Universities: Higher Learning or Higher Earnings?

This poem I wrote some time ago but have updated it as I felt inspired. What I see clearly is that universities have adopted a business-as-usual paradigm. They receive funds from corporations to ineffect train students to work in their industries. Moreover, those who have influence at universities are increasingly private interests. What I find fascinating is that they used to be places of exploring higher learning, a little bit like Star Trek exploring the unknown, receiving funding to advance civiliation to move into new frontiers and meeting new civilisations who knows! Today we see the value of university education decline (hence degrees are bottom level now) and as they receive less funding from government and the private sector starts to fill the void, they influence the direction of education not new knowledge (unless profitable). Of course this leads to serving the needs of industry over society and creating mindsets that are employable rather than intellectuals exploring for new knowledge.

What I saw clearly in my poem was the decline of business and the rise of new knowledge in enabling society to cope with chaos and change. I don’t think there will be business-as-usual as the world is changing rapidly and people are feeling the urge to take back their power.

In my own experience I have found a few enlightened thinkers at universities particularly in the Humanities area, of which I am somewhat familiar. I’ve also seen self interested individuals paralleling the same mind sets we are increasingly seeing in management circles. Management value the importance of market analysis and generating profits over students studying for their real passion. I see so many students going into law, medicine and accounting as they see the money, they don’t follow their hearts. Their well meaning parents steer them in a direction where they will get work and status. Many these days are from third world countries and see a chance to give their children what they didn’t have. I can understand that. However, if they were educated to follow the heart and that life itself is creative, then we would approach education in a different light. I don’t know how many times I’ve stepped out to follow my passion to find things come to me, I meet the right people and new possibilities open up that I could never have planned for. Our consciousness is electromagnetic and we do indeed attract what we focus on. What you believe you create. Yet the prevailing paradigm is that you must work hard in order to get ahead, you must compete, conform and be the best to succeed. Competition is encouraged over cooperation and harmony. However, I have found in my experience there are many wealthy successful people out there who feel unfulfilled and unhappy. I met one of the top 50 thinkers of the world, he invited me for dinner and I discovered he was lonely. I actually felt to connect with him to show him happiness through the clowning, I did come to him as a friend, it had nothing to do with fame. My intuition connected me. I’ve worked with famous people to find they don’t feel loved or have pressures to stay in the spotlight or on top of the game. So what is the money for if you are not happy. Does money make you happy? This of course is not taught at university, it is the fluffy stuff that many diminish as irrelevant. Yet if you ignore the fluffy stuff e.g. if you don’t love a child they can become mentally ill or die, I found that out in Russia when travelling to baby houses, that indeed was the result of lack of affection and loving validation. The fluffy stuff is the stuff of life infact. Without it life is meaningless. Many people seek the fame so others will love them, then they feel good about themselves. If you are unhappy you impact on others lives and that becomes a knock on attitude of dog eat dog. If you are happy you help others get ahead and they may pay it forward.

So the point of this discussion is that money is not the goal in truth, it seems that way as old ideas have told us so. Our entire world society is build on the unquestioned paradigm of business as a means of wealth generation and security. Many countries have come out of poverty been given extended credit to develop their economies rapidly. Cummulatively on a global level it is sinking the planet as the resources cannot supply an American lifestyle for 6 billion people. We need 3-4 planets to do that. Yet we are still educating young people to aspire for wealth, materialism, success, to go into occupations that offer more money and status rather than seeking happiness through what you truly want, this is indeed the new paradigm shift. People are starting to think more about what they truly want and what makes life worthwhile.

I have not found that universities or any business enterprise care for students or indeed employees, the objective is to keep people engaged so they can generate money and keep the system going. I can understand that given our prevailing beliefs. The banner of professionalism keeps this emotional distance and motivates tasks, work flows and outcomes. The notion of community is seen as a social paradigm outside of business yet it naturally includes differences under the one umbrella ‘society’ and makes itself open to all voices ‘democracy’. Business structures do not operate as a community with the best interests of citizens as equal shareholders in mind. The purpose of the traditional Greek Agora was to encourage forums to air people’s viewpoints (typically male senators). As small communities became cities we have lost this live interaction and sense of community in favour of distanced workplaces or politics in favour of a ‘do what I say’ emphasis. Generally, we are not inviting or embracing differences, different perspectives, or sharing power as it is perceived as rocking the boat rather than floating your boat on new ideas on the basis of inclusivity. The excitement is in exploring rather than turning every discussion into a win/lose debate or a directive. The structure of debate of course came from well meaning philosophers who thought argument would flush out truth. All it does these days is seek to cleverly put down the other, or trumph their argument to win the point. Over emphasis on knowledge is seen as power as others are disarmed if they don’t have the facts at hand. Issues of emotions and happiness are seen as motherhood statements. A term I smile at given the power of mothers. So knowledge is used as a power chip rather than curiously opening to new ideas as equals, expressing feelings, intuition or visions of the future as a means of growing and expanding awareness.

