How do Schools and Religions shape our mind?

Continuing on with the same flow as the past article on Relationships and Love, there was a deep realization that an integral part of human enlightenment, peace of mind, and tapping into infinite knowledge… largely stems from completely eliminating constructs and preconditions from our minds.

We are at an incredible moment within history of civilization – regarded as the age of Enlightenment. At no point has there been this high of a population of educated individuals on planet Earth, and the access to infinite pools of knowledge through the Internet takes us even a step further.

The important step to enlightenment and developing a world of peace and harmony, is to clean the mind from learned constructs that have been forced upon us by ancient systems and information from 100’s to even 1000’s of years ago. Cleaning the mind of preconceptions we can then tap into pure wisdom, intuition and creativity.

We are realizing now how much religions have impacted our minds, and a mass exodus is happening. Society is finding that true spirituality comes from within rather than from without. This realization is stemming from religions preaching compassion and love, yet creating constructs based on ego – my god is greater than all others, my words are better than my neighbors. Constructs are formed forcing woman and men to be within marriages they wish to be liberated from, or not allowing marriages at all because your partner is from ‘the other side’. The true psychological impacts come when they condemn your desires rather than providing methods to live in harmony with them.

All religions are simply ideologies, dogmas, creeds. The true religion has no name, it cannot have any name. Buddha lived it, Jesus lived it — but remember, Jesus was not a Christian, and Buddha was not a Buddhist, they had never heard of the invented words. The truly religious people have been simply religious, they have not been dogmatic. Simply dive into spirituality, into yourself, to connect with God are the actual words of Jesus and Buddha.

There are three hundred religions in the world – If truth is one, how can there be three hundred religions?

If there is one science that deals with objective things, then religion is also one because it is concerned with the subjective truth, the other side of the truth. But that religion cannot have any name, it cannot have any ideology. True spirituality is the elimination of constructs and preconditions, when everybody and everything is equal and in harmony. When our minds and actions aren’t limited but guided for growth, and deep awareness in everything we do, a deep creativity is born. One that reflects Gods true ambition… creation, harmony, and balance.

My words are here to shock the system because the system needs a shock. Deep conversations here in India, with enlightened teachers from private international schooling systems such as Montessori and International Baccalaureate, has led me to find that there is a massive movement to completely restructure our current school system… one that was created in England pre-World War 2, and focuses on assembly line education – producing children that conform to creativity extinguishing cookie cutter templates, and crippling those that don’t. This rigid out-dated system is supposed to develop our youth for their lives until they retire at 65, though our society doesn’t know where we’ll be in 5 years’ time.

Human flourishing isn’t a mechanical process but an organic process… we must create a system that customizes and personalizes to the students. Approaching our youth through constructs that they should be like this or that, especially ones that are extremely dated or better yet influenced through religious dogma – we impose limits on our future… which is in the hands of our children.

I think it’s befitting to finish off with a powerful quote that is applicable to our current time on Earth.

“The dogmas of the quiet past are inadequate of the stormy present.

The occasion is piled high with difficulty and we must rise with the occasion.

As our case is new so we must think a new and act anew.

We must dis-enthrall ourselves and then we shall save our country.”

Abraham Lincoln

Here is an incredible talk from TED.com on school by Sir Ken Robinson:

http://www.ted.com/talks/ken_robinson_says_schools_kill_creativity.html