Why the "Inner Academy"?
The way through is inward. The Inner Academy.
By academy, I'm not referring to today's colleges and universities, but to the lineage of ancient academies. I've been a member of the Seventh Academy (and earlier renditions of it) for 20+ years. The Seventh Academy traces its philosophical roots to back to Plato's original academy founded ~427 BCE. Plato's Academy involved the study of tools and methods to help us understand the world, and ourselves, especially through the use of dialogue.
To the ancient Greeks all learning was considered remembering. Life, to them was an act of re-collecting the knowledge the soul forgot at the moment of birth into the physical body. My working understanding is that we agreed to forget much of this information so that we would not be overwhelmed with the impact of it before we had the capacity to integrate this knowledge. It is also my experience that we weren't meant to stay in this unawares condition for the rest of our lives! We're meant to seek and grow and develop. That's the journey I'd like to accompany you on.
The original word "education" meant "to draw from that which was already known". Further, the word Academy comes from the ancient Greek, which derives from the Athenian hero, Akademos. I remember being intrigued and enthralled as I sat on the edge of my chair during the first Seventh Academy class and learned that Plato's original Academy was held outside in a sacred grove of trees! Trees are my thing! The grove was dedicated to Athena, the goddess of wisdom; and it was there that Plato met with his followers, and taught them through dialogue, to seek their own wisdom. The word philosopher literally means "lover of wisdom". To Plato and Socrates, wisdom was personal, lived, internalized and never achieved! It's a process and not a state you arrive at. Socrates knew that he was the wisest man in Athens because he knew that he didn't know anything for sure! That may not feel comforting to our Western mind. But what he practiced was wisdom as an on-going, life-long process of putting forth a starting definition and then exploring where it actually worked and where it didn't. Then revisiting and revising those definitions as his understanding changed, grew, developed. You see, our language - how we describe something - is like a map, it is not the territory of our experience. It's an approximation of the territory. We tend to get confused about this with our reliance on outside experts and so don't seek our own understanding, our own inner knowing. I invite you to become the expert of yourself. It is the exploration of our maps, our worldviews, our ways of seeing ourselves and the world around us that really interests me. I am especially drawn to the tools that allow us to peek at these maps we've created. The term "Inner Academy" came to me in a visualization one day several years ago. It felt so right because what my life has been about - and what I want to help people with - is to gain access to their inner resources, their inner knowing. We all have so much within us than we know and even more that we can tap into and connect with when we go within first before reaching out. It's amazing to see this light of confidence get turned on. We feel both solid and fluid, flexible and sturdy at the same time. We each have an "Inner Academy" within us that we can learn to rely on and to lean into. It's part of my life's mission to help people access this seat of learning, their inner academy. So consider picturing us walking together in a grove of trees, and each of those unique trees is supporting our journey, the journey of giving you access to your tools, your resources, your birthright.
The original word "education" meant "to draw from that which was already known". Further, the word Academy comes from the ancient Greek, which derives from the Athenian hero, Akademos. I remember being intrigued and enthralled as I sat on the edge of my chair during the first Seventh Academy class and learned that Plato's original Academy was held outside in a sacred grove of trees! Trees are my thing! The grove was dedicated to Athena, the goddess of wisdom; and it was there that Plato met with his followers, and taught them through dialogue, to seek their own wisdom. The word philosopher literally means "lover of wisdom". To Plato and Socrates, wisdom was personal, lived, internalized and never achieved! It's a process and not a state you arrive at. Socrates knew that he was the wisest man in Athens because he knew that he didn't know anything for sure! That may not feel comforting to our Western mind. But what he practiced was wisdom as an on-going, life-long process of putting forth a starting definition and then exploring where it actually worked and where it didn't. Then revisiting and revising those definitions as his understanding changed, grew, developed. You see, our language - how we describe something - is like a map, it is not the territory of our experience. It's an approximation of the territory. We tend to get confused about this with our reliance on outside experts and so don't seek our own understanding, our own inner knowing. I invite you to become the expert of yourself. It is the exploration of our maps, our worldviews, our ways of seeing ourselves and the world around us that really interests me. I am especially drawn to the tools that allow us to peek at these maps we've created. The term "Inner Academy" came to me in a visualization one day several years ago. It felt so right because what my life has been about - and what I want to help people with - is to gain access to their inner resources, their inner knowing. We all have so much within us than we know and even more that we can tap into and connect with when we go within first before reaching out. It's amazing to see this light of confidence get turned on. We feel both solid and fluid, flexible and sturdy at the same time. We each have an "Inner Academy" within us that we can learn to rely on and to lean into. It's part of my life's mission to help people access this seat of learning, their inner academy. So consider picturing us walking together in a grove of trees, and each of those unique trees is supporting our journey, the journey of giving you access to your tools, your resources, your birthright.