The Sacred Exchange: Teacher and Student in the Union of Knowing Thyself

One Sangha Gathering 2018

What is it about a teacher that attracts us and keeps us riveted by their teaching?

What is it about a student that allows our words and gifts to flow effortlessly to them?

What occurs between teacher and student, coach and client, or mentor and mentee when the educational magic begins to transform their shared mind and heart?

During my high school teaching career, I often wondered why some colleagues could command students' respect and attention, while others struggled to maintain control in the classroom.

What was it about their speech, their relationship with students, the rules they set and enforced, and their handling of conflict that earned students' earnestness, not just respect or obedience?

Now, the word "earnestness" isn't so commonplace but speaks to a set of qualities that I would look for and celebrate in my students and also aspire to as a student, myself.

It signifies sincerity and willingness that transcends the usual coercive school dynamic (the 'grade game') into a broader educational field. An earnest student captivates a teacher, drawing them into the core of the educational journey beyond the confines of traditional schooling.

In this article, I want to explore the broader educational promise of 'knowing thyself' as a space that surpasses any schooling system or educational modality, encompassing all forms of schooling, coaching, mentoring, and teaching.

And it's that wider field that is my home now, having left my tenured teaching position to start my own 1:1 education and coaching business for young men and educators.

So, within this larger educational paradigm, which I see as having the highest ideal of "knowing thyself", I wonder what it takes to actualize this educational promise. And what I see is that it takes earnestness from both the student and teacher.

Words carry meanings beyond their definitions and etymologies, as they are embedded in living contexts within our psyches, cultures, and social networks. The first time I heard 'earnestness' used meaningfully was by the best teacher I have ever met (see photos above and below).

Mooji is a spiritual teacher who meets people with the expressed and explicit intention of helping them "know themselves". And in that context, I learned about earnestness.

Earnestness, I have come to learn, is about the willingness to "shed skin", personas and long-standing holdouts of resistance in the service of learning, development and insight.

An earnest teacher/student are up for the risk of being wrong, the risk of being seen as silly/stupid, and they both yearn so deeply for the truth of what the moment offers that they're willing to put true skin in the game to connect with it.

When a student approaches a teacher with earnestness, the channel of transmission widens, and grace flows reciprocally. This is the miracle of education, facilitating not just the transmission of knowledge but the mutual nourishment of both individuals.

As Mooji would say, we see then that "life is taking care of life". When this happens, teachers receive the nectar of educational purpose that they long to taste and the student actively loves and stays loyal to the teacher because of how they help them grow.

In Advaita Vedanta and other spiritual lineages in which there is an emphasis on the teacher (guru) and student (devotee) relationship, the educational promise of the relationship is much less about the student developing the capacity to do something that they cannot do without the help of the teacher. The emphasis and focus here and in many spiritual traditions is more on non-doing...

To be yourself does not require you to do anything at all but it would likely require you to stop doing what you are habitually doing.

The focus in this context is on the refinement of being.. improving one's capacity to consciously be who they really are, moment to moment.

This is tremendously powerful stuff because when we learn to 'be' better or in a more refined way, the insight, growth and transformation that enabled this is serving our every moment because how we be is the common denominator to all our experiences.

While teaching, I would often contemplate the relational matrix of curriculum, pedagogy and ontology. Ontology is a term that is almost never used in the educational conversation and it simply means the study of being.

How we be when we are learning/teaching or in any educational dynamic, matters and has an enormous effect on the potential educational impact of our choices both for us and those in dynamic with us.

To me, being earnest is not just an attitude, albeit it is mostly that... I feel that it is about how willing we are to be true, authentic and present in the service of our own or someone else's education... how much are we willing to offer up to know ourselves?

In the language of Internal Family Systems, we could name it as the capacity to be as Self. In Boys to Men Canada language, how willing we are to be "hollow bone". And in the language of my my teacher Mooji, how willing you are to be empty of your agendas, personas and resistances when looking into and accessing who you are moment to moment?

One Sangha gathering 2018

Without getting overly metaphysical, I see through my experience that the way we be depends so much on our relationship to our own mind. And it depends on how earnest we are, especially when the proverbial mind-shit hits the corresponding mind-fan.

Whether we call that "getting triggered" or when the "shadow" starts to play, these are important moments in the play between educator and student... but I am really focusing on the boon that earnestness provides us when the teacher or student becomes aware, in those moments, of their relationship to their own mind.

How we be in a classroom or an educational/coaching/mentoring dynamic totally depends on this internal relationship. And we can sense when someone is committed to their thoughts/parts/shadows running the inner and outer show... we can feel the tension, narrowness and lack of heartfulness in this. Generally, this does not produce educational fruit!

And when we can also feel the power of presence that animates the way we be when we are empty, "hollow bone" or engaging from Self, and we can see how it can help melt the tension, resistance and ignorance of another, which is a miraculous phenomena!

This beautiful quality of being earnest as a way of being isn't just about being empty of ruminative, haranguing thoughts... because sometimes, no matter how much we meditate, pray or speak about our problems with a wise guide... they just keep on coming.

Earnestness is moreso about the volition and directed intention to choose the unknown and higher-way over the habitual, especially in relationship to our own mind and conditioned habits.

People who double down on this, change, grow and become wise. Not only because they become more open to the flow of knowledge from teacher-student but because their own inner ontology and inquiry is alive; the heart/spirit is open to life's guidance!

What I mean by this is that we can often find ourselves in states that really limit what we can see, receive, understand and live. In these states we are generally mesmerized by the mind through rumination and negative thought patterns. And who we think we are (and how we be) at that moment likely won't shift until something happens.

This happening is made possible through earnestness because only when we are willing to cede to an unknown unfolding, can we discover new possibilities.

How many times have we felt like a situation is just simply not going to change, so we cling mercilessly to our own beliefs and views of it?

It is the earnest student/teacher of life who realizes that things always change and that our own unwillingness to face that change both within and without, correspondingly, that keeps us stuck.

Like the video-game addict who keeps doubling down on his hero-treadmill, we require the earnest bravery to see the going-nowhere-ness of our current way of being and it's corresponding activities to actually emerge out of the mind-adoring simulation into the arena of reality

An earnest teacher helps a student cultivate a willingness to let attachments to habitual ways of thinking, feeling and being dry up, or for lack of a better word, die.

The question is really whether you want most to stand inside what's earnest, true and good within yourself as the site of who you are... or are you committed more to what is comfortable and familiar?

Even more simply... are you willing to bear the discomfort that is inherent in moving into the unknown?

This willingness does not in any way guarantee comfort or even psychological safety but it does open the aperture of transmission for Life/God/Spirit to unveil the known through the unknown and for us all to come into a higher understanding, a higher way of being.

True education depends on this earnestness from both teacher and student. How willing are we to embrace the earnestness Parker Palmer put at the center of good teaching/learning; the willingness to be vulnerable in the service of learning and development?

When an earnest teacher/mentor/coach meets an earnest student/mentee/client, the magic of true education resonates and emanates out from within and a great communing becomes possible.

In my view, this communing is in the invisible space of knowing thyself, where the separateness of our seemingly reified individuation breaks down and we become one in the service of both human beings living their highest aspirations and integrity.

This is my highest goal in meeting clients in my 1:1 offerings. To meet in the reciprocity and communion of true education is nectar for my soul. And I cannot wait to work with anyone who earnestly yearns for refining how they be with themselves and in the world.

Leave a comment describing your experience of an earnest, masterful teacher and your own role as student in cultivating that reciprocal relationship and dynamic.