RUNNING HEAD: MYTHOLOGY AND TECHNOLOGY IN HOLISTIC EDUCATION
TOWARDS INTEGRAL ECOLOGIES: MYTHOLOGY AND TECHNOLOGY IN
HOLISTIC EDUCATION
A Thesis
Presented to the Graduate Institute for Transformative Learning
In Partial Fulfillment
of the Requirements
for the Master of Arts Degree
by
Jessica Fuhr Nichol
June 12, 2019
Josette Luvmour, Ph.D. Faculty Mentor
Sam Crowell, Jr., Ed.D. Faculty Advisor
Fionn Wright Learner Colleague
Copyright 2019
Jessica Fuhr Nichol, All Rights Reserved
MYTHOLOGY AND TECHNOLOGY IN HOLISTIC EDUCATION
ABSTRACT
This intuitive inquiry explores the potentialities of ancient cultural mythologies, the universe story as a new mythology, and technology with its role in community connection in the context of holistic education. Intuitive inquiry is a qualitative research methodology that invites an engagement with the unique interests and passions of the researcher. This study looks through the lens of the emerging field of archetypal cosmology to examine how and why mythology and technology can strengthen the soul dimension of holistic education and lead toward integral ecologies.
Key words: holistic education, archetypal cosmology, mythology, technology, integral ecologies, the universe story, Journey of the Universe
MYTHOLOGY AND TECHNOLOGY IN HOLISTIC EDUCATION
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
With appreciation and thanks to:
My family: Brad, Lance, and Zoe, for your patience, support, and participation in this project.
My faculty mentors: Josette Luvmour and Sam Crowell, whose guidance shaped this inquiry in ever-appreciated ways.
My learner-colleague: Fionn Wright, for your affirmative interest in technology.
MYTHOLOGY AND TECHNOLOGY IN HOLISTIC EDUCATION
TABLE OF CONTENTS
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS……………………………………………...... ……… i
Chapter Page I INTRODUCTION ...... 1 The Situation ...... 1 Purpose of the Study ...... 3 Archetypal Cosmology ...... 3 Integral Ecologies ...... 4 The Approach to the Study ...... 5 Important Definitions ...... 6 Cycle 1 ...... 7
II LITERATURE REVIEW ...... 8 Systems Thinking: The New Paradigm of Science ...... 9 The Field of Holistic Education ...... 11 Archetypal Principles ...... 12 Our Place in Time and Space ...... 14 From Ancient Civilizations to the Axial Age and Beyond ...... 14 The Triphasic Pattern, the Spiral, and the Fractal ...... 16 In Consideration of a Second Axial Age ...... 18 Integral Philosophy and Integral Consciousness ...... 19 Structures of Consciousness Throughout Childhood ...... 22 Myth and its Role in Culture ...... 22 The New Story to Journey of the Universe ...... 24 Look to the Stars: A Path Toward Integral Ecologies ...... 27 The Historical Dialectic of Archetypal Principles ...... 30 Understanding Archetypal Principles in Childhood ...... 31 Care of the Soul in Education ...... 32 Mythology in Holistic Education ...... 33 Technology in Holistic Education ...... 35 The Potential of the Adult/Child Relationship ...... 37 Summary and Cycle 2 Lenses ...... 38
III METHODOLOGY ...... 40 Intuitive Inquiry as a Qualitative Research Methodology ...... 40 Research Questions ...... 42 Context of the Study ...... 42 Graduate Institute for Transformative Learning ...... 42 Fourth Industrial Revolution ...... 43 Positionality ...... 44 Procedure ...... 45 Triphasic Pattern ...... 48 Hypnogogia ...... 48 Study Participants ...... 50 Data Collection ...... 51 Validity ...... 55 MYTHOLOGY AND TECHNOLOGY IN HOLISTIC EDUCATION
IV FINDINGS/CYCLE 3 ...... 56 Open Intake ...... 56 Open Intake for my Children ...... 58 Sleep/Digestion ...... 65 Skill/Mastery ...... 67
V DISCUSSION ...... 82 Cycle 4 ...... 82 Cycle 4 Lenses ...... 83 Open Intake Lenses ...... 83 Sleep/Digestion Lenses ...... 84 Cycle 2 Lenses ...... 84 Comparison of Triphasic Cycle 2 and Cycle 4 lenses ...... 84 Concept: Adult/Child Relationship ...... 84 Concept: Technology ...... 86 Concept: Mythology ...... 89 Concept: System ...... 91 Concept: The Unseen ...... 92 Concept: Our Place in Time and Space ...... 97 Concept: Earth/Human Relationship ...... 99 Summary ...... 101 Cycle 5 ...... 102 Integration of Cycle 4 Lenses with Literature Review and Findings ...... 102 What is Left Unsaid? ...... 104 Procedures and Plans That Did Not Work ...... 106 Mistakes Made ...... 106 The Researcher’s Apprehensions and Puzzlements About the Study and Findings ...... 107 The Style of Intuitive Interpretation Used ...... 108 What Remains Unresolved or Problematic About the Topic or the Method? ...... 111 Summary ...... 112 Summary Implications and Visionary Trajectory ...... 112 Implications for Practice ...... 113 Limitations of my Research ...... 113 Future Research ...... 114 Recommendations ...... 115 Final Reflections ...... 115
Appendix A ...... 116 Appendix B ...... 117 Appendix C ...... 118
REFERENCES ...... 119
MYTHOLOGY AND TECHNOLOGY IN HOLISTIC EDUCATION 1
Prohibited though it may be from an objective point of view to make statements out of
the blue – that is, without sufficient reason – there are nevertheless some statements
which apparently have to be made without objective reasons.… Since the archetype is not
just an inactive form, but a real force charged with a specific energy, it may very well be
regarded as the causa efficiens of such statements, and be understood as the subject of
them. In other words, it is not the personal human being who is making the statement, but
the archetype speaking through him.
-Jung, Memories, Dreams, Reflections
CHAPTER I
INTRODUCTION
The Situation
When my son was a toddler, he would look out the window on certain dark evenings and point his chubby young finger towards the sky. "Moonah," he would proclaim. "Moonah!" His fixation on the moon was the beginning of his interest in space. When no moon is present in the night sky of the rural area in which I live, the stars twinkle brightly against a backdrop of darkness. These glittering points of light soon captured the attention of my son’s inner yearning.
Like so many before him, he longed to know more. What are the stars? How far away are they?
His father and I procured a variety of children’s books and began to read aloud Bob Berman’s
Secrets of the Night Sky (1995) in an attempt to satiate his hunger for meaning-making. We learned together about Betelgeuse. We gazed upon Orion’s Belt, located the Pleiades, and contemplated the vastness of the Milky Way. My small daughter began to look to the sky as well, noticing Orion’s constancy in winter whether she was star-gazing from the island of Maui MYTHOLOGY AND TECHNOLOGY IN HOLISTIC EDUCATION 2 or a mountain valley in Colorado. This story of wonder at the depth of creation within the cosmos is not unique to my family. This story has permeated humanity throughout the ages.
Richard Tarnas and Brian Thomas Swimme, professors in the Philosophy, Cosmology, and Consciousness (PCC) Department at California Institute of Integral Studies (CIIS) gave a talk entitled The Stars Lead us to Wonder in November 2018 that captures the essence of my children's experience and this study. Tarnas provided two meanings of the title word "wonder":
1) Numinous mystery (numinous is defined (Merriam-Webster, 2019) as 1) supernatural,
mysterious; 2) filled with a sense of the presence of divinity: holy; 3) appealing to the
higher emotions or the aesthetic sense: spiritual)
2) The feeling of wanting to know something that has caused us curiosity or perplexity.
An urge to understand or solve a mystery.
Tarnas explained that the religious sense of the first definition and the scientific sense of the second have led to the main worldviews of today. “Lead” in the title focuses attention and intention.
Through the course of their talk, Tarnas and Swimme spoke about how the stars have (a) evolved into us over a 14-billion-year period, (b) been crucial through each stage of evolution and consciousness as they draw forth new capacities and cosmologies at each transition, and (c) been key to our intellectual development. Swimme stated that we live in a time where we are ruining the planet with tremendous intelligence and power. His hope that evening was for the discussion to make a difference to the planetary situation in which we, as humanity, find ourselves. The PCC program at CIIS echoes this hope in their dedication "to re-imagining the human species as a mutually enhancing member of the Earth community” (Philosophy, MYTHOLOGY AND TECHNOLOGY IN HOLISTIC EDUCATION 3
Cosmology, and Consciousness, 2019). This intuitive inquiry is conducted in the spirit of the above-stated re-imagining.
Purpose of the Study
As we float in the midst of such mysterious immensities, is there any deep wisdom that
might help us align our consciousness with the grain of cosmic evolution?
-Brian Thomas Swimme, Journey of the Universe film
This study explores the potentialities of mythology and technology within holistic education in our current context. In the recently published International Handbook of Holistic
Education (Miller, Nigh, Binder, Novak, & Crowell, 2019) (The Handbook), Bruce Novak identified an overarching soul dimension of holistic education. Miller (2008) defined soul in his book The Holistic Curriculum as “a vital and mysterious energy that gives meaning and purpose to one’s life” (p. 178) and identified mythology, the universe story, and community connections as among the ways to nurture the soul and allow the self to emerge. What is missing from the literature as well as The Handbook, and what this study attempts to provide, is a transdisciplinary look at how and why (a) mythology in its original relationship to ancient civilizations, (b) the universe story as a new cultural mythology, and (c) technology with its exponentially expanding role in community connection provide care to the soul and encourage the emergence of the true nature of the individual. This study posits that the soul dimension will be strengthened by incorporating mythology and technology into education based on holistic principles for reasons illuminated by archetypal cosmology.
Archetypal Cosmology
Archetypal cosmology is “a distinctive vision of psyche and cosmos, of the human being’s co-creative participation in an ensouled, evolving universe” (Tarnas, 2011, p. 65) that MYTHOLOGY AND TECHNOLOGY IN HOLISTIC EDUCATION 4 arose during the 1970s and 80s at Esalen Institute in California and from the 1990s to the present at CIIS. Tarnas writes of the early days at Esalen:
The unusually profound encounters with the deep unconscious that we were studying
frequently involved direct experiences of an archetypal dimension of reality – whether in
the form of mythic figures and narratives from various cultures, gods and goddesses,
transcendent Platonic Ideas, or Jungian archetypes. (Tarnas, 2011, p. 66)
Academic scholars and researchers began to recognize the larger implications of the evidence for correlations between planetary movements and patterns of human experience. In response to extraordinary evidence, the research was pursued more systematically and then integrated into
“relevant ideas and conceptual frameworks from both the admired past, such as the Platonic-
Pythagorean tradition or the work of Johannes Kepler, and the cutting-edge present, from depth psychology to the new paradigm sciences” (Tarnas, 2011, p. 65). The astrological research paradigm has “proved highly promising in the study of history and biography, psychology, philosophy, religion, mythology, culture, and the arts” (Tarnas, 2011, p. 65). Implications of archetypal cosmology are being considered by scholars within the PCC department at CIIS to further understanding of the relationship between the psyche and the cosmos (About the MA, n.d.). Considerations of the relationship between psyche and cosmos, “inner and outer, between self and world,” (Tarnas, 2007, p. 17) are intrinsic to holistic education and are seen throughout
The Handbook using different vocabulary.
Integral Ecologies
This study aims to encourage transdisciplinary research and dialogue between the field of holistic education and the multidisciplinary fields within and associated with the PCC department at CIIS to further a shared interest towards integral ecologies. Integral ecologies are MYTHOLOGY AND TECHNOLOGY IN HOLISTIC EDUCATION 5
“a variety of emerging approaches to ecology that cross disciplinary boundaries in efforts to deeply understand and creatively respond to the complex matters, meanings, and mysteries of relationships that constitute the whole of the Earth community” (Mickey, Kelly, & Robbert,
2017, p. 1). Edward Brantmeier explores this shared interest in The Handbook through an examination of the subfields of holistic, sustainability, and peace education to “shed light on their confluence and also reveal divergent approaches to ensuring quality of life for the human species during our tenure on earth and also for planetary well-being for the long haul” (Miller et al., 2019, p. 80). The transdisciplinary nature of this study may contribute to numerous fields in addition to holistic education, including depth psychology, the field of religion and ecology, and ecopsychology. Ecopsychology holds that “the psyche is rooted inside a greater intelligence once known as the anima mundi, the psyche of the Earth herself that has been nurturing life in the cosmos for billions of years through its drama of heightening complexification” (Roszak T.,
1995, p. 16).
The Approach to the Study
Over the five chapters of this thesis, I utilize the qualitative lens of the five iterative cycles of intuitive inquiry. Cycle 1 is listed at the end of Chapter I Introduction. Cycle 2 lenses are listed at the end of Chapter II Literature Review. The next chapter is III Methodology.
Indications for future research and gaps in the literature situate a case study utilizing purposeful sampling as the ideal research methodology for data collection within the parameter of my intuitive inquiry. Specifically, the case study explores the incorporation of digital media
(digitized content transmitted over the internet or electronic networks including text, audio, video, and graphics) and the interweaving of Journey of the Universe (Our Story, n.d.) as a new cultural mythology for our time into the Live Education! (Live Education: Creative and Caring MYTHOLOGY AND TECHNOLOGY IN HOLISTIC EDUCATION 6
Waldorf Guidance, n.d.) fifth-grade curriculum. The descriptive findings of the Cycle 3 research are reported using embodied writing accompanied by illustrative examples of participants’ art and writing in Chapter IV Findings. Chapter V Discussion includes the Cycle 4 lenses, a comparison to Cycle 2 lenses, and Cycle 5 of the intuitive inquiry.
Important Definitions
Two key terms identified within the focus of this study that can have a variety of meanings are mythology and technology. The specific ways they are utilized here are defined as follows:
Mythology - this study defines mythology as a sacred story set within the unfolding universe.
Mythology describes in poetic form the fundamental truths of nature and human life and gives body to invisible and eternal factors that reach beyond the personal to express imagery reflective of the archetypal dynamics that shape the universe and every human life.
This definition incorporates the new cultural mythology of Journey of the Universe
(defined in the literature review) and is drawn directly from Thomas Moore's description in his book Care of the Soul:
A myth is a sacred story set in a time and place outside history, describing in fictional
form the fundamental truths of nature and human life. Mythology gives body to the
invisible and eternal factors that are always part of life but don’t appear in a literal,
factual story…. Myth reaches beyond the personal to express an imagery reflective of
archetypal issues that shape every human life. (Moore, 1994, p. 220)
Technology - is defined in this study as any technology potentially available to create community connection and “aid the young to identify themselves in the comprehensive MYTHOLOGY AND TECHNOLOGY IN HOLISTIC EDUCATION 7 dimensions of space and time” (Berry, 2003, pp. 86-87), specifically but not limited to digital media and devices, artificial intelligence, virtual reality, and robotics.
Cycle 1
The inspiration for this work came through my graduate studies and specifically from coursework offered through the Graduate Institute for Transformative Learning:
• Holistic Education: Roots and Praxis - with a Focus on Adolescence, mentored by David
Marshak, Ed.D.
• Catalytic Memes: The Transformative Power of the “New Story,” mentored by Jonathan
Tayler, Ph.D.
During this parallel coursework, I read for the first time Thomas Berry’s 1978 essay The New
Story: Comments on the Origin, Identification, and Transmission of Values (2003). I reread the text repeatedly, sensing a depth of meaning that was not immediately discernable to me. Several months later I became familiar with intuitive inquiry as a research methodology, and I re- engaged with The New Story essay as my Cycle 1 text.
MYTHOLOGY AND TECHNOLOGY IN HOLISTIC EDUCATION 8
CHAPTER II
LITERATURE REVIEW
This study explores through the lens of archetypal cosmology the potential of mythology and technology to strengthen the soul dimension of holistic education and lead towards integral ecologies. The Cycle 1 text, Berry’s The New Story (2003) essay, catalyzed the literature review.
