One of the exquisite possibilities of engaging an integral approach in our teaching practice is that at every moment, with every subject, we have the opportunity to engage the whole universe. The ‘subject’ we teach, be it music, history, language, painting, literature or science, becomes a vehicle for deeper insights that include and embrace the intricacy and detail inherent in that discipline while at the same time transcending it and engaging higher dimensions of truth, goodness and beauty. One of the classes I teach this year is a senior seminar in botany. We have spent considerable time examining the relatedness and relationships among flowering plant families; much of that exploration was taken up in the field and garden, walking among fall blooms of autumn crocus or eating the spinach-like leaves of lambsquarters, Chenopodium alba. This week, in the middle of winter’s cold and ice, we are steeped in broccoli. After engaging an AQAL four-quadrant approach to GMOs in food, we are examining for a moment the connectedness between what we want, what we eat and what exists in the world. Part of this exercise is designed to come to a fuller understanding of the relationships between the seasonality of food crops, the globalization of food trade, and the complex pathways that might connect our purchase of an item of fresh produce in a supermarket to a Mayan farmer in Guatemala. But ultimately the time and energy invested here is also an exercise in realizing that the conditions that exist in other parts of the world, the lives, aspirations, creativity and consciousness of others on the planet, and the very fabric of being, is not separate from our own selves at this moment. When we touch broccoli, or chocolate, or a rose, or plant a seed, we can realize and appreciate this kind of connectedness. Just as I am photographing mid-winter ice crystals hanging from the edge of an 18th century millrace in Pennsylvania, my friend Sue writes us of picking and tasting raspberries in mid-summer Tasmania. Integral education increases our circles of awareness to become more inclusive, holding more of the big picture, and stepping ever outward into greater spaciousness to reflect on our own meaning making. I would love to hear about others’ experiences of engaging an integral approach with other subjects – what arises for you and your students in this undertaking? How does it change the structure or the outcomes of the learning experience? 
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light in flow
“Here came the thought that passes beyond Thought,
Here the still Voice which our listening cannot hear,
The Knowledge by which the knower is the known,
The Love in which Beloved and Lover are one.”
Sri Aurobindo, Savitri; The Book of the Traveller of the Worlds; The Kingdoms of the Greater Knowledge
Possibility
Right where we are, in this moment, there is possibility for realization. As educators, we practice in a ground so rich with possibility, so full of promise and hope, that it can be nearly overwhelming. What do we do next? What do we offer? We want to awaken the hearts and minds of our students, our colleagues, and continue in our own process of realization and awakening, and yet there is somewhere in the back of our minds, somewhere the recognition that we are indeed hoping to teach the unteachable. And we also know that there is some teaching practice, some upaya, that will serve the place where we find ourselves.
Knowing Our Selves
Before we can reach our highest potential as educators, as teachers, we need to come to know ourselves as fully and deeply as possible. We need to recognize our unique gifts and talents, and also come to understand our own shadow selves. As educators, we show up completely as ourselves and will find again and again that our practice of teaching is really one of teaching oneself. The more we can understand the depths and heights of the Self, and the more we can deepen our own personal practices, the more fully we can step into the possibilities of our roles as educators.
Creating Space / Holding Space
In a learning space, one of the most significant roles we can play as teachers is that of creating space for insight, for awareness and for creativity. When we are fully present and teaching from a space that is grounded and centered, we can give our attention to all the subtle acts and energy that create space and hold space for learning and realization. The ways we receive questions, the ways we encourage and offer inquiry, the seeds we plant that might lead to discovery, the tools we offer for creative invention, and the high expectations we hold for what can be accomplished – all of these support a space where meaningful learning may emerge. Our own enthusiasm and energy, our skill and discipline, are also present as sources of inspiration, examples of engagement. Whatever the field of study or practice, when we approach it with care and genuine interest, it becomes a true reflection of the realms of understanding beauty in the universe.
I am very attentive to seasons, both as a teacher and as a student of natural history and the living cosmos. For me, this season from November to the end of the calendar year is one of thanksgiving and gratitude, a time of reflection and crystallization, and a moment of finding light in the darkness. This week, we approach the winter solstice in the Northern hemisphere, that moment when the earth’s tilt is pointed fully away from the sun, fully out into the depths of the beyond; it is also our shortest day in the north, and it comes this year as it often does at about the same time we begin a break from daily teaching until classes resume again in January.
As much as I love the summer garden, the forest and the mountains of the warmer months, the long light of late spring days and the taste of August raspberries, I also appreciate deeply this season of ice and bright lights in the long darkness. Perhaps it is in part because of the outer stillness in the exterior world, the quiet dormant state of the oaks and spicebush, the frozen ground, perhaps it is this very space that allows some other dimensions to come to light.
I have been particularly attentive this year to appreciating what is present in each moment in my teaching practice, and continue to work to hold as wide an awareness as possible of every element and dimension of that presence. From that still point, so much comes to light in the space of learning – the possibilities inherent in every moment, the sense of wonder and gratitude for the space of awakening and realization, the fascination with complexity and intricacy – all of these sparkle in the gathered place we call a class or a conversation.
One other aspect of this teaching practice has been particularly present for me in the last several weeks and has held a great deal of interest. I have been touched by the continuity and evolution of relationships begun in some cases many years ago and extended through time well beyond the years I spend with students at our school. In this particular season, as friends who have moved on in the world come home to visit families, I have had many opportunities to meet and visit with students who have continued such incredibly rich journeys in their own lives and learning. I am looking forward to several more such conversations in the next few weeks. Most of these relationships were built on many hours of discussion, exchanges of written work and ideas, and occasionally on time spent working together in settings outside of the school. The continuation of these conversations and explorations is one of the great joys of this work. I am constantly learning other dimensions of what it means to be human through these conversations.
At the same time, I recognize that at the beginning of each new year, another group of students who are new to me enter in again to the space we create together, and we begin once more the good work of building relationship, of sharing questions and ideas, of holding inspiration and inquiry, and starting those conversations that may well be carried on and continued for the next ten years or more. That awareness brings a sense of both possibility and responsibility to each class day, knowing that together we are laying the ground for all that is out there, and that we may look back at this very instant and see that it was the exact moment of some particular awakening or understanding.
So I look forward to the time just ahead, to enjoy the opening of space from which to look in on all that is unfolding. And as we celebrate and move through the lights waiting for snow, the Earth will slide through the solstice point again and start the journey back to June and the outward abundance of another summer.