We are not deeply discussing or reflecting on the reality in which we live and the future we desire. Much is unquestioned or masked. Mostly our world is categorised through the prism of the top-down economic paradigm which is declining rapidly in my view. We do not educate people to learn how to discuss ideas without fighting, but to really respect diversity of viewpoints and realise that everything you experience has a purpose and we all have different journeys, that is what makes viewpoints interesting, they provide an array of probabilities and perspectives. None of course are the absolute truth just perceptions on this journey through life filtered by personality, education, articulation and memory. Life is simply a learning context in all ways. Some call it a school. That applies typically if we are open to new ideas and learning.

This world is not haphazard. Did the trees invent themselves, the oceans, the wind and the climate? No it evolved and was here before us and it is an intelligent system on a living planet amongst a solar system of stars and moving bodies, within galaxies infinitem. None of which is haphazard. We have limited our intellectual abilities to the point where originally the enlightment was to break us out of unquestioned religious power and rigid thinking to now find ourselves straight jacketed by unquestioned business power again following the same model of rigid ideas and the mantra of business as the new religion of globalisation within which we are addicted. Yet notwithstanding the point being made above about limitedness and power, in reality even our existence is not haphazard there is indeed purpose for it and we do learn from the challenges in life. So the yin/yang do serve a higher purpose, wisdom cannot occur from an unchallenged life unless you are born with it, indeed some are.

We still are subject to percevied power. Typically it plays out as power over others, indeed this is powerlessness seeking power. It is the eogic consciousness that serves self primarily. The ego is the personal self that becomes hurt, angry, outraged as it sees itself as victimised by the world or self interested. Hence, when you take another’s choices away resentment and negativity grows as people need to be self determining. We have lost touch with ancient teachings that inspire an understanding and virtuous worldview where we are part of the whole, that for every action there is an equal and opposite reaction, to flow with life not fight it, to look for the good and serve others are notable examples. Many don’t believe in the spiritual life as they haven’t felt it, I can understand that, yet if you have felt love and selflessness, you have experienced your higher self. The higher feelings come from alignment of our values which lead us to our own truth and naturally formulate communities based on love, peace, joy, equality, fairness and integrity. These communities live in harmony with each other and the natural order. These communities build and expand upon knowledge developing well rounded and wise members. Yet truth in our modern world has been marginalised and likely to be seen as idealistic and pointless. We see truth perceived as peer review or consensus of academic papers, media spin promoting viewpoints that many take on as their own. Truth is not typically regarded as a deep exploration of life where you actually get outside of your university or office box and experience life to ground what is thought (conceptualised) with actual experience. Wisdom is knowlege applied, did you know that? I overheard a politics lecturer speaking about how they analyse politics at university but none of the academics had been to Question Time. He was making the point of practical activities and the importance of experience. Even I have walked up and down the corridors of parliament questioning what this is all about. I did confess going as a clown once fanticising to stand up and call them ‘clowns’, however from my perspective that would not be an insult as I am one. However, I found the thought amusing, it would be more to play with the name calling.

Today so many people live in their heads in an imagined world that appears real by consensus. I would see that more as a sleight of hand magic trick that designs the world, but is nothing like the real thing. Neither is Coke I might add ha ha. Yet they speak eloquently and they are seen as experts so the public acquiesce and assume they must know better. That of course is what disempowerment looks like. Yet many are unaware they are disempowered, they accept the roles as presented to them from childhood. We see most people are working 9-5 and not getting a life outside of their workspaces. The real world is unreal to them and their real world is not real at all, it is 4 walls and the same faces mimicking the same mantras and just getting the job done until they can go. Very few want to be there. No original thought happening or invigoration of new frontiers as expectations are hamstrung by needing to work and dreaming of holidays. Most definitely we created our own prisons and call it democracy. That is the set up. Another unquestioned belief.