The coverage approach was guided by the exercises of Cycle 2 of the intuitive inquiry, as described in Chapter III Methodology. The transdisciplinary nature of the study provided too vast a landscape to present an exhaustive review within a single thesis chapter. Therefore, a purposive sample of literature representing the voices associated with (a) theories that provide guidance and influence across the fields, (b) the International Handbook of Holistic Education
(Miller et al., 2019), (c) the PCC Department at CIIS, and (d) the faculty members of the
Graduate Institute for Transformative Learning (GIFTLearning) whose teachings influenced my own meaning-making in relation to the study have been included.
The transdisciplinary nature of this study requires a systems approach, and the literature review begins with an overview of systems thinking as the new paradigm of science. Organized conceptually, the review next outlines the field of holistic education, followed by archetypal principles as a concept fundamental to both archetypal cosmology and this study. Our place in time and space is situated by connecting historical periods identified across the fields and exploring the triphasic pattern and spiral as discussed and illustrated in Sean Kelly's (2010) work. The view of the evolution of human consciousness known as integral philosophy and the structures of consciousness throughout childhood are related to the previously discussed triphasic pattern and the spiral. A key concept to this study is mythology. A purposive sample of present MYTHOLOGY AND TECHNOLOGY IN HOLISTIC EDUCATION 9 and past voices within the literature summarize myth's role in culture and the rise of a new cultural mythology in the universe story.
Finally, the review attempts to synthesize the literature and offer a new perspective as it attends to Swimme and Tarnas’s indications in their talk The Stars Lead us to Wonder (2018).
Kelly (Mickey, Kelly, & Robert, 2017) identifies evolution and (re) enchantment as the guiding principles of integral ecologists Swimme and Berry. When viewed through the lens of archetypal cosmology, the principles of evolution and (re) enchantment position the potentialities of mythology and technology as a viable study within holistic education. Holistic education is poised to play an essential role in returning an awareness of soul to twenty-first-century education as post-modern and integral thinkers examine methodologies with which to move away from the prevailing mechanistic worldview towards a systems view of life (Capra & Luisi,
2014). The literature highlights advantages of the adult/child relationship for the use of technology in our current Western educational context; archetypal cosmology links our current period to the period five hundred years ago that was shaped by the printed book. A co-evolution of the child and the adult in relationship with each other is emphasized in the literature in light of the new-science paradigm. A summary and identification of the intuitive inquiry Cycle 2 lenses conclude the review.
Systems Thinking: The New Paradigm of Science
In the twentieth-century scientists came to realize that analyzing the parts of a living system does not allow an understanding of the behavior of the whole. “In the systems approach, the properties of the parts can be understood only from the organization of the whole” (Capra &
Luisi, 2014, p. 66). Systems thinking concentrates on basic principles of organization and is
“contextual,” situating the object of study into the context of a larger whole. The conceptual MYTHOLOGY AND TECHNOLOGY IN HOLISTIC EDUCATION 10 framework of systems thinking is elucidated in The Systems View of Life: A Unifying Vision
(Capra & Luisi, 2014). Systems thinking “includes and integrates life’s biological, cognitive, social, and ecological dimensions” (Capra & Luisi, 2014, p. xii) with broad implications for humanity’s continued quest for answers regarding the origin, nature, and meaning of life. “Some systems theorists, including Capra, Erich Jantsch, and Ervin Lazlo, suggest that the universe itself can be conceptualized as a vast living system that can be analyzed and explicated using systems concepts” (Le Grice, 2012, p. 101). Capra and Luisi (2014) emphasize that the shift in perspective to systems thinking does not eliminate “one perspective in favor of the other, but rather that there is a complementary interplay between the two perspectives, a figure/ground shift” (Capra & Luisi, 2014, pp. 79, 83). By including mind, consciousness, and meaning within the central concepts, systems theory brings understanding to the interior psychological structure and organization in addition to the material structure and organization (Le Grice, 2012).
Thomas Kuhn introduced the concept of a scientific “paradigm” in his 1962 book The
Structure of Scientific Revolutions (Capra & Luisi, 2014). According to Kuhn, a scientific paradigm includes not only concepts and techniques but also values, which are the basis and driving force of science and its applications to technology. Kuhn described a discontinuous, revolutionary break in the concepts, values, and techniques shared by a scientific community and the wider community as a paradigm shift. In recent decades the concepts of a paradigm and a paradigm shift have been used increasingly within the social sciences where the change in values can also be observed. Capra and Luisi write:
“The Zeitgeist (“spirit of the age”) of the early twenty-first century is being shaped by a
profound change of paradigms…. The new paradigm may be called a holistic worldview, MYTHOLOGY AND TECHNOLOGY IN HOLISTIC EDUCATION 11
seeing the world as an integrated whole rather than a dissociated collection of parts.”
(Capra & Luisi, 2014, p. 12)
Capra and Luigi say that it can also be called an ecological view in the sense that deep ecological awareness recognizes the interdependent relationship of individuals and societies embedded within the cyclical processes of nature. Whichever name one chooses, the new paradigm view and sciences offer support to the field of holistic education, the emerging field of archetypal cosmology, and the shared transdisciplinary goal of integral ecologies.
The Field of Holistic Education
The literature suggests that “indigenous peoples were the first holistic educators” (Miller et al., 2019, p. 5) and the concept of holistic education traces back to Ancient Greece and Rome
(Miller J. P., 2008) in the West, and centuries earlier in the East with Buddhist and Taoist spiritual traditions (Nakagawa, 2000). Holistic education recognizes the whole person, including the mind, body, and spiritual aspect (Miller et al., 2019; Miller J. P., 2008; Nakagawa, 2000;
Nava, 2001). An essential element of the holistic perspective is that, in viewing the whole person, it also includes the context (ecosystem or system) the person is situated within.
Everything is interrelated and cannot separate into parts. By implementing holistic perspectives in education, educators and learners gain awareness of the systemic nature of our world. There are many influential teachers in the history of holistic education. Ron Miller (1997) provides background on the originating theorists: Rousseau, Pestalozzi, Froebel, Alcott, Channing,
Emerson, and Thoreau. Miller includes Francis W. Parker, whose career took place in the public- school system, and John Dewey, whose writing has inspired twentieth-century holistic educators.
More recent educators and theorists who contributed to holistic education are Maria Montessori,
Rudolf Steiner, Sri Aurobindo, Howard Gardner, and Jiddu Krishnamurti. All of these theorists MYTHOLOGY AND TECHNOLOGY IN HOLISTIC EDUCATION 12 and educators contributed to the many educators who are teaching with a holistic worldview today.
In the preface of the International Handbook of Holistic Education (Miller et al., 2019)
John P. Miller links the field of holistic education to the new paradigm, referring to it as the
Holistic Age. The term holistic education arose in the 1980s. Recent decades have brought relevant publications and developments within the field including conferences around the world where educators come together to share their work. The Handbook intended to provide an "up-to- date picture of the field, as it exists around the globe, its theories, practices, and research" (Miller et al., 2019, p. xxiii). Miller states that perhaps the most significant challenge has been in the area of empirical research since that area is less developed than others. Miller cites the example of Toward a Spiritual Research Paradigm: Exploring New Ways of Knowing, Researching, and
Being (Lin, Oxford, & Culham, 2016) as a recent book that has started to address the need for innovative research methods for holistic educators to utilize. The Handbook’s section on research in the field includes the qualitative methodologies of phenomenology, arts-based, poetic and narrative inquiry, action and participatory action, and a quantitative study using scientific methods. This intuitive inquiry aligns with a spiritual research paradigm (Appendix A) and is presented as an innovative research methodology within the field of holistic education.
Archetypal Principles
Fundamental to archetypal cosmology and this study is the concept of archetypal principles. The origin of this concept traces back to ancient Mesopotamian, Greek, and
Hellenistic thought. Significant figures of Western intellectual history have contributed to the developing understanding of the nature of archetypes, including Plato, Aristotle, Ficino, Kant,
Schopenhauer, Nietzsche, Whitehead, Freud, Jung, Hillman, Grof, and Tarnas (About the MA, MYTHOLOGY AND TECHNOLOGY IN HOLISTIC EDUCATION 13 n.d.). A present definition of an archetype is “a universal principle or force that affects – impels, structures, permeates – the human psyche and the world of human experience on many levels”
(Tarnas, 2007, p. 84). The archetypes have been correlated with planetary movements, and
Tarnas explains the Platonic-Jungian lineage of the astrological thesis in his 2007 major work
Cosmos and Psyche. Tarnas describes the nature of these correlations as an orchestrated synthesis that combines the “precision of mathematical astronomy with the psychological complexity of the archetypal imagination, a synthesis whose sources seemingly exist a priori within the fabric of the universe” (p. 85).
In Jungian terms, the astrological evidence suggests that the collective unconscious is
ultimately embedded in the macrocosm itself, with the planetary motions a synchronistic
reflection of the unfolding archetypal dynamics of human experience. In Platonic terms,
astrology affirms the existence of an anima mundi informing the cosmos, a world soul in
which the human psyche participates as a microcosm of the whole. Finally, the Platonic,
Jungian, and astrological understandings of archetypes are all complexly linked, both
historically and conceptually, to the archetypal structures, narratives, and figures of
ancient myth. (Tarnas, 2007, p. 86)
This study is based on archetypal cosmology’s premises that (a) the archetypes are linked to ancient myth and planetary movements, (b) the planetary movements are synchronistic with the archetypal dynamics of human experience, and (c) the anima mundi as World Soul exists a priori, with the human psyche as a microcosm of the whole. To further situate this study, themes in the historical periods identified across the fields are examined next, followed by the consideration of an underlying dialectical pattern in both interior and material structure and organization. MYTHOLOGY AND TECHNOLOGY IN HOLISTIC EDUCATION 14
Our Place in Time and Space
Ancient Civilizations to the Axial Age and Beyond
As Bruce Novak reflected on the six written pieces that constitute Part 1 Foundations of
The Handbook, he arrived at “seven integrated dimensions of holistic education: three related to our organic nature; three related to the beginnings, middle, and prospective fulfillment of our being in the world; and a final, single overarching dimension” (Miller et al., 2019, p. 1). The overarching dimension - the soulful dimension, was introduced in Chapter I of this thesis. The three related to our organic nature are the neurological dimension (mind), the incarnated dimension (body), and the aesthetic dimension (feeling/heart/spirit/soul). The three related to time are of interest here:
• The anthropological dimension: before “civilization” when all human education was
holistic. “Indigenous Worlding” is relayed by Four Arrows aka Don Trent Jacobs in The
Handbook and is now being introduced to holistic educators to encourage a reconnection
to the natural world as it acts as a co-participant in our being and doing, just as it did in
humanity’s early existence.
• The historic dimension: diverse wisdom traditions provide educational resources to
recover our natural wholeness within "civilization." The Axial Age, a term coined by
philosopher Karl Jaspers which refers to the period from @900 to 200 BCE brought
peace and what can now be recognized as holistic consciousness to stem the violence that
arose near the beginning of the historical period in the late second millennium BCE.
During the Axial Age, world religions and the perennial philosophy arose, and great
teachers appeared on the earth including "Buddha, Zoroaster, Lao-tzu, Confucius,
Socrates, Plato, and the Israelite prophets" (Miller et al., 2019, p. 6). MYTHOLOGY AND TECHNOLOGY IN HOLISTIC EDUCATION 15
• The philosophical dimension: “bringing the left brain to know what the right brain can
do” (Miller et al., 2019, p. 3). Novak writes:
this tradition of both teaching and thought, which might be called “The Empathic
and Ecological Enlightenment,” seeks, at its foundation, to engage feeling and
embodied minds in a lively and restorative dance with one another and the world.
And it provides new left-brain conceptual support for a general holistic worldview
in which the full intuitive power of the right brain is reinstated. (Miller et al.,
2019, p. 3)
Sean Kelly, professor at PCC at CIIS, explores the same historical themes as Novak and articulates an in-depth thesis in his book Coming Home (2010). Kelly provides multiple visuals that align with this study. In the first diagram, note the three periods arcing towards the same goal.
(Kelly, 2010, p xi)
In the following diagram, note the historical periods of the inner spiral and the influences coming from the differing thought streams indicated by the upward-moving arrows located along the bottom of the diagram. MYTHOLOGY AND TECHNOLOGY IN HOLISTIC EDUCATION 16
(Kelly, 2010, p. 162) The Triphasic Pattern, the Spiral, and the Fractal
Kelly relays Hegel’s logic of the Absolute, known through the concept of the “dialectic as the movement which leads from an initial position through opposition or negation to a new position that includes (or, to be more precise, simultaneously transcends, includes, and negates) the initial position along with its apparent opposite” (Kelly, 2010, p. 15). There are multiple triads of terms which Hegel associated with the logic of the Absolute: Kelly utilizes identity, difference, and new identity (see diagrams: I. identity, II. difference, III. new identity). Kelly explains that the manifestation of the triphasic pattern of separation, initiation, return as encountered in the hero's journey within mythology is not a return in the literal sense, but rather a new identity. "The Hegelian triad can also be seen as the deep structure of other – and arguably all – developmental processes," writes Kelly (2010, p. 17). Numerous examples are provided from both the East and the West, including Jung’s process of individuation in which self- actualization occurs and recent variations in the work of Ken Wilber, Stanislav Grof, and Jean
Gebser.
In Coming Home (2010) Kelly narrates a historical account of the triphasic dialectical pattern (as seen in his diagrams) and explains that the spiral path “can be understood as an MYTHOLOGY AND TECHNOLOGY IN HOLISTIC EDUCATION 17 expression of the dialectically generative potential of the fundamental pattern” (Kelly, 2010, p.
65). The movement towards the modern and postmodern “proceeded by way of a fractal repetition of the fundamental pattern. A pattern is fractal when there exists a “self-similarity” between the properties of the overall or larger-scale shape and the parts or regions” (Kelly, 2010, p. 45) that make up the shape. Mathematical support for the concept of the fractal is credited to
Benoit Mandelbrot who began to study the geometry of irregular shapes in the late 1950s.
Mandelbrot invented a new type of mathematics which he called fractal geometry to analyze the common features of the shapes. “The most striking property of these fractal shapes is that their characteristic patterns are found repeatedly at descending scales, so that their parts, at any scale, are similar in shape to the whole” (Capra & Luisi, 2014, p. 117). Capra and Luisi report that
Mandelbrot uses cauliflower to illustrate “self-similarity” as a property. By breaking a small piece out of a cauliflower, it looks like a small cauliflower. Kelly (2010) uses the example of a tree branch looking just like a tree. This study draws on the triphasic dialectical pattern and the concept of the fractal in relationship to (a) the evolution of human consciousness, (b) structures of consciousness throughout childhood, and (c) the process of learning (detailed in Chapter III
Methodology). Before addressing (a) and (b), an additional diagram from Kelly is offered about our place in time and space. The final chart includes the concept of a Second Axial Age with the principal arc as a middle term between the origin and goal.
(Kelly, 2010, p. 163) MYTHOLOGY AND TECHNOLOGY IN HOLISTIC EDUCATION 18
In Consideration of a Second Axial Age
In Cosmos and Psyche (Tarnas, 2007), Richard Tarnas discusses the Uranus-Neptune-
Pluto triple conjunction that extended in the 590s to the 550s BCE, the very heart of the Axial
Age.
