Letter #19: I Don’t Care
On the road from Mareeba to Cook Town in Far North Queensland
Dear Friend
I’m late this week, but it’s for a good reason, more of which later!
Now then, if you really, and I mean really, want to be healthy and happy, then there is one thing above all that you need to do and make central to your life.
Diet aside, perhaps, because eating corporate-made foods is SO detrimental to your body’s biology and your mind’s wellbeing. Try as hard as you can to never let that toxic garbage into your temple. You will also be taking care of your planet, as well as your body and mind.
But this week we are talking psychological health, that is, your emotional, mental and social wellbeing.
And since your mind is the centre of the whole universe for you, getting your mind sorted out should be your #1 priority in life. It’s my perspective that all the troubles in our human world arise from not knowing our own mind, meaning we don’t even know our own self.
When you know who you are, you are not going to sabotage yourself, nor are you going to hate or hurt others because you will know that hurting or hating others means that you are harbouring the energy of hurt and hate within you. And you’re going to drop fear and anxiety like a lead balloon, because why bother with that harmful stuff?!
Only by doing inner work on yourself, consciously starting your personal journey of self-inquiry (and which once started cannot ever end), can you learn about your mind, and therefore who you are.
(And who you are is not the person recorded in your passport, that is just your society identity.)
So, in this week’s Letter I’d like to share this one thing you need to do, to put into your life, but let me first tell you the tale of how it hit me one time.
Philip starts, postpones and resumes his spiritual journey of self-inquiry
The time is something like 2003 because for two years at that time I had what I now call a ‘mid-life retirement’ where I had no need to do any work. I had enough money to cover my bases, and I was so massively motivated to do something for my life.
However, I need to take you even further back for a minute…
I’ve mentioned this before, but in the sort of late 1990s I consciously began what I call my spiritual investigations. In jargon-free language, doing inner work on myself.
Living in Thailand the bookshops had lots of enticing titles to get me started. I still recall the first one I bought and got stuck into. It impacted on me like a sledgehammer; it was hard-hitting in that I had always blamed politicians, weapons-making corporations and media for all the unfairness, inequity, and rampant injustice that they traded in.
But here was a book blaming the people, the ordinary people - you and me!
I shouldn’t really say blaming, it was observing, analysing and presenting the situation of the human world. I recall not wanting what I was reading to be true, but it was a battle I lost. It was true.
This is by the by, but if you’re interested it was called A Treatise in Revolutionary Psychology, by Samael Aun Wor.
I am relating this tale as it officially marked the start of my SELF-inquiry journey, in contrast to previously always inquiring into and analysing the external world of politics and society around me. But after a year or two of this inner work, which I was tremendously enjoying, and which was bringing me tremendous rewards, I then went back to England in 2000 to study for my master’s in London.
I wanted to do the ultimate qualification for my teaching work (and my lifelong interest in language and psychology), and so I gave up my very well-paid job teaching at the university and at Bangkok’s #1 English language institute (which I was instrumental in helping get it to #1!!), and my whole beautiful lifestyle was gone in the blink of an eye, because…
Suddenly being plonked back into England after nine years of living and working in Thailand was a huge shock to my system. Life, suddenly, was very tough again! But it was good for me, part of my evolution in life, and I put my head down to focus on my studies, while also teaching nearly full-time. What it meant was that I had zero time to read my own books, let alone be on a journey of spiritual self-inquiry. This journey was postponed, and I got into the rhythm of living in Blair’s Britain which at the outset had me complaining left right and centre.
Now, fast-forward to 2002. I have finished my studies, got my degree, and my heart has demanded I return to live in Thailand. My plan had been to go work in Hong Kong or Dubai, the mecca for master’s qualified English teachers (very few of them at the time, still very few) in terms of earning huge sums of money. But, no, my heart had other ideas. It was on my return that I then moved up to Chiang Mai to live. Now this immediately presented itself to me as an adventure playground surrounded by a natural wonderland. Truly, I could not imagine a better place to live. And as if that was not enough, a three-hour drive away was Pai, a stunning place of nature and harmonious energy forces.
So, for two years I didn’t work, and that left me all the time in the world to resume my spiritual work on myself. I frequently went to Pai, explored the whole Chiang Mai valley, full of exquisite nature, resorts, streams, rivers, waterfalls, hot springs, mountains, trails and so many other delights for my soul.
I discovered the books and voice of Osho and immediately bought 18 of his books from a brilliant second-hand bookshop in town (yes, 18). I did my reading, I did my reflecting, I did my nature, my trekking and my walks, I did my travel (all over northern Thailand), I did my photography, I did my writing in my notebooks… I did everything that fed my soul and expanded my mind and my understandings of life and being human.
We also had a top community back in those days in Chiang Mai, and nearly all my friends were somehow, too, not working. Life was simply outstanding!
The Big Secret Revealed!!
And so with the background and context now painted, we come to the one thing you need to do, above all, to put health, happiness and harmony into your life.
Whaddaya reckon it is?! The clue is in this week’s Letter title.
So there I was one beautiful morning, circa 2003, at my favourite resort set against a tree-filled mountain backdrop, with a wonderful stream running through it, old teak houses for staying in, and loads of gardens and tree-lined areas to walk around in and be tuned into the birds and nature. I would hardly ever encounter another person, aside from the staff when it got to lunch time.
I often went there with my camping chair in the back of the car. I would park up, and then sit down by the stream in the shade and read my Osho books or reflect upon things in my journal. From time to time I would look up and let all the nature sink into my consciousness. The birdsong was so joyful to listen to.