So that brings me to new ideas. It is time to break free. I love that movie where the broadcaster tells people to go to the window and shout ‘I’m as mad as hell and I am not going to take it anymore’. For me I am happy as heaven but you get the point, get real and ask for what you want. Why suffer in silence, just be honest and find what makes you happy. As you reach for choices you lose that feeling of being a victim, that life is happening through you not to you. In truth when you start to ask you may happen to see an idea in the paper, someone mentions a new job somewhere, some information comes to you and you marvel at ‘I was just thinking that’. That is the magic of life you won’t get at university. Who knows if you ask you may just get it. Look up the law of attraction on the net and play with the idea that you create your life. Why not shake up the old energy and wake up to a real world that is free and sustainable and fun. We can’t go on in the old paradigm, most definitely the times are a changing as Bob Dylan famously sang. But first we must question ourselves, question the world we created, take responsibility and imagine the future we want. Why not open to new ideas, possibilities without poo hooing anyone venturing outside of the box. Just because most believe an idea or way of life does not make it true or real. Where ideas ground is in the truth of personal experience and inspiration, then they integrate as your own truth. That is where I have found my inner knowing and expanding philosophy of life.

Spirituality is really connecting to love in a real way, love of self and love of others, it is not the least bit fluffy it is the real stuff of life which enables you to live with little, to follow your passion, to trust life, to live authentically and to feel deeply happy as you are true to yourself. You can’t buy that. If that is considered fluff, then I am there. I believe in opening the mind to new knowledge and not being afraid of change. For me change is great and taught me to see and experience life in a myriad of ways. I’ve lived in 100’s of houses now, I’ve travelled 20 countries, travelled around Australia alone with a tent and worked in 400 workplaces. I’ve clowned in refugee camps, slums, spoken to 500 people at conferences about clowning and peace, jumped out of a plane to overcome fear, interviewed heaps of different people, clowned in Russia with Patch Adams, been to university, worked as a typist, skateboarded on half pipes, dived at the Great Barrier Reef, got drunk, married, seen channellings, ridden a camel, spotted a pod of dolphins, lived in a foreign country and worked with famous people. All because I had the primary thoughts ‘life is about experience not the money’, ‘the world is safe’, ‘I create my reality’ and ‘people are good’. When I thought this way the fetters and blinkers to my freedom came off. It makes you contemplate on how powerful is thought. It was when I was 28 that I opened to possibilities in life, I made that decision that ‘life is about experience not money’, I’ve never looked back. So I don’t think as I write this I’ve been living in my head, I’ve been out there tasting this wonderful life and found it freeing me when I am open and creating new thoughts instead of ‘I should…, I must… I ought to’. No I go with ‘why not’ and ‘what do I truly want’ I then go about creating it, hang out with those into it, get pictures, talk about it, make it your obsession and whallah one day you may just have it. Observe your thoughts and you will find out what you are creating. If you are always negative, that is the way the world will look to you and negative people will attract and then you will say ‘see it is a horrible world’. That seldom happens to me.

Another thought producing machine is television it just locks you into prevailing thought patterns that are tired and the same old stuff trotted out as truth. I’ve seen kids across the world just watch it and think it is the world. You see the same programs, the same patterns, same language emerge. We see the same news items as the media keeps us in fear and people keep their heads down. Video games are the same, playing the same game over when outside the sun is shining. So many kids are lonely and escaping unhappy homes, so they lose themselves in games and life just happens. In the end it is game over, where did life go. They become more scared of life as they are not testing, challenging the boundaries, building resilience, questing, they are living in their heads and learning that violence is power through gaming. Sadly they don’t realise they are hooked up to a machine and narrowing their life and potential.

When you open to new ideas you take your head out of the sand (fear) and take responsibility for the world you have helped create through silence, participation or tacit consent. You may want to look at the children and ask ‘what sort of future do they have’? Severne Suzuki’s speech at the United Nations representing what young people want, it shakes you into the reality for kids who are going to have to try and survive the excesses of our generation and those before us. Go to http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1zER45h2xP4&feature=related

The quality of our thinking AND FEELING indeed matters for the present and future are created from what we think and feel. We literally as a collective create the times we are moving through. What you think you see, doesn’t mean you are seeing what is. We notice what interests us or we have a filter of ideas and thought patterns that interpret what life means. We attach words and if we have many fears we may not trust people or not walk down that street, don’t make eye contact, all because we believe our thoughts and are not living in the moment open to life. As a clown I do that and I see what we are all missing. People are actually wonderful. As a clown I evoke their feelings and thoughts that I am safe, just a thought is all it is. They then open to me (new ideas) and allow life to connect with them. If I am dressed normally they may walk passed and not emotionally connect.

