eight day teacher training

Today is the final day of an eight day training that I am completing with 20 people who will become the next group of teachers of Evolutionary Enlightenment.

We’ve been having a blast! And this training has gone far beyond the previous one. It seems obvious that all of the success that our previous teachers have had and are having with their fall classes is affecting everyone. This group of people started at a much higher level in terms of both their ability to communicate in a teaching format and in terms of their understanding of the teaching.

Perhaps the most interesting thing that came out of this was what happened on the last day of their practice teaching rounds. During this part of the training each teacher has three opportunities to teach aspects of Evolutionary Enlightenment to the rest of the trainees and have their teaching critiqued (fun). Coming to the last session of this phase Katherine (remember Katherine, she’s becoming the head teacher for the course) and I felt that more practice just wasn’t needed. What was needed was to give everyone a good kick in the pants by making the point that you can only go so far with this teaching by practicing teaching technique or even improving your cognitive understanding of Evolutionary Enlightenment. In the end, when all is said and done, the only thing that will allow anyone to be able to convey the vast mystery and implication of this teaching is the degree to which the teaching itself has usurped their own spirit and guides their own lives.

Andrew told me that the one thing that was critical for our teacher’s success was authenticity and by authenticity he didn’t just mean being honest and not trying to B.S. your way through material you don’t really understand. He meant the degree to which our teachers are actually “walking their talk” – living these teachings with inspired passion, energetic engagement and sincere intention. Only someone who is grappling with their own soul in relationship to the meaning and significance of human life when seen as part of the vast universal unfolding of evolution will be able to do justice to what we are trying to teach - period, end of story…