In light of the great triple conjunction of Uranus, Neptune, and Pluto during the Axial
Awakening period of the sixth century BCE, it is striking that many of the impulses
established at that time more than 2500 years ago have been moving toward a climactic
moment of transformation in the course of the past hundred years. Reflecting this epochal
historical development, prophetic voices in the 1990s, such as the theologian Ewert
Cousins, began to suggest the possible coming in our time of a second Axial awakening
comparable to the first.” (Tarnas, 2007, pp. 450-451)
Mythology’s triphasic pattern of separation, initiation, return as experienced in the hero’s journey (also referred to in the literature as the monomyth) is discussed by Kelly in his article
Gaia and a Second Axial Age (Kelly, 2016). Kelly describes our current moment in time and space: “For the first time in sixty-five million years, the Earth community is being drawn into a collective, planet-wide Near-Death-Experience (NDE)” (Kelly, 2016, p. 1). Kelly explains that
NDEs can occur spontaneously or be cultivated in rites of passage or initiation by intentional processes toward a specific goal and are therefore teleological in nature (telos meaning purpose or goal). After an explanation of how “the first Axial Age sets up the conditions of possibility for the eventual emergence of the second” (Kelly, 2016, p. 3), Kelly returns to his theme of initiation:
We can note that an essential component during the liminal (“threshold”) phase of many
rites of initiation involves introducing the initiate to the sacred stories, myths, and MYTHOLOGY AND TECHNOLOGY IN HOLISTIC EDUCATION 19
symbols of the community into which they are being inducted. In contrast to the situation
in both archaic or indigenous societies and in first Axial traditions, the stories and
symbols required for this collective initiation into a new Gaian identity need to include a
genuinely common narrative core, regardless of language and ethnicity. (Kelly, 2016, p.
4)
A description of the universe story, which Kelly identifies as the only candidate for a common narrative, is upcoming in the literature review. Kelly affirms the value of existing stories, myths, rituals and religious doctrines for continued insight into the cosmos, humanity, and how to navigate forward. In summary, this study is in agreement with Kelly’s view of our place in time and space as “straddling, or crossing and recrossing, the threshold between” (Kelly,
2010, p. 99) the initiation stage (second phase) of the mythological hero’s journey and the return
(third phase), which requires the shaping of a new identity. This review now returns to the triphasic dialectical pattern and the concept of the fractal as it relates to (a) the evolution of human consciousness and (b) the structures of consciousness throughout childhood.
Integral Philosophy and Integral Consciousness
"Integral philosophy is a new understanding of how the influences of evolution affect the development of consciousness and culture" (2007, p. 2), writes Steve McIntosh in Integral
Consciousness and the Future of Evolution. Integral philosophy began to emerge into a coherent whole beginning in the late 1990s and is described by McIntosh as “a self-organizing dynamic system of values” (2007, p. 153). The result of this philosophy, posits McIntosh, is the worldview of integral consciousness. McIntosh traces the various thought streams that have contributed to integral philosophy and credits the following founders: Georg Hegel, Henri
Bergson, James Mark Baldwin, Alfred North Whitehead, Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, Jean MYTHOLOGY AND TECHNOLOGY IN HOLISTIC EDUCATION 20
Gebser, Jurgen Habermas, and Ken Wilber. Developmental psychology is foundational to integral philosophy because it reveals “the stage-wise development of all historically significant worldview structures. That is, the structures that organize consciousness are directly related to the stages of human history” (McIntosh, 2007, p. 29).
The psychologist Clare Graves's research demonstrated that the sequentially emerging stages organize within a larger dynamic system; a dialectical spiral of development or living system of evolution (McIntosh, 2007). Spiral Dynamics (1996), authored by Don Beck and
Christopher Cowen, popularized Graves's work and introduced the spiral of development to a broader audience at a generalized level that facilitates its usefulness. McIntosh qualifies that the stages of consciousness are "better compared to ocean currents than to architecture…a pattern of relationships that exhibit systemic properties" (McIntosh, 2007, p. 33). The stages include archaic, tribal, warrior, traditional, modernist, postmodern, integral, and postintegral. Integral consciousness is the first stage that recognizes “how the real values of every historically significant worldview must be included within our larger estimates of what is good and worthwhile” (McIntosh, 2007, p. 79). “Transcend and include” has become the catchphrase of integral consciousness and the value of evolution itself is the prime directive.
Critics of the spiral dynamics model point out that its focus is on values and the model does not adequately account for the other “lines of development” that have been identified by psychologists and developmentalists. McIntosh acknowledges this claim yet argues that “these various lines of development are themselves organized within a larger holarchic structure wherein three primary lines of development encompass the rest” (McIntosh, 2007, p. 241). The
“center of gravity” phenomenon supports McIntosh’s claim. McIntosh points out that integral MYTHOLOGY AND TECHNOLOGY IN HOLISTIC EDUCATION 21 theorist Ken Wilber, who insists that the lines of development are separate, also recognizes a center of psychic gravity.
McIntosh identified feeling, thought, and will as the three primary lines that consciousness is organized around before becoming aware of the spiritual paths of Hinduism and
Theosophy as supporters of these same three aspects. Readers familiar with the work of Rudolf
Steiner or Waldorf education will immediately recognize the triad of thinking, feeling, willing, also referred to as head, heart, and hands, that structures the associated literature and pedagogy.
The interested reader will find an insightful overview and critique of the many contributors to this discussion of consciousness and human development in Chapter 9 Structures of the Human
Mind in McIntosh’s book Integral Consciousness and the Future of Evolution (2007), as well as a more in-depth handling of the metastructures of emotion (feeling), cognition (thought), and volition (will). To conclude, McIntosh's model provides a visual of his integration of the spiral of evolving values into the three primary lines of development:
Figure 9-4. The spiral’s influence on consciousness through its effect on the lines of development within the human will. (McIntosh, 2007, p. 264) MYTHOLOGY AND TECHNOLOGY IN HOLISTIC EDUCATION 22
Structures of Consciousness Throughout Childhood
Developmentalists Josette and Ba Luvmour co-created the Natural Learning
Relationships (NLR) theory and program based on “fieldwork and extensive research in child development, family systems, and pertinent psychological” (Luvmour J., 2016, p. 9) and spiritual disciplines. With NLR as a ground, J. Luvmour (2016) proposes as ontogeny “recapitulates phylogeny in the formation of a human fetus, structures of consciousness also manifest in humans in shorter forms through childhood” (Luvmour J., 2016, p. 283). Luvmour links the stages of child development as detailed by NLR to each stage of Gebser’s structures of consciousness (see Appendix B). The emphasis here is that human development is comprised of predictable stages in childhood that exhibit the dialectical, spiral, and fractal pattern that can be discerned by the adult for optimal learning. This concept is expanded in relationship to this study in the upcoming section regarding understanding archetypal principles in childhood.
Myth and its Role in Culture
Drawing from the work of Joseph Campbell, Le Grice outlines the four main functions of myth (2012, pp. 40-43):
• mystical or metaphysical function – to reconcile the waking consciousness to the universe
as it is, to adapt the human to the numinous mystery that is interior and exterior
• cosmological function – the forming and rendering of an image of the universe
(cosmological image) that is in alignment with the science of our time
• sociological function – that of supporting and maintaining a functioning social moral
order by shaping the individual to the current geographical and historical context MYTHOLOGY AND TECHNOLOGY IN HOLISTIC EDUCATION 23
• pedagogical or psychological function – to initiate the individual into the order of
realities of his or her own psyche, guiding the individual toward spiritual enrichment and
realization
The mythologies of ancient civilizations provided meaning for people about their place in time and space. The myths of indigenous cultures provided a connection to the universe not only in the past but also today. The literature suggests the universe story as an appropriate mythology today and encourages the integration of ancient cultural mythologies, indigenous mythologies, and religious doctrines (Kelly, 2010). In The Origins of History and Consciousness (Neumann,
1995) Erich Neumann, a student of Jung, provides an analysis of mythology’s archetypal stages as they relate to the developing ego, both on an individual and historically collective level. One mythological theme already discussed in this thesis and identified by Neumann is the hero’s journey. Correlating the archetypal dynamics within each, Neumann identifies the hero myth as a second cycle embedded within the creation myth.
Additionally, Neumann details the transformation myth. "The development of consciousness in archetypal stages is a transpersonal fact, a dynamic self-revelation of the psychic structure, which dominates the history of mankind and the individual" (Neumann, 1995, p. xxii). Neumann defines transpersonal factors as internal structural elements that are collective.
Neumann states “The archetypes that determine the stages of conscious development form only a segment of archetypal reality as a whole” (Neumann, 1995, pp. xvi-xvii). Archetypal cosmology, which emerged as a field of study decades later, gives new meaning to Neumann’s statement. In
The Archetypal Cosmos (2012) Le Grice writes:
Fundamental to this next great movement, I believe, will be an understanding of the
archetypal-cosmological basis of the ‘single symphony’ of our biological and spiritual MYTHOLOGY AND TECHNOLOGY IN HOLISTIC EDUCATION 24
history. It is my contention that a recognition of the archetypal matrix, as the foundation
of an archetypal cosmology, is congruent with the emergence of integral consciousness
and might therefore mark a next stage in the evolution in our understanding of the nature
of myth and its function in human experience. Archetypal astrology, I propose, could
support a new integral mythic world view for our time, addressing each of the four
functions of myth, and presenting a viable alternative to the currently dominant
approaches to understanding myth and religion – as well, of course, as offering a radical
alternative to the modern disenchanted world picture. (Le Grice, 2012, p. 283)
The New Story to Journey of the Universe
In 1978 Thomas Berry (2003) wrote an essay titled The New Story: Comments on the
Origin, Identification, and Transmission of Values about the human story coinciding with the
Earth story. Berry stated that after two centuries of scientific analysis, humanity has mostly lost touch with the need for a sustainable system in relationship with the earth. As a way forward,
Berry identified three fundamental values that continue to influence current thought streams:
(1) Continued differentiation - likened to the primordial intentions of the Earth process
and seen in the variety of all things.
(2) Subjectivity – also called interiority. Each being has its interior, inner self. Berry
attributes the destruction of the Earth over the last centuries to the loss of this vision of
wholeness and reverence for each being's interiority.
(3) communion – the interrelationship of the universe within itself and of each part to the
whole. MYTHOLOGY AND TECHNOLOGY IN HOLISTIC EDUCATION 25
In conclusion, Berry suggested with optimism that the Earth’s guiding process of evolution is the very process at work in our present moment, bringing awareness to humanity of the Earth-human connection. Berry wrote:
This web of relationships throughout the universe is what first impinges on the waking
consciousness of the human from the beginning…. It is the destiny of our present and all
future generations to develop this capacity for communion on new and more
comprehensive levels.” (Berry, 2003, p. 86)
Berry continued his part in this destiny of greater communion, authoring The Dream of the Earth (Berry, 2015) in 1988 and then co-authoring The Universe Story (Berry & Swimme,
1994) with Brian Thomas Swimme in 1992. Berry and Swimme explain that “‘The Universe
Story’ refers of course to the book we have written, but only in a secondary way. The primary referent of our title is the great story taking place throughout the universe” (p. 5). The Universe
Story unites science and the humanities into “a coherent narrative of the origin and the long sequence of transformations of the universe and of the planet Earth” (Berry & Swimme, 1994, p.
5). The authors posit that the most significant change in the twentieth century may be the passage from “a sense of cosmos to a sense of cosmogenesis” (p. 2). The cycle of seasonal renewal that oriented the consciousness of every past human culture has now given way "to a dominant time- developmental mode of consciousness, where time is experienced as an evolutionary sequence of irreversible transformations" (p. 3). The authors go on to explain:
We are now experiencing that exciting moment when our new meaning, our new story is
taking shape. This story is the only way of providing, in our times, what the mythic
stories of the universe provided for tribal peoples and for the earlier classical civilizations
in their times. The final benefit of this story might be to enable the human community to MYTHOLOGY AND TECHNOLOGY IN HOLISTIC EDUCATION 26
become present to the larger Earth community in a mutually enhancing manner. We can
hope that it will soon be finding expression not simply in a narrative such as this but in
poetry, music, and ritual throughout the entire range of modern culture, on a universal
scale. Such expressions will sensitize people to the story that every river and every star
and every animal is telling. The goal is not to read a book; the goal is to read the story
taking place all around us. (Berry & Swimme, 1994, p. 3)
Berry continued his work as an eco-theologian until his death in 2009, contributing two important additional books: The Great Work (1999) and Evening Thoughts (2006).
Journey of the Universe (Journey) is a project more than three decades in the making, and
2011 marks the first time the story is told in a film (Our Story, n.d.). Swimme and Mary Evelyn
Tucker, a senior lecturer and research scholar at Yale School of Forestry and Environmental
Studies and Yale Divinity School, wrote the film script and book in a ten-year collaboration while working with scientists and scholars from the history of religions. Journey allows an update to the science included in The Universe Story (Berry & Swimme, 1994) and provides a platform for development which consists of an interactive website, online community, the film, the book, a conversation series, a monthly newsletter, and online courses. Quoting from the website:
Journey, then, is a cosmological story of the unfolding of the universe and Earth in which
life and humans emerge. This story is told in a poetic manner while relying on our best
knowledge from modern science. Scientific facts and poetic metaphors are interwoven so
that viewers of the film or readers of the book can understand how they arose from these
creative processes and participate in them. This weaving is in the spirit of Loren Eiseley, MYTHOLOGY AND TECHNOLOGY IN HOLISTIC EDUCATION 27
the American anthropologist and nature writer, whose books and voice are a major
influence on Journey of the Universe. (Our Story, n.d.)
Journey of the Universe is the functional cosmology that Thomas Berry suggested in his 1978
“New Story” essay. This study posits that the functional cosmology of the universe story is best introduced in childhood, in a repeating triphasic dialectical pattern. This position is touched on in the next section and expanded in the Methodology chapter of this thesis.
Look to the Stars: A Path Toward Integral Ecologies
“Look to the stars” in the title of this section attends to Swimme and Tarnas’s indications that the stars have (a) evolved into us over a 14-billion-year period, (b) been crucial through each stage of evolution and consciousness as they draw forth new capacities and cosmologies at each transition, and (c) been key to our intellectual development (Swimme & Tarnas, 2018). The new discipline of archetypal cosmology does “look to the stars” in its central supposition “that one can gain a deep insight into the archetypal dynamics underlying human experience by interpreting the meaning of the positions of the planets in relationship with each other” (Le
Grice, 2009, p. 4).
Archetypal cosmology includes the study of the correlations between cyclical alignments
of the planets and archetypal patterns in human experience (archetypal astrology), but
goes beyond this to address the theoretical basis of these correlations and their
implications for the wider contemporary world view. Consequently, archetypal
cosmology is a multidisciplinary subject drawing on scholarship from many other areas
such as depth psychology, history, philosophy, cosmology, religious studies, cultural
studies, the arts, and the social and natural sciences. (About the Journal, n.d.) MYTHOLOGY AND TECHNOLOGY IN HOLISTIC EDUCATION 28
This study utilizes the term “integral ecologies” in its plural form to acknowledge and emphasize the underlying value of differentiation in the evolutionary unfolding of the earth itself and “different ways of knowing, and the effort to respect but also overcome differences in searching for solutions” (Mickey et al., 2017, p. xi). This section summarizes multiple thought streams of integral ecologies to highlight the relationship of the universe story as a part within the whole of the field. In defining the five principles of integral ecologies (for further reading see
Chapter 8 Five Principles of Integral Ecology (Mickey et al., 2017, pp. 189-227)). Kelly uses the adjectives evolutionary, planetary, transdisciplinary, (re) enchanted, and engaged to guide the reader toward the consideration of how a more integral understanding of each begins to emerge only after considering all five. Kelly goes on to explain that although “each of the five principles is active in one way or another with all of the integral ecologists considered in this chapter, one or two tend to take center stage” (Mickey et al., 2017, p. 221). Kelly provides the following examples:
• Esbjorn-Hargens and Zimmerman – transdisciplinarity (as a system) is primary
• Morin – transdisciplinarity (as method) is primary, with the support of evolution and re-
enchantment, which then have planetary and engagement as support.
• Berry and Swimme – evolutionary is primary, bound intimately with re-enchantment
• Macy – engagement is primary with the other four principles channeling directly through
the primary principle.
Berry and Swimme’s work in bringing forward the universe story, known in its more recent evolution as the Journey of the Universe (Swimme & Tucker, 2011), has potential to connect individuals, including children, to their place in time and space. The value of this evolutionary view has been recognized and implemented in the existing form of holistic MYTHOLOGY AND TECHNOLOGY IN HOLISTIC EDUCATION 29 education known as Montessori education. Montessori trainer Pottish-Lewis describes Cosmic
Education:
Cosmic Education is a way to show the child how everything in the universe is
interrelated and interdependent, no matter whether it is the tiniest molecule or the largest
organism ever created. Every single thing has a part to play, a contribution to make to the
maintenance of harmony in the whole. In understanding this network of relationships, the
child finds that he or she also is a part of the whole, and has a part to play, a contribution
to make. (Lillard, 2007, p. 130)
This study recognizes the ability of Cosmic Education to connect children to their place in time and space. However, this study posits that an elucidation of our place in time and space that includes the spiritual aspect of numinous wonder is intensified when the orientation to the cosmos includes mythology.
