Seventh Academy
It's the process that matters.
- The principle aim of the Seventh Academy is Self-Mastery. This isn’t your typical academy! Classes are based on dialogue with everyone contributing. It’s about applying practical tools that allow us to step back and see the processes going on in our lives and the world around us. The Seventh Academy has helped me become clear that learning is our default as human beings, it’s hard-wired, a natural process. It’s also fun! We don’t have to work at it, only allow it, make space for it. Learning isn’t just for kids, or school. We are always growing and developing – yet never “arriving”. We are always making new connections and integrating what we know from all our intelligences. We each have capacities way beyond those that we were taught in school.
- I liken this kind of self-mastery and self-learning to what I imagine a tree experiences. A tree is always growing, until it’s not and on its way out. We are likely not aware of this growth because we have so few examples around us of trees that have been allowed to grow uninhibited. Trees weave their roots into more intricate patterns with the soil and also their neighbor’s roots; they grow girth in their trunk and branches, new twigs and eventually new branches develop. They become more complex, more connected. We don’t often give trees enough room, time or companions to allow them to grow into their maturity. It can be the same for us humans. What I’ve found in the Seventh Academy are companions who are in this for the long haul, who are always evolving, asking questions and coming up with their own working definitions. You see, the Seventh Academy is based on classical academies. The focus isn’t on knowledge, but on process, on tools.
- I grappled with this idea for a long time: that it’s the process that’s important, that knowledge isn’t worth much. After all, our society tends to put people on pedestals that seem to have knowledge: the doctors, the lawyers, the scientists and professors. I found an example that brought this idea that process is what’s essential home for me. It’s from the author and teacher, Joseph Chilton Pierce. The example is problem solving, something we all do every day. But many of us stop at the solution. What Pierce suggests is that we keep going:
- ● You encounter a challenge
- ● You work your way through to a solution and think: “Ah Ha! This is it!”, that you gained what you needed
- ● Yet, Nature wants us to go further, to reverse our steps, to trace them back to the problem to see how we arrived at the solution (yes, to “show your work!”)
- ● Nature wants us to see the process – to determine what inner ability of our brain and heart connection, of our intuition and imagination, of our body and emotions was created that brought us to this new place, to this solution?
- ● To return to the tree metaphor, what new branches, connections or roots were created?
- ● Then Nature wants us to apply that process to new challenges.
- This form of learning is what was considered by Piaget - the Swiss psychologist whose work focused on cognitive development - to be the greatest act of intelligence. He called it “reversibility thinking”. It’s about extracting the process from its original context and then applying it to other areas. It’s the process that provides the biggest benefit.
- In other words, what is important to take with you from your time with the challenge is the process. The answer, the solution itself, the information, that’s incidental. Data can be captured by a computer or other means. And that information was specific to that unique situation, you’re likely to need a different answer next time you encounter something similar. Pierce goes on to say that the act of obtaining the information is helpful to the extent that it strengthens those new connections you’ve made so that you are able to notice them. You can see and feel the growth of your new roots!
- In the Seventh Academy we stop looking for fixed solutions and instead we remember that we are always exploring, always evolving. Information will help us in the moment, but we don’t stop there. We become observers of our own and other’s processes. It’s an ongoing journey and a path that continues to work for me. We find our solid ground in how we live our lives, not in the small details.