Feeling is an important filter that can give insights into emotional landscapes around us and opens gateways to live life more fully. When you feel good you are typically open, if you are slightly depressed (most people in my opinion) you will just stay in the rutt of routine. How you feel changes your reality and changes your life. What does that mean? How does it feel? Is it imagination? Where does that come from? Is our life haphazard or is there intelligence beyond our concepts? The intuitive world is like a radar, a sensing ability, that is greatly perceived as unintellectual, yet indeed it is the greater part of our intelligence.

In society in general, feeling and emotions have been minimised as typically feminine and non rationale in business contexts (where we mostly are). In truth the feeling component to human nature connects us to higher insights, ideas, opportunities and spirituality (connectedness). Moreover, it is emotional intelligence that tells you to go outside and save your kid from running in front of a car or to not hurt someone by blurting out something cruel or ignoring people. In addition if you feel an intuitive vibe and follow it, make that call, see that person or look in the newspaper and find that job, you may find it changes your life in interesting ways. We are afraid of our emotions as they are intense and revealing of our truth, most people hide beneath veneers of intellect and control to be seen to be in control, their emotional world is under the surface and many don’t even know how to acticulate how they feel and why, as no-one asks. That is why we have depression and suppression in our society, our real world is concealed.

Creativity in truth is not thinking it comes from the non thinking spaces between thoughts. I am learning this aspect of ourselves comes from higher intelligence. The feeling world is like the colours in a landscape, you can feel the contour of life with greater depth. It provides a context, it will give you a sense of feeling an excited aliveness. This contrasts with numbness as concepts and patterns of thought and behaviour that become like the pencil strokes that sketch out your day, there feels to be the same picture but no real depth, just an outline. When your senses are on automatic pilot you may feel dull, and always vigilant that you fit in, otherwise you may be alone (greater fear). If we were meant to be the same we’d all be the same, we were all born diverse and that is exciting. Fear hold us in these lines of conformity and we are terrified of having no job, no home, no food but I can tell you magic happens when you have the courage to follow your heart. I am referring to heart based intelligence, going with what you love. Moreover, if you want peace then it is the non thought quality of consciousness that provides the spaciousness to just be where you are. As you think and feel you create, but when silence is there you experience the NOW. In reality there is no past and no future, just now. Eckhart Tolle is a good reference to explore this http://www.oprah.com/oprahsbookclub/Stillness-Speaks-by-Eckhart-Tolle. I am realising as I stop thinking, I fully accept where I am now, I feel happier as I allow the flow of life. Life will just move you. This is what some mystics call the non doing. You are active but life is just guiding you. I’ve experienced this a great deal, there is no stress just happily seeing what turns up. It is very exciting and never a dull moment. I no longer see myself I see life as a field of experience or some say consciousness. It is an interesting idea. Worth exploring if you are into peace.

I have some stories about miracles in my own life that I didn’t make happen, but just happened as bolts out of the blue. I may leave that for a book as you wouldn’t believe the great things that came to me. I might add my attitude is not negative and I am open to whatever, life is fascinating when you let go of control. So that is what you are missing out on, living in uncertainty where you don’t have the answers you have to allow life to happen. It is like free falling out of a plane, that would be the exact analogy. Uncertainty forces you to let go into the spaciousness explained above. Living in the now is another form of intelligence, I would suggest the greatest power resides there. Uncertainty provides a space for anything to happen and you will find the ablity to overcome difficult circumstances, someone just turns up at the right time, you sit there smiling, yet again, as life just turned up to save you or pulled an opportunity out of the bag. Jung calls this synchronicity. You didn’t make that happen, life just happened giving you what you needed. Sometimes a negative experience could occur but you would look at it with curiosity and learn from the event, in truth the event is neutral it is we who decide what it means, we project our meaning onto the event as good/bad. So the fear of good/bad events can encourage us or stop us from living life. I would say, why live in fear of a imagined reality that will probably not happen but the thought may stop you from taking a risk to live your life. Some people are fearful of success, so that can block it happening.

So much we have taken for granted as reality and real will be turned upside down and new ideas presented as other ways of seeing differently. Who is right who is wrong, you can only ground it in your own experience and be open to possibilities, if you close your mind with fixed beliefs that is indeed what you see. So if you are open, get ready for new ideas, they are indeed here.