Bridging the exteriority of the cosmos with the interiority of the psyche in the education of the child is at the heart of this study. Archetypal cosmology is a term that manifested via dialogue within the PCC department at CIIS to bridge the multiple disciplines of cosmology and psychology with astrology as a meeting point (Tarnas, 2011). This study posits that the integration of mythologies from multiple ancient civilizations alongside the universe story encourages the experience of numinous wonder and provides the foundation for an ever- deepening personal experience of the archetypal dimension of reality. Furthermore, this study posits that an experience of the archetypal dimension of reality strengthens the soul dimension of the individual psyche, and therefore the cosmos, in their interrelationship of the microcosm embedded in the macrocosm (Tarnas, 2007). John P. Miller has written that mythology, the universe story, and community connections are among the ways to nurture the soul and allow the MYTHOLOGY AND TECHNOLOGY IN HOLISTIC EDUCATION 30 self to emerge. This study posits that the emergence of the true nature of the individual will lead towards efforts to understand and respond to “our crisis-ridden planetary context” (Mickey et al.,
2017, p. 209). The “insightful analysis of the teleological, evolutionary dimension of history as it unfolds through the archetypal planetary cycles described in Cosmos and Psyche” (Tarnas, 2011, p. 69) and Kelly’s (2010) presentation of the Hegelian triad as the deep structure of possibly all developmental processes provide context and guidance for the procedure of this study.
The Historical Dialectic of the Archetypal Principles
Archetypal cosmology’s foundational concept of archetypal principles can be understood in three different senses:
in the Homeric sense as a primordial deity and mythic figure; in the Platonic sense as a
cosmic and metaphysical principle; and in the Jungian sense as a psychological principle
(with its Kantian and Freudian background) -with all of these associated with a specific
planet. (Tarnas, 2007, p. 86)
Tarnas provides an example in the archetype of Venus, understood on the
• Homeric level as the Greek mythic figure of Aphrodite (goddess of beauty and love),
Mesopotamian Ishtar, and Roman Venus
• Platonic level as the metaphysical principle of Eros and the Beautiful
• Jungian level as the “psychological tendency to perceive, desire, create, or in some other
way experience beauty and love, to attract and be attracted, to seek harmony and aesthetic
or sensuous pleasure, to engage in artistic activity and in romantic and social relations”
(Tarnas, 2007, p. 87).
Tarnas distinguishes the different levels to acknowledge the complexity inherent to the archetypes and to emphasize that archetypes are not concrete and definable or restricted to a MYTHOLOGY AND TECHNOLOGY IN HOLISTIC EDUCATION 31 specific dimension. This study considers the three levels identified by Tarnas in relationship to the education of the child.
Understanding Archetypal Principles in Childhood
As Tarnas and Swimme articulated in The Stars Lead us to Wonder (2018), the stars have drawn forth new capacities and cosmologies through each stage of evolution and consciousness.
This study has summarized the role of myth in culture and acknowledged the dialectical spiral in the evolution of consciousness and the structures of consciousness throughout childhood. The concept of ontogeny recapitulates phylogeny, or that the growth and development of the individual will go through the same evolutionary stages as the species has been considered by developmentalist Josette Luvmour and is described by Marshak in his book Evolutionary
Parenting (2016). Marshak writes:
As the child unfolds and grows, the evolution of his or her individual consciousness
recapitulates the evolution of the homo sapiens consciousness throughout its evolutionary
history so far, as described by the spiral dynamics model: from archaic to tribal/magical,
to warrior, to traditional, and, with the necessary nurturance and social and cultural
opportunity, to modernist, post-modern, and integral. (Marshak, 2016, p. 18)
Developmentalists have been working toward an increased understanding of developmental stages in childhood concerning the emerging consciousness of the child. "Kegan's articulation of the lifelong process of development set the stage for the idea of movement through the structures of consciousness and emergent self-knowledge as set forth by Gebser, who mapped the structures of consciousness through historical representations" (Luvmour J., 2019, p.
5). “Developmental knowledge can inform educators about the optimal age for appropriate communication strategies, for relationship, and for environments that provide the best needed MYTHOLOGY AND TECHNOLOGY IN HOLISTIC EDUCATION 32 support for development of the child’s innate capacities” (Luvmour J., 2019, p. 4). The middle stage of childhood, from approximately age 8-12, is recognized as a stage nourished by mythology (Luvmour B., 2006). Mythology correlates with an understanding of the archetypal principles on the Homeric level and is addressed in the case study research of this intuitive inquiry. An understanding of archetypal principles on a Platonic and then Jungian level would be developmentally suited to later structures of consciousness as supported by the dialectic pattern of development.
Care of the Soul in Education
An underlying theme of the literature across disciplines is a return to interconnection and wholeness rather than the mechanized view of separation. Care of the soul in education is directly related to connecting the material of study with the people studying it. “A soul-oriented education aims at making you a person of character, love, connection, and the creativity that comes from being a true individual” (Miller et al., 2019, p. 54). Moore focuses on the phrase
“intimately connected” as part of the dictionary definition of “holistic.” The Greek word “eros” might be used to describe this intimate connection, with examples from nature including gravity and the orbiting of the planets. Moore emphasizes the use of the entire environment and all of one’s time as potential resources for learning. Moore points out that his descriptions “stem from a sense of soul. Soul is that element in us that is our mysterious depth and makes us an individual while feeling connected to others and to the human community” (Miller et al., 2019, p. 54). As identified by John P. Miller, mythology, the universe story, and community connections are among the ways to nurture the soul and allow the self to emerge.
MYTHOLOGY AND TECHNOLOGY IN HOLISTIC EDUCATION 33
Mythology in Holistic Education
In the chapter "Care of the Soul in Education," Thomas Moore attributes his use of the phrase "care of the soul" to Werner Jaeger's Paideia: The Ideals of Greek Culture and asks, with the Greek polytheistic imagination in mind: which gods are neglected in twenty-first-century education? Years earlier, Moore's mythology class had determined that Saturn was the only discernable god and "ruled the campus with his love of hierarchies, authority, exclusive masculinity, order, testing, and tendency toward depression" (Miller et al., 2019, p. 51). Moore suggests "One interesting way to imagine holistic education is to picture it mythologically, rooted in all the gods, not just one" (Miller et al., 2019, p. 51). Through the lens of archetypal cosmology, Moore could be speaking directly of the archetypes.
If archetypes pertain to nature, the world, and perhaps the universe at large as well as to
the psyche, and if myths arise from archetypes, then we can perhaps say that myths
themselves are expressions of the world, of nature, of the universe. (Le Grice K. , 2016,
p. 107)
Moore shares:
Many readers who have noticed my use of mythology as a means of taking many issues
deeper tell me that the little mythology they learned in school had no relevance to their
lives. But now they see how that subject could have helped them deal with many
significant turning points in their lives. We could say the same about every subject. It
isn’t that the subject matter is not relevant to the student, it’s that the teaching fails to
connect the material of study with the people studying it. (Miller et al., 2019, p. 52) MYTHOLOGY AND TECHNOLOGY IN HOLISTIC EDUCATION 34
Expanding on the stages of child development and the articulation of the common vision of Steiner, Aurobindo, and Khan, Marshak writes of the second era of childhood: age six through
12-14 years:
As the child learns through his senses, feelings, and imagination in these years, he needs
to be spared from theories and other abstractions that have little meaning for his. Instead
he needs to experience stories and pictures that convey aesthetic and moral values, that he
can visualize and take within himself for guidance and enduring meaning. He has the
capacity to learn profoundly from stories of great and wonderful personalities from myth
and history. Such stories evoke inner imagery, grounded in feelings of reverence and
veneration, and arouse a spirit of emulation in the child’s spiritual being that aids the
growth of his character and moral nature. (Marshak, 2016, p. 22)
Referring to popular science books on the new physics and cosmology Keiron Le Grice writes "What is notably absent from these and most new paradigm perspectives, however, is an engagement with and appreciation of the mythic and archetypal dimensions of existence" (Le
Grice, 2012, p. 39). As a new paradigm perspective, holistic education manifests a spectrum of attunement to the mythic and archetypal dimensions of existence to which Le Grice refers.
Waldorf and Enki Education (Enki Education, n.d.) are examples of holistic pedagogy that utilize both ancient creation stories and the natural world as primary sources from which to draw forth learning. However, neither currently includes an interweaving of the universe story as a new cultural mythology. The Live Education! fifth-grade curriculum, inspired by Waldorf education and based on the teachings of Rudolf Steiner, is utilized in the case study research of this intuitive inquiry.
MYTHOLOGY AND TECHNOLOGY IN HOLISTIC EDUCATION 35
Technology in Holistic Education
Marian de Souza, recognized for publication in the field of spirituality, well-being, and education (Miller et al., 2019), acknowledges in The Handbook the positive outcomes and challenges of media and communications technology for children. De Souza's states "As teachers and parents have found, when used with care and wisdom, media and technology provide superb and stimulating ways to open up new worlds to children and young people"
(Miller et al., 2019, p. 304). Tony Eaude has written extensively on children's spiritual, moral, social, and cultural development and the implications for teachers (Miller et al., 2019). Eaude comments in The Handbook "While technology may bring significant benefits, for instance in understanding other cultures, children have come to expect immediate responses and might be uncritical of what they see and hear without explicit guidance" (Miller et al., 2019, p. 62). In summary, Eaude and de Souza suggest care, wisdom, and guidance from the adults in relationship with children for technology use to align with holistic principles.
The children who comprise today’s youngest generations are often engaged with emerging technologies, especially digital media. Karl Mannheim is credited with generational theory and wrote about it in his 1923 article titled The Problem of Generations (Van Eck
Duymaer van Twist & Newcombe, 2017). As individuals continuously emerge into the cultural process, they "come into contact anew with the accumulated heritage" (Mannheim, 1952, p. 293) and assimilate and utilize the events, data, and material they encounter. People who share a birth period and common location "in the historical dimension of the social process" (p. 290) experience highly similar mental data. The result is a socializing effect. Mannheim credits the art historian Pinder with the concept of each generation having an entelechy of its own. “According MYTHOLOGY AND TECHNOLOGY IN HOLISTIC EDUCATION 36 to him [Pinder], the entelechy of a generation is the expression of the unity of its ‘inner aim’ – of its inborn way of experiencing life and the world” (Mannheim, 1952, p. 283).
Aristotle, a great naturalist, coined the term entelechy to describe how wisdom expresses
itself in humans. Distilled to its essence, entelechy means the essential informing
principle of a living thing.… Froebel, and later Montessori, referred to entelechy to help
describe the vital nature of the child and then developed pedagogies designed to
maximize this vitality. Carl Jung, Gregory Bateson, Thomas Merton and many others
have used entelechy as a springboard to deepen appreciation of the source of knowledge,
of awareness, of self-reflexivity. (Luvmour B., 2005, pp. 6-7)
In light of the astrological research paradigm of archetypal cosmology, this study posits that the archetypal dynamics of the universe that shape human experience are likely at play in the concepts of generational theory and each generation having an entelechy of its own.
In his book The Fourth Industrial Revolution, Klaus Schwab (2016) states that a
“transformation of humankind” (p. 1) began at the turn of the century. “The changes are so profound that, from the perspective of human history, there has never been a time of greater promise or potential peril” (Schwab, 2016, p. 2). The scale, scope, and speed of new developments and technologies as “they leverage the pervasive power of digitization and information technology” (Schwab, 2016, p. 14) is already an aspect of the worldview of the youngest generations (Generation Z and Generation Alpha). Are educators, specifically holistic educators who base their view in educating the whole person, holding the technologies and context of the Fourth Industrial Revolution in their conscious awareness as they strive to bring community connection and meaning within the world to today’s children? Additionally, Tarnas states that “our present moment in history is most comparable, astronomically, to the period MYTHOLOGY AND TECHNOLOGY IN HOLISTIC EDUCATION 37 exactly five hundred years ago… – a period shaped by the rapid spread of a powerful new medium of universal communication, the printed book” (Tarnas, 2007, p. 482). Tarnas writes that humanity, aided by technological advances in communications media, is “more able to think, feel, and respond together in a spiritually evolved manner to the world’s swiftly changing realities than has ever before been possible” (Tarnas, 2007, p. 483). Digital media provides community connection on a local and a global scale.
The Potential of the Adult/Child Relationship
“Fritjof Capra has noted that we are living at a crucial time in the history of humankind, a time of crisis that embodies both conflict and opportunity, a point of bifurcation to either overcome our dilemmas or to drown in them” (Nava, 2001, p. 20). A review of the literature indicates that a paradigm shift is underway. Ramon Gallegos Nava (2001) describes what this means for holistic education:
The new-science paradigms provide holistic education with a vision of a dynamic,
complex, open reality and with a human sensitivity that goes beyond the fragmented,
mechanical, positivist, reductionist, dualist vision of eighteenth-century mechanical
science. Developments in the new science, such as the holographic theory of the brain,
implicate order, chaos theory, morphogenetic fields, synchronicity, the Gaia hypothesis,
and quantum physics have afforded holistic education a more accurate and open vision of
our universe. (Nava, 2001, pp. 31-32)
“The paradigm shift that is emerging now, in this time of our lives, is focusing on the relationships and interconnections among all things. Knowledge itself is evolving and emerging in the context of relationships” (Luvmour J., 2016, p. 209). MYTHOLOGY AND TECHNOLOGY IN HOLISTIC EDUCATION 38
Luvmour’s (2016) research confirms that adults and children develop in relationship with each other, and by doing so, access wisdom – each in relationship to their developmental moment. Luvmour describes the adult’s access to wisdom as “the ability to see and accept multiple perspectives with an awareness of change and uncertainty in life” (Luvmour J., 2016, p.
245). Marshak echoes Luvmour's research in his discussion of evolutionary parenting and his research on the common vision as "a path to follow that will nurture this growth for ourselves and our children, a path that leads both to survival and to co-evolution" (Marshak, 2016, p. 47).
In his 2019 book The New Childhood, Jordan Shapiro emphasizes the importance of the adult/child relationship within the current technological landscape, as opposed to the child navigating the new technologies without adult guidance. Diana Graber, a digital literacy educator and advocate, offers a curriculum designed for digital citizenship (www.cyberwise.org) and emphasizes the importance of learning to navigate the digital world in her book Raising Humans in a Digital World (2019). This intuitive inquiry will utilize Shapiro and Graber’s indications for adult participation with children in the use of technology during the Cycle 3 research.
Summary and Cycle 2 Lenses
Systems thinking as the new paradigm of science offers support to the field of holistic education, the emerging field of archetypal cosmology, and the shared transdisciplinary goal of integral ecologies. Our place in time and space is situated not only by common themes across the fields but by a triphasic dialectical pattern that suggests the formation of a historical new identity for humanity. The triphasic spiral of development can also be seen in the evolution of human consciousness in relation to values and structures of consciousness throughout childhood.
Mythology fulfilled mystical, cosmological, sociological, and pedagogical functions in ancient civilizations and now a new cultural mythology is offered in the universe story. Journey of the MYTHOLOGY AND TECHNOLOGY IN HOLISTIC EDUCATION 39
Universe is a living cosmology that weaves the entire evolution of the universe, Earth, and humanity into a unifying story of creation and connection. With the prevailing mechanistic worldview of separation called into question, educators who sense the shift towards wholeness have been calling for attention to the soul. Mythology strengthens the soul dimension in education when the images it brings to the child correspond to the child's structure of consciousness and stage of development. With community connection identified as a way to nurture the soul and allow the self to emerge, technology warrants the care, wisdom, and guidance of an adult within a holistic learning environment. The Cycle 2 lenses of this intuitive inquiry are (a) archetypal cosmology, (b) the soul dimension of holistic education, (c) integral ecologies, (d) our place in time and space, (e) triphasic pattern, (f) Journey of the Universe, (g) mythology in holistic education, (h) technology in holistic education, and (i) the adult/child relationship.
