The Soul of Learning presents a lens on teaching and learning that weaves together our respective backgrounds of contemplative and critical pedagogies with perennial wisdom. Throughout these pages, we have constructed a path for you, our reader, to experience education as a living discipline. An education that is so deeply infused with soul that the results are imbued with authenticity, wisdom, compassion, and living justice. For it is the soul that grants these gifts and guides us to lead an awakened, authentic, compassionate, and harmonious life.

Along this journey, we can hear the words of Ella Baker as she tells us, “The system under which we now exist has to be radically changed. This means that we are going to have to learn to think in radical terms.” To accomplish Baker’s vision, we need to do the internal work that will allow us to reconnect and rediscover the essence and roots of our humanity. We yearn for drastic changes in society and in our selves. We also believe the time is now. Right now. This particular moment is spectacular. “The pandemic is a portal,” Arundhati Roy (2020) explains: “Historically, pandemics have forced humans to break with the past and imagine their world anew. This one is no different. It is a portal, a gateway between one world and the next.” Thus, we are at a crossroads: one path leads forward toward transformation and the other a return to the status quo. May we not return to “normal.”

The Soul of Learning is our small attempt to bring us through the portal. Our intentions are simple. There is no learning without soul. An education about the soul is spiritual in nature. While many of the readings may seem religious, per se, they are part of the greater opus of the world’s literature and can be experienced as “living revelations.” Inside these pages, we enter into sacred dialogue with parables and poets spanning across time and cultures. Through a carefully curated selection of these literary pieces and activities, we embark on various rituals of awakening. This generative process is meant to challenge and inspire you to come face to face with yourself and each other as a form of pedagogical disruption. Altogether our method is meant to be transformative, offering contemplative and innovative ways to read, teach, learn, lead, and live.

May these words reach your heart, reflect your purpose, and enliven the world.

Every being with a gift,

Every being with a responsibility.

~ Robin Kimmerer¹ ~

As a first step, we want to personally welcome you into this experience of the interior and the infinite. Please accept our invitation and make yourself feel at home. Take a deep breath—and let it fill you from the soles of your feet all the way through to the crown upon your head—and allow yourself to relax into the moment. Lay your burdens down. Trust yourself, your intuition. Just pause and be.

Breathe...Breathe...Breathe.

In 1968, Thomas Merton discussed the “innate violence” of being too busy with the “rush and pressure of modern life” (p. 81). Jane Dalton (2018) extended this idea when she writes, “Ignoring my body and my heart, I force personal will to complete my ‘to do’ tasks, despite signs of fatigue or stress. I become oriented toward goals and making things happen, pushing against the very loud messages I receive to pause” (p. 21). Moving from the personal to the political, Leigh Patel (2016) connects slowing down to decolonial practices, consciously reorienting oneself in relation to space and time. She writes, “Pausing is useful, even necessary, particularly in these modern times in which colonial projects have shaped technology, knowledge, and connection to be a veritable nonstop stimulations of tweets, status updates, and deadlines, all competing for our attention” (p. 1). Pausing can actually be a productive interruption to competitive ways of doing. When we pause, we can shift into our human being.

People, just like plants and animals, have a purpose. The sacred pause can help us discover our inner compass.

Seek That

There is a fire within you that gives you life—

Seek that.

In your body is a precious jewel—

Seek that.

Oh, wandering Sufi,

If you are in search of the greatest treasure,

Don’t look outside,

Look within, and seek That.

~ Rumi ~

When we are seeking our truest self, we often start this journey of awakening—alone. However, that’s not the complete truth. We have within us the past and future, ancestors and descendants. Our lives merely and magnificently a bridge between yesterday and tomorrow. Right now, we have before us the most precious present. We are grateful for this moment and these words. This page and your attention. We are actually here in this moment—together.

How beautiful it is to come together for the purpose of learning. Consider teaching as a ritual, a ceremony. In Latin, caerimonia means holy and sacred; it is holistic and whole-making, both grounding and elevating. As Robin Kimmerer (2013) shares in Braiding Sweetgrass, “Ceremony focuses attention so that attention becomes intention … These are ceremonies that magnify life” (p. 249). This magnetism is enlightening and regenerative, a creative force that moves us from objects to subjects, from passive to powerful.

Any place we gather becomes a ceremony on the way.

~ Rumi ~

As a form of ceremony, how do we hold one another and ourselves to higher states of being and deeper ways of living in and with each other? Helminski (2017), provides an answer:

A seed has no energy of its own, but it can respond in the right environment. Every form of life has a capacity for response but none so much as the human being… . The cultivation we need to provide is through conscious awareness. This makes the difference between nominally being alive and being alive abundantly (p. 14).

As we pivot toward conscious awareness, we start to see ourselves with greater clarity. This form of honesty can be hard and painful. It requires accountability, integrity, and responsibility. Any commitment to change takes work and discipline guided by wisdom, beauty, and grace.

As human beings, we have the incredible capacity to change and be changed. Learning—in its most liberating state—allows us to let go of preconceived notions, stretch our ideas, expand our consciousness, and cultivate understanding. Moving from the known into the unknown can be terrifying, but as Morrison (1998) explains: “What you do know is that you are human and therefore educable, and therefore capable of learning how to learn” (p. 141). Leigh Patel (2016) extends this conversation when she writes, “Learning is fundamentally a fugitive, transformative act. It runs from what was previously known, to become something not yet known” (p. 6).

What will come of this transformative work? Who are you now? Who will you become? As authors of this text, we do not hold the answers, but we are intent on inspiring you, challenging you, shapeshifting perspectives, and impacting the landscape of learning.

Our book builds upon the long legacy of freedom dreams, contemplative thinkers, and contemporary abolitionists (Kelley, 2002; Love, 2019; P...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Contents
• Foreword
• Preface
• 1 Meditation on Education
• 2 Silence
• 3 Just Breathe
• 4 Mental Emancipation
• 5 Expanding Perspectives
• 6 The Journey Into Truth
• 7 Into the Heart of Healing
• 8 Teaching Toward Sovereignty
• 9 Beloved Community
• 10 Ancient Futures
• Afterword
• References
• Index