You are wonderful beyond your imagining and when you let go of rigidities and find your true potential, you will laugh until you cry. We are amazing and that is truly what I see. We are well beyond what we think. You can only change the world when you change yourself because you are the one creating the world you are in.

I gave this poem below to a few Vice Chancellors, I didn’t receive a response. I see their own silence closes them off from ideas which is actually there to serve their highest good. Why not discuss explore and meet new people. That is the possibility in life. That is what I’ve learned. There are no coincidences in this life and when you really go deep into the reality of this life, you start to see the good everywhere. You will learn and grow and that is what it means to be a student of life. This is the true knowledge you will not get through a university degree as you must prove you have learned others knowledge, rather than tapping into your own. These are boxes we have created through curriculum and business ethos’s over long periods of time. Imagine when the walls and blinkers come down and we really start to see, learn, express and explore life to discover our highest potential was beyond our dreams. Wow.

Well I’ll wrap up there as I felt the passion and I feel I said what I came here to say. I can step down from my cyber Agora with great love and let you reflect on it and if it resonates with your truth. Always follow your own truth not mine. I am just exploring and expressing new ideas yet in truth they are ancient. This is the fun of life. I love life!

OPENING TO NEW IDEAS

University,
A library of ideas,
Housed in archives,
Referencing authority,
The Dewey Decimal system,
Classifies the library,
Yet free thinking sits in the Agora
pondering the trees watching the leaves fall,
Unseasonally.

Profit and loss, balance sheets and academic committees,
Learning the users pay of demand and supply,
To maximize places optimally,
A revenue stream marketed internationally,
Is the moat that flows in one direction,
Yet it is drying up.

Building bridges across troubled waters,
Provides new experiences and perspectives not seen
from rooms without a view,
Tunnel vision is the specialist,
The deeper channel is the visionary,
For the university of ideas can be limited,
When unquestioned,
For when we are all teachers and learners,
Pathways become the neural networks,
Of what has not been tried,
But true,
Differentiating new knowledge,
Is the cue,
For change.

The intellectual ponders questions,
Generating perspectives and probabilities,
For these are the pathways leading away from the castle,
A re-mote sensing,
As infinite possibilities are unlimited when open
to new ideas beyond borders.

What is the university?
I ponder,
A place of higher learning?
Or higher earnings to get a place?
Is it the space of academic freedom?
The freedom to think and feel for what is new?
Yet schools of thought carry us in one direction,
Competing schools sharpen the intellect,
As beliefs of humanity become challenged,
This is the higher learning of pre-texts,
Enabling breakthroughs to excellence,
Bringing in the higher earnings by default,
For awareness is excellence shaping new world views,
Differentiation is a diverse leading edge,
That learns to see differently,
Innovation is creativity living outside the box,
Not enshrined in bureaucratic structures,
Illuminating renewable junctures,
Indeed going beyond cross roads,
Understanding chaos catalyses re-newable inquiries,
Leading from the edge.

Undergraduates learn the structure of the box,
And recite from the platform,
A presentation of published theories,
For they have learned their lessons well,
And with cap and cloak they receive degrees,
Institutionally endorsed,
Internationally recognized,
Yet cap and trade is the new currency,
That caps trade,
Leading to educational enlightenment,
That sustains a future for academic freedom.

Universitas emerged from medieval guilds,
Attaining collective legal rights,
Guaranteed by princely charters,
As the traditional bearers of higher education,
Were elite leaders defining the modus operandi,
Believing the earth was flat in theory,
Yet planet earth was a circle not a square.

Ancient centers of higher learning,
Stood apart from tradition,
The oldest universities in the world,
Were philosophical mystical inquirers,
Universities based on the ourboros,
The circle outside the square,
A cyclical learning of primordial unity,
Finding community in humanities,
Cycling in spirals of higher knowledge,
For awareness expands understanding,
As understanding expands awareness,
And this is the higher learning of all uni-verses,
The one song composed from renewable dischords.

Harmony is the objective outcome of innovation,
As passion appears unbridled when seeking unity not status,
Scholarly freedom finds its renaissance in diversity outside of conformity,
And this is not radical but natural
when passion is leading us away from the edge.

So dear friends I ponder …

Institutional awareness or business-as-usual?
Intellectual freedom or conformity?
Vested interests or unity of the commons?
For this is the security that finds equilibrium,
Where economy serves community balancing interests,
And passion opens up to new ideas of intellectual freedom,
as best interest.