MYTHOLOGY AND TECHNOLOGY IN HOLISTIC EDUCATION 40
CHAPTER III
METHODOLOGY
Intuitive Inquiry as a Qualitative Research Methodology
Qualitative research encompasses multiple philosophical orientations and approaches, including constructivism and phenomenology, the antecedents of which can be traced back to anthropology, sociology, and applied fields of study such as journalism, education, social work, medicine, and law (Merriam & Tisdell, 2016). Emphasis on experience, understanding, and meaning-making are features of qualitative inquiry. According to Merriam and Tisdell (2016), the four primary characteristics of qualitative research are:
• a focus on process, understanding, and meaning
• the researcher is the primary instrument of data collection and analysis
• the process is inductive
• the product is richly descriptive
Intuitive inquiry is a hermeneutical process of interpretation that joins intuition to intellectual precision (Anderson, 2004). Anderson began developing this methodology in 1995 in a doctoral-level research course that emphasized feminist approaches to research and heuristic research (2011). Over time, Anderson included elements from biblical hermeneutics, philosophic hermeneutics, embodied phenomenology, and scholars’ descriptions of intuitive and embodied practices among indigenous peoples. According to Anderson and Braud (Anderson & Braud,
2011), the method seeks to make known new ways of being human in the world.
In honoring the archetypal, symbolic, imaginal, and the possible latent in all human
experience, the analysis and interpretations provided by an intuitive inquiry tend toward
wholeness and wellness, regardless of the topic chosen. Often, intuitive inquirers explore MYTHOLOGY AND TECHNOLOGY IN HOLISTIC EDUCATION 41
topics that require attention by the culture at large, as though they are called to envision
anew. What may seem like a researcher’s zeal for a topic may be the tip of an iceberg of a
call for change from the culture at large.
Epistemologically, intuitive inquiry is a search for new understandings through
the focused attention of one researcher’s passion and compassion for her- or himself,
others, and the world. In so doing, intuitive inquiry affirms a world reality in flux and
mutable and, therefore, challenges conventional notions of a static worldview that is
separate and distinguishable from the knower. (Anderson & Braud, 2011, pp. 17-18)
Several of Anderson’s students working with intuitive inquiry have referred “to the five cycles as a “sacred” container because each cycle gives directions on what is and what is not needed to complete that portion of the method and move the study forward successfully” (Anderson &
Braud, 2011, p. 18).
As researcher, I remained committed to the five iterative cycles of intuitive inquiry while becoming increasingly aware of the triphasic pattern shaping Cycles 1, 2, and 3. This chapter and
Chapter IV Findings provide descriptions of the interplay of the triphasic learning process with the cycles of intuitive inquiry. The interplay is further elaborated within Cycle 4 in the comparison of Cycle 2 and Cycle 4 lenses. In an intuitive inquiry, the researcher identifies a topic based on unique interests and passions. Topic identification in this method is in contrast to established research practice where a researcher reviews the current research in a scholarly area of interest and then identifies a relevant next study. The following questions were formulated concerning the topic:
MYTHOLOGY AND TECHNOLOGY IN HOLISTIC EDUCATION 42
Research Questions
• Does the study of Journey of the Universe as a new cultural mythology aid the 8-12-year-
old child in situating themselves in time and space?
• Does Journey of the Universe as a new cultural mythology, when studied in relationship
with the mythologies of ancient civilizations, invoke numinous wonder in the 8-12-year-
old child or in the adult guiding the study?
• What experience(s) of an archetypal dimension of reality does the interweaving of
technology, ancient cultural mythologies, and the study of Journey of the Universe
invoke for the participants of the study?
Context of the Study
As I am engaged in a distributed learning program, I conducted my intuitive inquiry in the location of my home on the Western Slope of Colorado, USA as well as in locations of family travel.
Graduate Institute for Transformative Learning
The Graduate Institute for Transformative Learning (GIFTLearning) is a low-residency interdisciplinary program with a distributed and relational learning model grounded in learner- driven inquiry (Vision, Mission, and Goals, n.d.). Moreover, GIFTLearning is an interactive learning experience that responds to the personal and professional lives of learners. Faculty mentors are accessible and available after facilitating courses for questions and consultations.
The GIFTLearning community of scholar-practitioners addresses personal, societal, educational, and ecological concerns in pursuit of a more sustainable world.
GIFTLearning’s mission is to nurture each learner’s authoring of his/her learning and life within a learning community of scholar-practitioners. GIFTLearning builds on two hundred MYTHOLOGY AND TECHNOLOGY IN HOLISTIC EDUCATION 43 years of cultural evolutionary legacy, the transcendentalists in the 19th century, Maria
Montessori, Rudolf Steiner, Sri Aurobindo, Hazrat Inayat Khan, Jean Gebser, Teilhard de
Chardin, A.S. Neill, humanistic psychology and Spiral Dynamics, and Ken Wilber’s Integral
Model (About Us, n.d.). The Graduate Institute for Transformative Learning offers a Master of
Arts in Transformative Learning and a Certificate Program. Every learner in the M.A. Program is invited to self-design their program. Faculty mentors and colleagues support each learner in this effort as they use the knowledge and tools gained in their MA program to become active agents of change who make a difference in their world.
The Fourth Industrial Revolution
A basic premise of this study is that education and the social-economic system are intricately interconnected. The Fourth Industrial Revolution is happening right now. Although many people may be aware of the latest smartphone release or read an article or two about self- driving cars, they likely remain unaware of the magnitude of impact that the Fourth Industrial
Revolution is predicted to have. This study proposes to elevate awareness among holistic educators of the importance of the adult /child relationship in cultivating care, wisdom, and guidance in the engagement of digital media as a form of community connection and new technologies as a way to situate the child in time and space. Klaus Schwab (2016) describes the
Fourth Industrial Revolution as different from the Third Industrial Revolution because the pace is faster, it is more extensive in breadth and depth and has a broader systems' impact. Schwab states that the Fourth Industrial Revolution will combine physical, digital, and biological worlds.
The technology he refers to is artificial intelligence (AI), robotics, the Internet of things (IoT), autonomous vehicles, 3-D printing, nanotechnology, biotechnology, material science, Energy storage, and quantum computing. MYTHOLOGY AND TECHNOLOGY IN HOLISTIC EDUCATION 44
Positionality
I am a parent homeschooling my children per the laws of the state of Colorado. My position as a homeschooling parent provides me with the unique opportunity to learn and interweave holistic principles of education from multiple pedagogies, established curriculum providers, and emerging sources. I have explored a variety of educational and developmental philosophies including Waldorf Education, Montessori, Enki Education, Charlotte Mason,
SelfDesign, Natural Learning Relationships, and Partnership Education. My studies have allowed an evolution of my worldview from the modern mechanistic paradigm to a systems view of life.
To homeschool my children, I have drawn on my art background, musical education through secondary school, an undergraduate degree in finance, and my own knowing of the world. I have gained knowledge about child development and learning through self-study, parent/child classes at the local Waldorf school, Enki Teacher Training courses and curriculum, the Live Education! curriculum, and my graduate studies with the Graduate Institute for
Transformative Learning. My exposure to diverse methodologies has provided the insight to follow my children's self-inquiry as well as create and implement my own curriculum at appropriate intervals to meet my children's unique interests. I consider myself engaged in a continuous co-evolution with my children.
David Marshak wrote in his book The Common Vision that he believes that it was
Steiner's
understanding of the relationship between the freedom of the child as an ideal and each
teacher’s own unfoldment as a limitation that led Steiner to develop the original Waldorf MYTHOLOGY AND TECHNOLOGY IN HOLISTIC EDUCATION 45
School as he did. The teachers in his school in 1919 needed a teacher-centered pedagogy
and a detailed curriculum, given their levels of unfoldment, and Steiner provided them
with both. This same understanding also helps to make sense of the movement towards a
more teacher-directed pedagogy at the Sri Aurobindo International Centre of Education.
Over time the teachers in the school learned about how much freedom they could offer to
students, given their own levels of unfoldment. (Marshak, 2016, p. 187)
I draw on Steiner’s indications as a foundation in my use of the Live Education! fifth-grade curriculum as a current source of study with my children. Additionally, I have the freedom to explore the relationship of Journey of the Universe and digital media alongside a Waldorf based curriculum to provide data for future educators and researchers to consider.
Procedure
In this research project, I conducted an intuitive inquiry by engaging in the five iterative cycles of hermeneutic interpretation that comprise the methodology of the approach (Anderson
& Braud, 2011). Basic instructions for all experiential exercises include a quiet time and place with art and journaling supplies and specific directions to come into a relaxed, meditative state.
The steps of each cycle are outlined as follows:
• Cycle 1: The researcher clarifies the topic via the specified creative process (experiential
exercise 1). The intended audience is identified (experiential exercise 2). After a
continued imaginal dialogue with the “text” (anything that represents the topic to the
researcher in some way such as an “art object, sculpture, painting, photo, poem, reading
from scripture or prose, movie, statistical equation, or graph” (Anderson & Braud, 2011,
p. 33)), the researcher articulates a precise statement of the research topic at the end of
Cycle 1. MYTHOLOGY AND TECHNOLOGY IN HOLISTIC EDUCATION 46
• Cycle 2: The researcher articulates in words his or her values, assumptions, and
understanding of the research topic as preliminary interpretive lenses before the data
gathering of Cycle 3. Cycle 2 consists of three stages:
1. The intuitive inquirer becomes familiar with theoretical, empirical, historical, and
literary texts relevant to the topic and chooses a set of texts that are directly related to
the topic.
2. A unique set of texts is identified (experiential exercise) from among the
literature and research on the topic for the Cycle 2 imaginal dialogue. During this
time a literature review is written up on the topic, as in regular research reports.
3. After an ongoing imaginal dialogue with the texts, the researcher prepares a list
of preliminary interpretive lenses that express an understanding of the topic before
data collection.
Note that in intuitive inquiry, the articulation of lenses is not intended to identify
and separate pre-understandings from influencing the research process. Rather,
the method is boldly hermeneutic in nature. Lenses are articulated in order to
track and record how they change and transform in the course of the study.
(Anderson & Braud, 2011, p. 44)
• Cycle 3: Utilizing an experiential exercise for (a), "the researcher (a) identifies the best
source(s) of data for the research topic, (b) develops criteria for the selection of data from
among these sources, (c) collects the data, and (d) presents a summary report of data in as
descriptive manner as possible” (Anderson & Braud, 2011, p. 45). Some interpretation of
the data is explicit in the summary report, yet interpretation should be minimized so that
the reader can draw their own conclusions before reading Cycle 4. MYTHOLOGY AND TECHNOLOGY IN HOLISTIC EDUCATION 47
• Cycle 4: The researcher refines and transforms the preliminary interpretive lenses
developed in Cycle 2 per the data gathered in Cycle 3. The lenses are then revised to
reflect the researcher’s more advanced understanding of the topic. Changes are
anticipated and elaborated in detail. The researcher’s intuitive style is illuminated by an
experiential exercise.
• Cycle 5: “Based on working the hermeneutic process of Cycles 1 through 4, in Cycle 5,
the intuitive inquirer presents authoritative theoretical speculations and theory related to
the topic of study” (Anderson & Braud, 2011, p. 58). The researcher returns to the
literature review done before the data collection and reevaluates it in light of the findings.
An experiential exercise guides the researcher to ask: What is left unsaid? What
unimagined possibilities are there? What are the visionary trajectories based on this
study? The research discussion will also include “(a) mistakes made, (b) procedures and
plans that did not work, (c) the researcher’s apprehensions and puzzlements about the
study and findings, (d) the style of intuitive interpretation used, and (e) what remains
unresolved or problematic about the topic or the method” (p. 59).
Five types of intuition are: (a) unconscious, symbolic, and imaginal processes, (b) physic or parapsychological experiences, (c) sensory modes, (d) empathetic illumination, and (e) the illuminating presence of wounds in the personality (Anderson, 2004, 2011). Four distinctive features of intuitive inquiry are (a) the transformative potential for the researcher and others,
(b) auspicious bewilderment (being taken entirely by surprise by unanticipated insights, likened to the trickster’s energy), (c) writing in the researcher’s voice, and (d) theory-building potential.
MYTHOLOGY AND TECHNOLOGY IN HOLISTIC EDUCATION 48
Triphasic Pattern
The triphasic pattern has been recognized within the literature as described in Chapter II of this thesis. Intuitive inquiry as a methodology recognizes the triphasic pattern of “the dialectic process of each of the five cycles. Each cycle of intuitive inquiry is explicitly dialectic, requiring ongoing reflection and engagement with either texts or data” (Anderson & Braud, 2011, p. 61).
Specific attention is drawn to the triphasic pattern of the dialectic within the parameter of this study due to its pervasive influence throughout Cycles 1, 2, and 3. I was introduced to the triphasic pattern in learning through Waldorf curriculum materials and further attuned to the pattern through engagement with the Enki Education curriculum and participation in Enki
Education teacher training courses. Beth Sutton, the founder of Enki Education, describes learning as a three-fold process: (a) open intake, (b) sleep/digestion, (c) skill/mastery (Sutton,
2005). This terminology is utilized within Chapter IV Findings to illuminate with honesty the three-fold learning process that pervaded this study as a dialectical overlay, at times crossing the cycle boundaries of the intuitive inquiry.
Hypnogogia
In addition to the experiential exercises, I utilized hypnogogia (Anderson & Braud, 2011) to guide my Cycle 2 literature review to completion. As mentioned, the three-fold learning process permeated this study. Once I had brought the literature review to what I thought was near-end two times, I recognized the process for what it was: three-fold. I experienced the duality of energization at the realization of arriving at the third stage as well as fatigue from the arduous process already undertaken. I genuinely enjoy listening to Dennis Klocek read Rudolf Steiner’s work aloud, and it was at this moment in time that I reviewed rudolfsteineraudio.com for material that might have some relevance to my study. I came across the lecture series Dying MYTHOLOGY AND TECHNOLOGY IN HOLISTIC EDUCATION 49
Earth and Living Cosmos. Lecture 3 given in Berlin, February 5, 1918, was of interest to me. In the talk, Steiner describes the moment of falling asleep and the moment of waking as intermediate states that are “extremely important in our overall consciousness” (Steiner, 2015, p.
35). Steiner describes the way to enter into correspondence with an individual disembodied soul during these states:
I’ll describe this very specifically. In the sensory world you speak to another person and
the other replies. You are aware that you are creating the words you speak with your
voice, and that these words originate in your thoughts. You feel that you are the creator of
your words. While you are speaking, you hear yourself; and then hear the other when he
replies. And you know that as the other speaks you are listening, you have fallen silent.
We become very accustomed to this form of interpersonal communication, to awareness
of it. Communication with disembodied souls is different. However strange it sounds, it is
the very opposite. When you yourself communicate your thoughts to a disembodied soul,
it is not you who speaks but the other. It is just as if you were speaking with another
person and he, not you, expressed what you were thinking and wished to communicate.
And what a so-called dead soul replies to you, does not come towards you from without,
either, but rises from within you: you experience it as your inner life. Clairvoyant
consciousness first has to accustom itself to this: to being a questioner within the other,
and to receiving his reply within oneself. (Steiner, 2015, pp. 36-37)
Anderson and Braud describe hypnogogic (sleep-entering) and hypnopompic (sleep- leaving) states as a way to access “information that otherwise might remain unconscious”
(Anderson & Braud, 2011, p. 235). The authors refer the reader to Mavromatis 1987 for further reading, and briefly summarize an encouragement of hypnogogia: MYTHOLOGY AND TECHNOLOGY IN HOLISTIC EDUCATION 50
One way to use a hypnogogic state for accessing previously unconscious material is
simply to pay greater attention to your mental content, especially your imagery, whenever
you are drifting into sleep. You can use specific intentions for fostering greater awareness
and memory for what happens during the hypnogogic state. (Anderson & Braud, 2011, p.