And then, on this particular morning, it hit me, a massive revelation, so big I just knew it was a major discovery for any human being to make:
Do not be concerned one jot, not one iota, what others think about what I say or do, or what they think about me. Quite literally, “I don’t care what you think of me”.
Now, I might add I had always been pretty good at this, relative to the society benchmark, but now, suddenly, I deeply and consciously understood for myself why I should adopt this as my new, conscious, mindset and approach to life.
I was so excited that when I got home I began emailing friends and family about what I had discovered. I then realised that while I understood it for myself, I wasn’t being very good at articulating my discovery to others I just said that “I don’t care” any more what anybody thinks of me. I think some people thought I was going a bit mad, and feeling a bit worried about me!
But I can easily articulate it nowadays, and will do so for you, but with a caveat!
It definitely has been as good as I thought it was back then. I immediately began living by this revelation and credo as my primary guiding principle of life.
Several years ago I then came across a maxim in a book that spoke to my own revelation, and very soon after that I walked into a cool, health-inspired cafe in town to find the same maxim written onto one of the walls:
“It’s none of my business what you say about me”.
I like to add a bit to it, making it look like this:
“It’s none of my business what you say about me, that’s your lookout and your responsibility, not mine”.
Now, dear friend, I will articulate to you what all this means, practically, psychologically and spiritually speaking for your own life, but I first want to give you the chance to reflect upon it for yourself. So I will return to this in Letter #20.
This is therefore your Weekly Task! And it runs true to the way I do education in my classrooms, which is inviting others to raise awareness of what they already know about things.
The guiding question you might ask yourself is this:
How can not caring what others think about me make my life happier, healthier and more harmonious?
Meanwhile, in other news…
Good news on my mission to transform the way education is done
The reason I’m late with this week’s Letter is because I did the first of three training sessions for a worldwide spiritual organisation I’ve been a member of for three or four years. And I spent many hours planning it to do as maximum a good job as I could. Teaching in a classroom is one thing, and something I’ve got about 15,000 hours experience of, but doing live online training is a different kettle of fish.
Especially when using my brand of Task-Based Learning, which is getting others to do the learning rather than depending on me to ‘teach’ and tell them.
My brief is to offer three sessions, one per month, starting this weekend just gone. It’s not paid work, but it gives me a huge exposure which is super important for people to discover what I do. If I am to be successful in changing education systems, I need people to buy into the kind of education I’ve always offered my own students.
I am doing this training using the Zoom platform, and on Saturday there were 105 participants from all over the world! They are all spiritual leaders who have put their hand up to be counted in helping to transform our human world into a much better world than the troubling turbulent one we have now.
I am really happy to report that there was overwhelmingly positive feedback from those who took part! They found the session to be super useful for their work.
(One of the things they loved was being asked to go back in time to their own schooling. I’m going to give you that opportunity too!)
There are three groups, so I have to repeat this first training session two more times this month. My job for the three training sessions is to help all these leaders improve their facilitation skills to enhance the regular meetings they lead with the members in their group.
In a nutshell this means teachers or leaders using key skills such as active listening and question-asking to encourage, enable and empower others to learn and understand things for themselves, and most of all to express themselves and articulate their own understandings..
This is transformational education and leadership in action, and it’s the complete opposite of the way things are doing in schools.
In fact, for this reason my first session was all about raising awareness of the bigger picture in our world, and that is the little-discussed, yet massively important connection between schooling and society.
I would like to share with you the first key activity we did in the session. You can reflect upon the questions yourself, but I really do strongly recommend you find one or two others to join you so that you can have a discussion and compare your memories and thoughts.
In the session, I put the participants into groups of three to hold their own discussion, guided by the questions I will share in a moment. I set aside 20 minutes for their discussion, but the feedback was that they so enjoyed it they simply did not have enough time. So why not set up your own discussion group?
Discussion activity
The purpose of this activity is to raise your awareness of the root causes of all the troubles we humans are creating for ourselves.
We need to understand what is causing our human world problems (and your own) and why, and know where we want to go, and then we can work out how to build the bridge, and to then cross the bridge to get out of hell and into the heaven!
Task 1
Your first task is to define what you think education is. If you’re in discussion with others, each share their own definition and offer your reactions. (You will find my own working definition at the bottom of this Letter - only look at it once you’ve done the first task yourself. Then go to Task #2.)
Task 2
The following questions ask you to share your own experiences and memories of what they mean to you, NOT the dictionary definitions!
What did learning mean to you in your school days? That is, what did you and your classmates typically do in classroom time?
What did teaching mean to you in your school days? That is, what did the teachers typically do during classroom time?
How were your classrooms physically set up? Try to remember how you typically used to feel in classroom time.
What useful skills did you learn during your schooling?
Share your reactions and thoughts to Philip’s quote, “Today’s society is yesterday’s classroom, today’s classroom is tomorrow’s society.”
What does that tell us we have to do today? What and where is a ‘classroom’?
Final thoughts
And that’s this week’s Letter done. I really hope you create for yourself a small discussion group to do the above two tasks, and don’t forget below you will find my own definition of education, and a question to provide you some food for thought. Look at it after Task 1 and before you start Task 2.
And next week I shall return to the main theme of today’s Letter and tell you what “I don’t care” means in terms of practical spiritual living, and how liberating it is.
All the best
Philip
~~~~~~~
Philip’s definition for Task 1, and a follow-up question for you to think about.
“Education is an energy force for navigating and creating change, to enhance our experience of life and to acquire the toolkit of skills, knowledge and self-confidence to take charge of our own evolution and self-growth”.
And with that in mind, here is a question for you (and your group) to reflect upon:
Do we resist or embrace change as adults? What kind of relationship do we have with change? Not YOU personally, but humanity in general, society in general.