235)
In summary, I was able to cultivate much greater awareness and duration of the sleep-entering and sleep-leaving states during the writing of my “skill/mastery” review of the literature. I did this with intention over approximately two weeks, and I do believe the process provided guidance towards the resources I then utilized to complete the literature review. I continued to encourage hypnogogia at various intervals throughout the remainder of my study.
Study Participants
Per Cycle 3 instructions, I identified the best source of data for my research topic to be a qualitative case study. “A case study is an in-depth description and analysis of a bounded system” (Merriam & Tisdell, 2016, p. 37). The unit of analysis, in this case, is the learning community of The Meadow School, which consists specifically of me and my two children in our home learning environment. The Meadow School was created as a learning community eight years ago when I began to “homeschool” with attention and intention. The name creation filled an immediate need to provide my children with an answer to the never-ending question from friends and strangers alike of “Where do you go to school?”
As previous playmates started preschool, I began to shape the days with my children using indications from Waldorf-oriented curriculum sources. I utilized Live Education!
Kindergarten for a year and then Enki Education Kindergarten for two years before I began Enki
Education Grade One with my son. My daughter, 28 months younger, did not engage in the same MYTHOLOGY AND TECHNOLOGY IN HOLISTIC EDUCATION 51 academics as my son at this time, yet was better met being present with us rather than separated during “school” time. I continued to use the Enki Education curriculum as my primary source for grades 1-3. With the Enki Education curriculum currently available to purchase only through grade three, I returned to Live Education! as a central resource for fourth and fifth grade. Over these many years, I at times provided separate main lesson stories to meet the developmental needs of each child. The majority of the time, however, the children were met either listening to both sets of stories or a back and forth to meet one age and then the other. Regular exposure to museum exhibitions has cultivated our knowledge of culture, nature, and space.
At the time of this study, the participants are: (a) an eleven-year-old boy, (b) a (just- turned) nine-year-old girl, and (c) me, a forty-one-year-old woman. The participants have been in a relationship for the entire duration of the children’s lives and together in an intentional learning community for eight years. In the months leading up to the research cycle, the children came into coordinated study across all areas of learning. The use of this single significant case in combination with self-study as purposeful sampling (Ravitch & Carl, 2016) allowed the deliberate selection of individuals with whom to explore the research questions.
Data Collection
Cycle 3 step (b) is to develop criteria for the selection of data from amongst the sources.
Data collection consisted of embodied writing, participant artwork and participant writing to present the data in as descriptive a manner as possible. The three-fold learning process provided a thematic organization for the data.
Epistemologically aligned with philosophic phenomenology and phenomenological
research methods, embodied writing seeks to portray experience from the point of view
of the lived body…. The researcher collects, analyzes, and presents research findings, MYTHOLOGY AND TECHNOLOGY IN HOLISTIC EDUCATION 52
fully intending to invite readers to encounter the narrative accounts for themselves and
from within their own bodies through a form of sympathetic resonance…. The readers’
perceptual, visceral, sensorimotor, kinesthetic, and imaginal senses are invited to come
alive to the words and images as though the experience were their own. (Anderson &
Braud, 2011, p. 268)
Seven distinctive features of embodied writing that a researcher may choose to employ are:
• True-to-life, vivid depictions intended to invite sympathetic resonance in the readers or
audience.
• Inclusive of internal and external data as essential to relaying the experience.
• Written specifically from the inside out.
• Richly concrete and specific, descriptive of all sensory modalities, and often slowed
down to capture nuance.
• Attuned to the living body.
• Narratives embedded in experience, often first-person narratives.
• Poetic images, literary style, and cadence serve embodied depictions and not the other
way around. (Anderson & Braud, 2011, p. 269)
As this study proposes that mythology and technology can strengthen the soul dimension of holistic education, I will seek to illuminate basic elements of soul within the study. In the chapter “Care of the Soul in Education” in The Handbook, Thomas Moore lists ten qualities associated with soul and considers their role in education. I will utilize Moore’s ten soul qualities to discern elements of soul as experienced during the research process. The qualities are:
1. Home and Family: The base of the soul’s life. Qualities of home and family can be part of
all learning – the setting and means of relating. MYTHOLOGY AND TECHNOLOGY IN HOLISTIC EDUCATION 53
2. Friendship: Historically the basic way to relate with soul. The spirit of friendship could be
in all contacts between teachers and learners.
3. Poetics and Metaphor: Go deeper into facts by perceiving the layers of meaning through
an appreciation of narrative, poetics, and metaphor.
4. Dream: Dreams reveal the deep stories lived now at the level of soul. Regular, simple
dream telling and discussing would deepen any form of education.
5. Spirituality: Every aspect of education has a spiritual dimension and relates to (holism)
infinite mystery, the sublime, strong values, and an expansive sense of community.
6. Nature: In the ancient teaching of anima mundi (soul of the world) the natural world is
alive with presence and metaphorical meaning. Experiences in nature are indispensable to
a soul-oriented, holistic education.
7. Art: Both an appreciation of all arts as sources of meaning and fulfillment, as well as
creative experiences in painting, music, building, dancing, photography, and all the arts
make for an educated and sophisticated person.
8. Service: Essential to the soulful life is service to humanity – both local and in an
increasingly larger sense. You learn some things only through the experience of service.
9. Life’s Work: Soul offers a strong individual identity that is not superficial but rises from
deep currents and inspirations. A soul-based education is interested in a job as an element
in the larger quest for a meaningful and contributing life work.
10. Learning for Learning’s Sake: Holistic education is lifelong and may change in style over
the course of a life. It reaches maturity when a person loves learning for its own sake.
(Miller et al., 2019, pp. 54-55) MYTHOLOGY AND TECHNOLOGY IN HOLISTIC EDUCATION 54
In the final chapter of The Handbook, in the section titled “Future Directions,”, Tobin
Hart provides “five gateways – approaches to knowing or inquiry” (Miller et al., 2019, p. 340). I will utilize Hart’s gateways to illustrate my perception of their presence within my Cycle 3 data collection. The gateways to knowing or inquiry are:
• Contemplation – to develop strength and flexibility of attention, to witness one’s own
consciousness which leads to metacognition, a steadier mind, and balanced emotions.
“This opening of consciousness can bring vitality, depth, and meaning to existence”
(Miller et al., 2019, p. 340).
• Empathy – a capacity to put oneself in another’s shoes, to close the gap between self and
object, to resonate with the other and experience interconnection.
• Imagination – a process fundamental to our knowing, a source of insight that opens new
possibilities to change both consciousness and culture.
• Beauty – to appreciate, behold, or encounter, “beauty embodies something both
immanent and transcendent that resonates deep within us” (Miller et al., 2019, 342).
Nature is a primary source.
• Embodiment – contemporary cognitive science has affirmed the connection of the body
as central to knowing, returning the body to education. 4E cognition refers to enacted; we
shape and activate the world we perceive, embodied; we know through our bodies,
extended; our consciousness extends beyond our physical self into the environment; and
embedded; we exist within a context.
MYTHOLOGY AND TECHNOLOGY IN HOLISTIC EDUCATION 55
Validity
Anderson and Braud offer investigator validation and participant validation as ‘the most straightforward and direct ways to determine the validity or trustworthiness of the results of a qualitative study” (Anderson & Braud, 2011, p. 290). Anderson and Braud cite Moustakas:
The question of validity is one of meaning: Does the ultimate depiction of the experience
derived from one’s own rigorous, exhaustive self-searching and from the explications of
others present comprehensively, vividly, and accurately the meanings and essences of the
experience? This judgement is made by the primary researcher, who is the only person in
the investigation who has undergone the heuristic inquiry from the beginning [through its
various phases]. (Moustakas 1990 as cited by Anderson & Braud, 2011, p. 293)
Participant validation, an important supplement to investigator validation, is achieved in this study by including participant writings and artwork within the research findings to fully honor each participants’ view.
MYTHOLOGY AND TECHNOLOGY IN HOLISTIC EDUCATION 56
CHAPTER IV
FINDINGS/ CYCLE 3
My experience of the three-fold learning process has led me to believe that the process can be undertaken with intention or arise naturally as an aspect embedded in the nature of the universe itself. In the case of my intuitive inquiry, I experienced an initial stage of Cycle 3 research findings, which I refer to in this chapter as open intake, without intention. Several weeks later I began my research stage of incorporating digital media and Journey of the Universe alongside the Live Education! fifth-grade curriculum, only to discover that it was in fact step 1) open intake of learning for my children. In this chapter I use the triad of terms utilized by Enki
Education for the three-fold learning process: 1) open intake, 2) sleep/digestion, 3) skill/mastery.
Following each embodied writing is an indication of which of Moore’s basic elements associated with soul pertain to that moment as well as an identification of Hart’s gateways to knowing or inquiry, if present (Moore’s elements of soul and Hart’s gateways are defined under data collection in Chapter III Methodology).
Open Intake
“Earth is the basic curriculum” (Frabel & St. John, 2003, p. 99) writes Mary Evelyn
Tucker. The warm ocean breezes caress my skin and ruffle my hair as I sit alone on the balcony that has become a familiar yearly retreat. The sunlight is hot on my back, but not too hot. I cross my legs at the ankle and elevate them on the outdoor table. My mind and my body feel relaxed.
My notebook and pen seem to request engagement. Each breath is a co-mingling of Pacific air and words from Teilhard in the 21st Century: The Emerging Spirit of Earth. “The narrative story of evolution provides the most comprehensive context for any curriculum, especially for an understanding of world history, literature, and religion” (Frabel & St. John, 2003, p. 99). MYTHOLOGY AND TECHNOLOGY IN HOLISTIC EDUCATION 57
Moore’s elements of soul: Nature, Poetics and Metaphor
Hart’s gateway to knowing or inquiry: Embodiment
I hear the celebratory voices and laughter of birthday revelers on the balcony below. The screen door is the only barrier between me and whatever the night has to offer. The song of the waves is just beyond my neighbors’ chatter, and from the other room drifts the low buzz of television commentary narrating a surfing competition recorded earlier today. The lamp casts a soft glow onto the pages of my open book. I read while the activities continue beyond the periphery of my own space. First a man, and then a woman sings and plays guitar. The woman’s voice is especially passionate and beautiful, and I’m engaged in her expression of emotion at this moment, though I cannot make out many of her words. Teilhard felt that the evolutionary process is in one of its most significant transitions. “As the movement of human affairs enters the supreme transformation experience toward its final convergence a new intensity of psychic effort is required” (Frabel & St. John, 2003, p. 61). Berry writes about the human struggling with identity now more than ever; that no model exists from past cultures. “Only when science and its associated technologies take on this activating role in following and fostering the spontaneities of nature will science have discovered its true identity” (Frabel & St. John, 2003, p. 71).
Moore’s elements of soul: Spirituality, Service, Life’s Work
Hart’s gateway to knowing/inquiry: Beauty
The day is early. The sand is cool beneath my bare feet yet already the children are at play in the rhythm of the waves. This is what we come for. As of yet, no other landscape has invoked the depth of immersive play in my son as that of the sand and surf. A small crab MYTHOLOGY AND TECHNOLOGY IN HOLISTIC EDUCATION 58 emerges from its hole in the sand and just as quickly retreats. I anticipate the cold water enveloping me later when the heat of the sun reaches the beach. I’ll kick down and swim with the humuhumunukunukuapuaa and yellow tangs. One inner image has been constant for me throughout the fall season: swimming under water. I’m comfortable there. I was a mermaid in my childhood. Now as an adult, at play with my children, I may be the shark, or I may be the prey. Today I’ll swim alone under the waves.
Moore’s elements of soul: Home and Family, Poetics and Metaphor, Spirituality, Nature
Hart’s gateway to knowing/inquiry: Imagination, Embodiment
One week later: I’ve traced the lineage of Thomas Berry’s essay The New Story to the
Journey of the Universe film.
Moore’s elements of soul: Life’s Work, Learning for Learning’s Sake
Open Intake for my Children
“Lay on your mat.” My dog has successfully caught every piece of tossed popcorn, and I want to enjoy my own snack in peace. The blanket feels wonderfully cozy to me after coming in from a dog walk in the gusting north wind. I settle in, my children nestled beside me, to watch the Journey of the Universe film. I’ve seen it once recently, with my husband. I feel confident that my son will enjoy the film because he loves to learn about space. Brian Swimme begins his narration:
Many of the world’s greatest stories begin with a journey, a quest to answer life’s most
intimate questions. Where do we come from? Why are we here? From the dawn of time,
all cultures have created stories to help explain the ultimate nature of things, and perhaps
a new story is emerging in our time. One grounded in contemporary science and yet MYTHOLOGY AND TECHNOLOGY IN HOLISTIC EDUCATION 59
nourished by the ancient religious wisdom of our planet. What if the universe, even the
earth itself, has its own unique story to tell? One in which we play a profound role?
(Journey of the Universe film, 2011)
Moore’s elements of soul: Home and Family, Poetics and Metaphor, Spirituality
Hart’s gateway to knowing/inquiry: Empathy (my children and I resonate with others and experience interconnection through our own knowing of the mythologies of ancient civilizations)
I’m sitting between my children at their school table. I have my laptop, and they each have an iPad with a newly added keyboard. Both children have used the iPads in small time durations (20-40 minutes) once or twice a week for a couple of years to watch a NASA video or explore a health app, star constellation app, or more recently, Google Earth. We’ve also used the iPads for the Scratch Jr. programming app and for Lego EV3 and Lego Boost programming. In the past, both children have wandered onto shopping sites if left unsupervised or would use the iPads without permission, so only my husband and I know the security code to open each device.
A feeling of burden washes over me as I type in the code for each of our three separate devices.
It is our first day using OneNote. The WIFI does not work as quickly in our school space as it does in other parts of the house. I feel tension gathering between my shoulder blades as I wait for
OneNote to sync the newly added sections and pages between the three devices. The children’s voices express impatience. I didn’t anticipate this intense contraction when I observed the children proudly carrying their “new” iPads with keyboards up the steps to our school space earlier this morning. I announce that we will spend only one hour on this, and then we will move on to something else.
Moore’s elements of soul: Home and Family, Service, Life’s Work MYTHOLOGY AND TECHNOLOGY IN HOLISTIC EDUCATION 60
I’m sitting between my children at their school table. I have my laptop, and they each have their hands hovering over their own keyboard, typing into our shared OneNote project. I scroll through the images and brief descriptions that my children and I have compiled as a summary of key historical contributors to the unfolding universe story. I enjoy the art images that portray the historical figures of the past, especially Edwin Hubble’s picture with his pipe. I’m reminded of my maternal grandfather, Papa, enjoying his pipe on the back porch during the muggy summer evenings in Missouri. I can almost hear the cicadas singing. I review the page dedicated to Chapter 2 Galaxies Forming. We’ve collected some beautiful images that begin to orient us within our own galaxy. No ideas come to me for visual orientation of our place in space that would be more effective than the images we’ve collected from the internet. I feel that any attempt to accurately draw these images would have been extremely contracting.
Moore’s elements of soul: Friendship, Art, Learning for Learning’s Sake
Hart’s gateway to knowing/inquiry: Beauty
Written by my eleven-year-old son in OneNote: The center of things: Humans like to orient themselves by determining the center of things. This is seen in sacred cities as the center, the previous notion the Earth was the center which then changed to the sun as the center.
Through science, we have come to realize that there is not one center, but millions! This is compared to raisin bread rising where each raisin is the center with everything else expanding away from it. The Milky Way galaxy is one of several dozen galaxies revolving around each other (picture the cookies orbiting around each other). This system (cookies) moves around the
Virgo Cluster of galaxies, along with other groups. This entire system is called the Virgo MYTHOLOGY AND TECHNOLOGY IN HOLISTIC EDUCATION 61
Supercluster. Science shows that the Virgo Supercluster is at the very center of the cosmic expansion. There are also other superclusters at the very center of the cosmic expansion (like the raisins in the bread).
The Milky Way is a spiral. The spiral structure enables it to continue making stars.
Moore’s elements of soul: Poetics and Metaphor, Nature, Learning for Learning’s Sake
Hart’s gateway to knowing/inquiry: Imagination
Written by my nine-year-old daughter in OneNote: I believe that there’s no city that’s the middle of the universe. And I like that Brain Swimme and Mary Evelyn Tucker talked about an object to explain whatever it is, like the raisin bread which explained the galaxies moving away from each other.
Moore’s elements of soul: Friendship, Spirituality, Nature
In Journey’s Chapter 1 Beginning of the Universe, Swimme and Tucker describe the transformation that a proton and neutron undergo in order to bond. “The proton and the neutron each give over part of their mass, which becomes a flash of light released into the universe. Who could have imagined this?” (Swimme & Tucker, 2011, p. 8). As my children and I paint this moment of creation, I contemplate the flash of light that begins many ancient creation stories as well as this new story based in the science of our time.
Moore’s elements of soul: Poetics and Metaphor, Spirituality, Art
Hart’s gateway to knowing/inquiry: Contemplation
MYTHOLOGY AND TECHNOLOGY IN HOLISTIC EDUCATION 62
daughter, age nine son, age eleven myself, age forty-one watercolor on paper
As a child, I was considered a good student. I was very obedient, and this very nature provided a drive to learn the material presented to me. There are many synonyms for obedient that match up with my inner feelings toward the various school subjects I encountered as a child.
In art class, I was devoted. In math class I was respectful, and in history class I was compliant. In science class I was subservient. I often struggled in science to achieve my desired high grade because many areas of science held no meaningful connection for me to other areas of my knowledge. Connecting the elements to the stars during the study of Journey of the Universe has provided a new context of meaning for me. What a revelation!
Moore’s elements of soul: Poetics and Metaphor, Art MYTHOLOGY AND TECHNOLOGY IN HOLISTIC EDUCATION 63
We are gathered together at the center of
our circle rug, pressing close, and closer,
generating heat. We are hydrogen nuclei,
then we are so close to each other,
generating even more heat, we transform
into helium! Our fusion releases energy so
that we expand outward, avoiding collapse.
Again, gravity brings us together, closer,
hotter, until we transform into carbon.
Expansion occurs once again, a noticeable
cooling, but gravity is bringing us in,
closer, closer, hotter. Our cheeks are pink,
and then we reach the billion-degree
temperature necessary and we fuse into
oxygen. The same process transforms us
into silicon and on through the heavier
elements until we become iron. With only
iron in our core, there is nothing left to do
but implode inward, and then explode into
a supernova!
Hart’s gateway to knowing/inquiry:
Imagination, Embodiment repurposed water color paintings, paper collage
MYTHOLOGY AND TECHNOLOGY IN HOLISTIC EDUCATION 64
Supernova explosions: repurposed watercolor paintings
“The supernova is the most spectacular display of destruction and creation in the universe. What are we to make of this, as our very existence – indeed, the very existence of life – depends upon it?” (Swimme & Tucker, 2011, p. 34), from Chapter 3 The Emanating Brilliance of Stars. MYTHOLOGY AND TECHNOLOGY IN HOLISTIC EDUCATION 65
“He shouldn’t be touching the cave walls!” both of my children proclaim as we watch the film clip of Brian Swimme narrating about the evolution of eyes from inside Pythagoras’s cave on the Greek island of Samos. I’ve already concluded that this cannot be the full Cycle 3 research period of my intuitive inquiry because I have become aware of additional work to be done on my literature review. I realized a few days ago that my literature review is following the three-fold learning process. An intuitive inquiry has distinct cycles. Cycle 2 lenses should be identified before beginning the Cycle 3 research. There’s no way I’m going to halt our homeschool study of Journey of the Universe entirely so we will carry on with the book chapters and corresponding film clips as arranged in the Coursera online course by Yale University. I’ve enjoyed doing the Coursera lessons myself in advance, and then I like to share with my children the clips and child accessible content that corresponds with each book chapter. I’m not worried about the change. I guess my research is destined to be a three-fold-learning process too! I answer my children “Yes, I noticed that. Maybe touching the walls is not an issue since that cave is already open to the air.”
Moore’s elements of soul: Learning for Learning’s Sake
Sleep/Digestion
I’m watching the little white lamb that my daughter was just holding rejoin its mother.
“Baa!” The bleating of sheep and lambs momentarily separated (for petting of the babies!) is an intense auditory experience. “Baa!” As mothers and babies rejoin, a more neutral level of sound returns to the barnyard. Standing in the sunshine at the local biodynamic farm is a blessing on this late February morning. I came to the farm for my weekly milk pickup and have delighted in holding one of the early pre-spring arrivals. The newborn lambs find their places in the hay. A MYTHOLOGY AND TECHNOLOGY IN HOLISTIC EDUCATION 66 mother cow, who has also recently given birth, grazes nearby. I can feel a small smile on my lips as my gaze moves from animal to animal. I’m on the opposite side of the fence, observing alongside the farm’s co-founder. We watch the cow graze nearer to the little white lamb, enjoying the hay. The cow is right beside the lamb, grazing, and she starts to lean over the lamb, happily grazing. Will the foot step forward and crush the baby? The co-founder acknowledges that an accident could happen. I feel engaged in the near-death-experience of the little lamb, who is oblivious to the danger. The co-founder gathers an armful of hay and tosses it strategically to the cow, who steps toward the food-offering, and away from the lamb. The danger has passed.
I reflect on Kelly’s writing
about humanity as engaged in
a collective near-death-
experience in our current
moment. My observation of
the lamb and cow illuminated
the power of nature to bring
forward many experiences of
the archetypal-nature of
reality.
Moore’s elements of soul: Spirituality, Nature
Hart’s gateway to knowing/inquiry: Empathy
MYTHOLOGY AND TECHNOLOGY IN HOLISTIC EDUCATION 67
I’m gathered at the breakfast table with my family. “Last night I dreamed that…,” I share.
“Oh!” exclaims my daughter, “I dreamed…”. My son and husband might also have a dream to share, if not today, then soon. This is not an uncommon breakfast conversation.
Moore’s elements of soul: Home and Family, Friendship, Dream
Skill/Mastery
“How can people not have known that longer?” my daughter exclaims, her nine-year-old voice ringing out in genuine amazement. It is the first day of revisiting Journey of the Universe.
The scent of candle smoke hangs in the air between us as we move away from the familiar nest of sofa and chairs. I turn my head to take in her body movements: slender arms raised in gesture, head thrust slightly forward, eyes open wide and lips agape, showing off a mouthful of gaps amongst her incoming teeth. Moments earlier the three of us had brought our story ritual to a close. This first day invited a short reading since I had felt an inner tug, partly in my belly, somewhat like an emptiness in the back of my throat, alerting me to the importance of the timeline of human knowledge between the sixteenth and twentieth centuries.
Moore’s elements of soul: Home and Family, Spirituality
Hart’s gateway to knowing/inquiry: Embodiment
I move with my children to our school tables and chalkboard. Despite the early morning frost, spring is discernable in the warmth of the mid-morning sun streaming in through the glass door. Our daily learning rests with me, as both mother and teacher. Today we came together on our circular rug to reawaken spring songs from earlier years and warm up our recorders with MYTHOLOGY AND TECHNOLOGY IN HOLISTIC EDUCATION 68 body heat and breath after a year-long hiatus. A sense of ease fills my core as I pick up the chalk.
“Let us recall Journey of the Universe from yesterday.” The children’s voices ring out with:
“We are in the story.”
“This story brings attention to each individual”.
“It’s like everyone is the main character.”
“Everyone from all of time is in the story.”
“It is miraculous that we are a part of this planet.”
“It’s crazy the way humans evolved the way we did, as opposed to being huge
towering slugs or fish with human hands.”
Calendar time has been a recent companion to me, whispering inside my head, reminding me to
“do this, do that.” I quieted that voice yesterday when I found the natural stopping place.
Moore’s elements of soul: Home and Family, Friendship, Poetics and Metaphor, Life’s Work
Hart’s gateway to knowing/inquiry: Contemplation
“That which is given up unwillingly by submission becomes the source of defiance” is a proverb found written on the clay tablets from Akkad and Sumer circa 2000 BC (Bischof, 2006, p. 43). In between the first and third stages of our learning cycle with Journey of the Universe, my children and I studied Ancient Mesopotamia. This proverb continues to catch my attention. It has taken me a long time to become aware of and then start to heal the wound of submission.
Submission to the authority figure. Submission to the perceived authority figure.
Thomas Moore writes in Chapter 6 Care of the Soul in Education in The International
Handbook of Holistic Education that sado-masochistic situations are “archetypal, deeply buried MYTHOLOGY AND TECHNOLOGY IN HOLISTIC EDUCATION 69 in the process of teaching/learning itself” (Miller et al., 2019, p. 55) and holistic educators are not immune to the situation.
A teacher has to deal with this inherent tendency to dominate the student, no matter how
subtle that domination may be. One way is to help the student teach himself, become an
independent learner and go off in his own directions. Then the teacher and student remain
whole in themselves, not split into a single pattern of dominator-subject. A certain degree
of strength and influence on the part of the teacher is necessary, but there is a line that
should not be crossed, where the student loses his power and can no longer be an
independent and free learner. (Miller et al., 2019, p. 55)
I became aware of my wound of submission right around the time I began my graduate studies. It feels like it is healing, but it still sometimes breaks open a bit. I have to be careful.
I have become entirely unable to make my children do things they don’t want to do. That’s what
I notice most about my own healing process.
Moore’s elements of soul: Learning for Learning’s Sake, Home and Family, Friendship
Hart’s gateway to knowing/inquiry: Contemplation
What archetype am I experiencing now? I’m tired. I know that it is the return to greater physicality that brings this cloud of fatigue to my whole being. It is always this way when I take a break from physical fitness and then return to it. For me, this return to physicality is a necessity to reach the third stage of the hero’s journey (separation, initiation, return). I had no idea how little I knew about qualitative research and academic writing when I approached this study.
Entering the unknown terrain of academic writing was my symbolic entry into the land of the unknown (separation), or as it is sometimes described, a descent into hell. Raucous laughter MYTHOLOGY AND TECHNOLOGY IN HOLISTIC EDUCATION 70 resounds silently within me as I reflect because the phrase “descent into hell” so appropriately captures the psychological hardship I experienced in the fall.
When GIFTLearning faculty member Hilary Leighton led a webinar in the autumn of
2018 about heuristic inquiry and associated it with the hero’s journey, I knew that it was just such a journey that I had begun. Very close to this time, my inner trickster had become present in full force. I’m well acquainted with the trickster, both from Beth Sutton’s revelatory pairing of trickster tales with modern sages in Enki Education Grade Two and from my graduate studies with Elaine Decker, who teaches a course entitled “The Hermeneutics of Humor.” In the fall, I acknowledged my trickster and opened myself up to what would please that mischievous force.
I’ve learned now that the trickster, too, can have a part to play in the development of consciousness.
The trickster figure taps on the rigid shell of the ego, cracking apart, as it were, the
ordered structures of life in order to open us to the living reality of the larger psyche. The
trickster disrupts and sabotages that it might move consciousness into a fuller awareness
of the transrational direction of life beyond the control of reason and personal willpower.
(Le Grice, 2016, p. 64)
It was the archetype of the trickster that guided me to give up a certain level of physicality as I endeavored in the task of writing this thesis. Now, as I attempt to find my way towards the path of return (new identity), I feel called back to a deeper sense of embodiment. For me, this necessitates a return to greater physicality. I know from many years of direct experience that getting my blood and breath flowing (Sutton, 2005) integrates my mind and body in a way that allows my sense of embodiment to deepen. MYTHOLOGY AND TECHNOLOGY IN HOLISTIC EDUCATION 71
I sit tucked into my bed at 7:52pm. I struggled to be fully present during our school time today. I experience this as a paradox; seeking embodiment leads to a numbing of my awareness.
I’ve been perplexed about how to create the timeline for our Journey study, yet I sense its importance as a visual orientation of our place in time and space. This puzzlement is interrupting the three-fold learning process that my children and I are used to each day (main lesson, natural sleep, recall the next day and then skill/mastery often in the form of both writing and artwork).
As we’ve moved forward through additional chapters, I noticed that I’d like the timeline to visually orient our prior learning as well as the new learning from this study. My son and I decided today that we’d enjoy working on one timeline together instead of each doing our own.
Collaboration has been underutilized in our learning community. My daughter agreed. The children are tired too. We’re coming out of last week’s birthday and local spring break week.
Tons of sugar. We need our rhythm. We need spring songs together. I let that fall through today.
Moore’s elements of soul: Learning for Learning’s Sake
Hart’s gateway to knowing/inquiry: Contemplation
As a holistic educator and parent, I spend the majority of my waking hours in direct or peripheral observation of children at play. “Play is the modus operandi of learning – the way to knowledge, to intimacy, and to relationships with the world and the people in it” (Luvmour B.,
2006, p. 24). I’m filled with delight when I realize that Journey’s Chapter 5 Life’s Emergence is directly observable via this morning’s play:
Written by my eleven-year-old son in OneNote: A living cell has to make decisions about what molecules to let in and what molecules to keep out, but still sometimes a cell will make mistakes. The cell is just like some castles. The main thing some castles do is let your friends in MYTHOLOGY AND TECHNOLOGY IN HOLISTIC EDUCATION 72 and keep your enemies out. Let’s also use the American Girl doll’s new apartment as an example. The apartment lets in the American Girl dolls, me, and my sister. Sometimes the apartment makes mistakes, because it sometimes lets in Katie (our dog). When Katie gets into the apartment, she makes everything chaos. That is what happens when unwanted molecules get inside of the cell. The outside of a cell is called the membrane.
Moore’s elements of soul: Home and Family, Poetics and Metaphor, Nature
Hart’s gateway to knowing/inquiry: Imagination
“With each passing decade, the life process is increasingly affected by the influence of human consciousness. Perhaps human consciousness has a much larger significance within evolution than earlier philosophers could imagine.” (Swimme & Tucker, 2011, p. 66). I ponder these words from Journey’s Chapter 6 Living and Dying.
Hart’s gateway to knowing/inquiry: Contemplation
Everything is contained within the story of the universe. I know this on a new level. My cheek is against my pillow, and my body is tired once again from my return to physicality. I know from past experience that the only way to disperse the fog of this profound physical fatigue is to rest, or better yet, to sleep. The afternoon coffee continues to activate my brain, so I tune into the sensations of my body and open to the stream of images pervading my mind: A spiral notebook lies open; 14x17 inches. My hands are creating the timeline, and it will need three pages, not two. No wonder I couldn’t make the timeline this week. I’m struggling each day for ways to nourish my youngest child’s soul against the “adult-oriented,” in the words of my daughter, description of the universe’s beginnings. Yes, the difference in perception of the nine- MYTHOLOGY AND TECHNOLOGY IN HOLISTIC EDUCATION 73 year-old child and the eleven-year-old child has been apparent. This difference in attitude is taking its toll on our learning community. Images continue to unfold in my mind’s eye. I can use the roll of white paper for the longer timeline. How many pages? It looks like a lot. I know that
I’ll be able to move forward with creating the timeline in the physical world tomorrow.
Moore’s elements of soul: Art, Service
Hart’s gateway to knowing/inquiry: Imagination (opening to the images for the timeline as they unfold in my imagination to reach a solution for my dilemma)
But what of death? Death presents us with one of the most fundamental
challenges to the human spirit….
We pay respects in memorials for the dead and in visits to ancestral graves. These
occasions draw us together in the presence of suffering and loss, assuaging personal grief
and channeling it into a shared communal experience. But they do more than this.
Such rituals often situate individual death in relation to the great cycles of nature.
They place us within the vast community of the living and the dead and in so doing we
enter into the processes that nurture future life. (Swimme & Tucker, 2011, p. 69)
I’m reflecting on Chapter 6 Living and Dying and thinking about my niece and nephew’s father, who is expected to pass from this world soon. Through each month since his terminal diagnosis, I have been acutely aware of nature’s progression through the seasons. Now a full year has passed, and the new growth of spring surrounds me. The sun is warm on my face as I kneel on the moist earth. I already have a blister on my hand from yesterday’s weeding extravaganza behind the new fence. MYTHOLOGY AND TECHNOLOGY IN HOLISTIC EDUCATION 74
Death is a familiar subject in my family of four. My husband is a general surgeon, so when we ask about his day at work or about what happened between his sudden departure from us and his return, death may be included in his answer. I work the hand-weeder into the soil from multiple directions and try to reposition my grip on the handle. Beyond the fence, the ground looks reasonably weed-free, and I feel inspired as I tackle the stretch before me. There is no way
I’ll finish today or even this month. I’ve never been out in April before, but I know that the weeds that came in the grass seed or were disturbed in the soil are growing each day and keeping out the grass. Monster weeds, that’s what these are.
In years past, we occasionally sprayed the weeds. I reflect on two-and-a-half-years of once-a-week farm chores at the local biodynamic farm. During that time, I experienced a shift in my perception. I became more aware of which actions are life-generating for “the farm as “an individuality” or a self-contained organism,” (Steiner, 2005, p. 12) and this knowledge has carried over into my actions at home. For a while, I felt as though I was standing with one foot in the realm of modern consciousness, into which I’d been deeply enculturated, and the other foot in the realm of new possibilities. Now I’m wandering in that new land and what I notice is a call towards collaboration. There is also an invitation to slow down and notice. I need to get more hand-tools so that my children and I can join in this endeavor together; no need to ask their young hands to engage in this task without the proper tool.
The morning is absolutely gorgeous. In fact, the weather is the most beautiful it’s been this spring. As I continue to hold both life and death in my heart, I listen as the western meadowlarks sound their repeated song nearby. I’m reminded of how weeding this land several springs ago first brought me into an awareness of embodiment, and I tried to describe the experience in writing during an Enki Education teacher training course. It’s funny to think that MYTHOLOGY AND TECHNOLOGY IN HOLISTIC EDUCATION 75 these weeds repeatedly get more credit for nurturing my feeling of connection with the earth than my long daily dog walks or the garden. Hopefully not forever though! I’m no longer sure who is benefiting more from incorporating the universe story as a new mythology into our studies: myself, the children, or the hawks who will be able to better spot the mice soon. I’ve been continuing with the next Coursera course (Journey Conversations: Weaving Knowledge and
Action, which does not developmentally appeal to either of my children), and I feel a more profound sense of place as well as a new intensity to steward this land I call home.
Moore’s elements of soul: Spirituality, Nature, Service, Life’s Work
Hart’s gateway to knowing/inquiry: Contemplation, Empathy, Beauty, Embodiment
Written by my nine-year-old daughter in OneNote: The only thing that I don’t like about this study unit is that it talks about microbes a lot and I am very sensitive to the thought of how much microbes are killed every second.
Moore’s elements of soul: Nature
Hart’s gateway to knowing/inquiry: Empathy
son, age 11, beeswax crayon on paper daughter, age 9, beeswax crayon on paper
MYTHOLOGY AND TECHNOLOGY IN HOLISTIC EDUCATION 76
My children explore evolution through artwork: my son’s drawing is of the emergence of multi- cellular organisms (Journey’s Chapter 5 Life’s Emergence). My daughter chooses to draw her favorite wild cat alone after wrestling with the fact that an evolutionary-timeline-drawing would trace the sand cat back to the shrew-like creature believed to be the earliest mammal (Journey’s
Chapter 7 The Passion of Animals).
Moore’s elements of soul: Art
We do not want or need to just catalogue our life; we need to enter it. In so doing, we are
transformed.
-Tobin Hart, International Handbook of Holistic Education
I’ve realized that it is time for the third stage of the learning process to be brought to a close. I sense the restlessness of my own soul and the children’s souls to get on to Ancient Egypt and then onto our summer studies of Greek mythology and botany. In this case, step 3 will suffice with “skill” and will move closer to mastery over time, in the triphasic dialectic of the spiral. I’ll reread the remaining chapters (8: The Origin of the Human, 9: Becoming a Planetary
Presence, 10: Rethinking Matter and Time, 11: Emerging Earth Community), but I don’t think we will spend much time expanding our learning of the content.
Metaphorically speaking, I feel like I put the butterfly in the kill jar. Not for my son, who often wore the expression of a dreamy smile when I read aloud from Journey of the Universe
(2011). My daughter has not been happy though. She said there are no gods in this story. I’ve released the metaphorical butterfly now. The wings are twitching. My intuition tells me that this butterfly has every chance to recover. This study cannot be rushed.
Moore’s elements of soul: Poetics and Metaphor, Spirituality, Learning for Learning’s Sake MYTHOLOGY AND TECHNOLOGY IN HOLISTIC EDUCATION 77
Hart’s gateway to knowing/inquiry: Empathy
My throat is aching, and the tears spring up. I am deliberately drawing a deeper breath, and then another. I have noticed that the writing about bringing the third stage of the learning process to a close already encompasses the answer: “I sense the restlessness of my own soul and the children’s souls to get on to Ancient Egypt and then onto our summer studies of Greek mythology and botany.” What does the soul want? That really is the central question.
Earlier tonight I was gathered at the dinner table with my husband and children. Through conversation, I realized that my son no longer feels that the name “Mother Earth” is applicable.
“Maybe Mother Nature,” he said. I’ve been deeply immersed in the Journey conversation series available on the website and also presented in the second Coursera course. I notice that I’m having a completely different experience than my children. I see that I have incorporated my own form of digital media into this study by utilizing the online courses. I remain committed to the research and know that this thesis is going to contain a fractal of the whole. I think of
Rosemarie Anderson’s words:
“Beloveds” are not only intimates but those occurrences, places, and curiosities in life
that claim a person before he even knows them well. This yearning to understand is Eros
or love in pure form because the intuitive inquirer wants to know his beloved topic fully.
(Anderson & Braud, 2011, p. 16)
Moore’s elements of soul: Life’s Work
I’ve “rediscovered” that Awareness Through the Body (Marti & Sala, 2006) has an evolution chapter, and I would like to bring this study to a close in a way that feels complete for MYTHOLOGY AND TECHNOLOGY IN HOLISTIC EDUCATION 78 all of us. I guide my children through the experience that a colleague guided me through about a year ago. The guided experience feels like a perfect reflection of Journey’s Chapter 8 The Origin of the Human, and a healthy way to close our universe story exploration.
Written by my nine-year-old daughter on notebook paper: At the beginning my mom told my brother and I to think of a muscle and make the muscle tremble and send that tremble to the other muscles in my body. The first movement that we were supposed to do was the electron.
Trying the moves of the electron was interesting, but I personally felt helpless because it was pretty hard to move. The second activity, which was the amoeba, was the same as the first one for me because I could barely move. The third one was more interesting than the first two because of the fact that I could move more easily. The fourth one was a fish which was odd and entertaining. The snake was the same as the fish because both of them are spine animals. The lizard was fun because I could climb over things easier than the first five. The mammal felt normal because I crawl on my hands and knees all the time. The monkey felt like a mammal with some human in it (this feeling is pretty hard to explain). The ape felt like a half-human and half- mammal animal. The Neanderthal was three-fourths human and one-fourth mammal animal.
Last but not least was the homo sapien, which of course is what we are today.
Written by my eleven-year-old son on notebook paper: The vibration for being an electron started in my shoulder and spread through my body. It was a combination of fun, relaxing, and enjoyable. Next was the amoeba, which felt almost the same as the election. Then it was the multi-cellular organism, and my sister and I latched onto each other. As we moved together, I felt like my sister wanted to get away from me, so I moved with her. Then came the fish. My sister and I “swam” around on the rug. The snake was about the same as the fish. Next was the lizard, during which my sister sat on me most of the time, so I didn’t experience MYTHOLOGY AND TECHNOLOGY IN HOLISTIC EDUCATION 79 crawling in this way. Finally came the mammal, where my sister and I had a fight, and she seemed to be a cat. Then two of my least favorite animals: the monkey and ape. I don’t know why; I’ve just never liked them. Then the Neanderthal: all I had to do was walk around with very bad posture. Finally, the Homo Sapien, or human, and I could do whatever I wanted.
Moore’s elements of soul: Nature
Hart’s gateway to knowing/inquiry: Embodiment
As I reflect on the overwhelm of emotion that engulfed me several days ago, I can hear the wise words of Enki Education developer Beth Sutton. “Read the stories first before sharing them with your children,” she always advises. I did read the Enki stories first, and I never experienced an emotional block that I had to work through before moving forward. I realize now that the wall I came up against the other night was of the nature Beth cautioned about. The conversation at the dinner table was simply a reflection of each child’s stage of development and was utterly appropriate. I realize that the universe story did not rob my child of the concept of
Mother Earth, my child is merely developing. I have been deeply engaged in the depth of sharing contained in the Journey conversation series, and that experience has brought a different lived experience to me. The different stages of development and structures of consciousness in my small learning community have been a reminder of the importance of contemplation as a gateway to knowing.
Hart’s gateway to knowing/inquiry: Contemplation
Written by my nine-year-old daughter on notebook paper: On 4/16/2019 my mom said that we’re going outside to pick up trash, so we went around the neighborhood and this is what MYTHOLOGY AND TECHNOLOGY IN HOLISTIC EDUCATION 80 we found: a glass bottle, some underwear, Styrofoam, paper, and plastic bags. When we were coming back from the big cul-de-sac, it started getting windy, the big cul-de-sac had this small valley and there was a lot of trash in that valley! When we were heading back, I wanted to go into the field behind our house because I knew of some trash there. I must say that I probably missed some pieces!
Written by my eleven-year-old son on notebook paper: I am getting my gloves on and going outside to pick up trash around the neighborhood using a black trash bag. First, we go across the street to look for some trash and come across the bones of a fox that died there last summer. I bring the fox skull into the garage. We go around the circle and the big cul-de-sac.
There is more trash than I thought there would be. The bag is heavier after my sister throws a glass bottle from the field into it. Near the end of our excursion, the trash bag is getting very heavy. From the lower part of the circle, I can see my sister riding her bike, but she should be cleaning up trash from the field.
Moore’s elements of soul: Home and Family, Nature, Service
Our Journey of the Universe book is bound, and we are ready to learn about ancient
Egypt. I think we will refer to our historical-period timeline with each new study we undertake and perhaps add to it. I delight in the fact that I can point to Neil Armstrong as the first man to walk on the moon and say, “that was the year Daddy was born.” Next, I can point to Ilya
Prigogine and say, “he won the Nobel prize in chemistry the year I was born, and his work has led to an understanding of self-organizing dynamics.” My children may not understand today what self-organization and emergence in dynamic systems have to do with them, but I believe that one day they will. MYTHOLOGY AND TECHNOLOGY IN HOLISTIC EDUCATION 81
Pictured below are my children on the circle rug with our historical timeline and our evolutionary timeline. Though we are tough to see, in the timeline on the right our family of four is holding a string timeline (created and provided to me by Pille Bunnell and Fleurette Sweeney, faculty at the Graduate Institute for Transformative Learning) that marks the entirety of Earth’s evolution.
(Photo credit for evolutionary timeline: Brad Nichol)
MYTHOLOGY AND TECHNOLOGY IN HOLISTIC EDUCATION 82
CHAPTER V
DISCUSSION
We are at a critical point of transition between the still dominant secular-scientific
worldview and a more integral worldview struggling to take hold.
-Sean Kelly, The Variety of Integral Ecologies: Nature,
Culture, and Knowledge in the Planetary Era, 2017
The discussion chapter of this thesis includes Cycle 4 and 5 of the intuitive inquiry and a summary section. Upon review of and reflection on the intuitive inquiry methodology as presented by Anderson & Braud (2011), I have concluded that formulating research questions regarding the topic is not specified in an intuitive inquiry. This realization is an example of the auspicious bewilderment (Anderson & Braud, 2011, pp. 62-63) identified as a distinctive feature of the methodology. As a living aspect within my study, the research questions moved me
“deeper into the intricacies of the topic” (Anderson & Braud, 2011, p. 63) during my Cycle 3 research, and again during Cycle 5 when I noticed that they remained unanswered. I have incorporated answers to the research questions within Cycle 4 in the comparison of lenses under the concepts of the unseen and our place in time and space.
Cycle 4
In Cycle 4 of an intuitive inquiry, the inquirer refines and transforms the Cycle 2 lenses
“in light of his engagement with the data gathered in Cycle 3. Cycle 2 lenses are modified, removed, rewritten, expanded, etc. – reflecting the researchers more developed and nuanced understanding of the topic at the conclusion of the study” (Anderson & Braud, 2011, p. 53). The detailed elaboration of changes between Cycle 2 and Cycle 4 lenses allows the reader of the inquiry to evaluate the researcher’s transition in the understanding of the topic throughout the MYTHOLOGY AND TECHNOLOGY IN HOLISTIC EDUCATION 83 study. Anderson emphasizes that the purpose of the research is to expand and refine the knowledge of a topic. Significant changes should be anticipated between Cycle 2 and Cycle 4 lenses and elaborated in detail. Intuitive inquiry requires honesty. The nature of this intuitive inquiry consisted of the dialectical three-fold learning process interwoven with the repeating dialectic of the five iterative cycles of the methodology. The Cycle 4 lenses generated at the end of the study are as follows:
Cycle 4 lenses: (a) the potential of the adult/child relationship for a co-evolution of the structures of consciousness, (b) the archetypal dimensions of reality, (c) the universe story as a new cultural mythology, (d) bringing attention and intention to the triphasic pattern of thinking, feeling, willing, (e) building an archetypal vocabulary in service to the soul dimension of life and toward integral ecologies, (f) the role of technology in transformative learning.
The inclusion of three sets of lenses during Cycle 2 is not described in the literature for intuitive inquiry. Nonetheless, Anderson’s requirement of “telling the entire truth about the course of the research project” (Anderson & Braud, 2011, p. 59) necessitates the incorporation of these additional lenses in order to communicate the three-fold learning process that I experienced between the time of initial engagement (Moustakas, 1990) during my graduate coursework and the conclusion of my literature review. The lenses, expressed in the terminology of the three-fold learning process, are as follows:
Open Intake lenses, interpreted from my thesis proposal submitted in December: (a) how technology is influencing the development of children, and therefore the adults they are in relationship with, (b) generational theory, (c) the Fourth Industrial Revolution as context, (d)
Bronfenbrenner’s Bioecological Systems Theory as a theoretical framework, (e) Riane Eisler’s partnership education alongside the Earth Charter to guide 21st century curriculum towards MYTHOLOGY AND TECHNOLOGY IN HOLISTIC EDUCATION 84 systems recognition and value identification for a sustainable Earth-human relationship, (f) the
New Story paradigm, (g) paradigm shift
Sleep/Digestion lenses, taken directly from a literature review draft submitted for review in
January: (a) Journey of the Universe, (b) integral philosophy and spiral dynamics theory, (c) stages of child development through a holistic lens, (d) mythology as care of the soul in education, (e) technology as care of the soul in education, (f) Second Axial Age.
Cycle 2 lenses (Skill/Mastery): (a) archetypal cosmology, (b) the soul dimension of holistic education, (c) integral ecologies, (d) our place in time and space, (e) triphasic pattern, (f) Journey of the Universe, (g) mythology in holistic education, (h) technology in holistic education, and (i) the adult/child relationship.
Comparison of Triphasic Cycle 2 Lenses and Cycle 4 Lenses
I am utilizing a conceptual organization of the lenses to convey the changes between the triphasic Cycle 2 lenses and the Cycle 4 lenses. The embodied experience of sorting the cycle lenses into conceptual categories was like sorting laundry with my children. Loads, or in this case concepts, had to be chosen. Each lens is not limited to a single category. Like articles of clothing, the cycle lenses work well in multiple conceptual categories: advice I often share with my children as we sort the laundry. The organizational schema includes some lenses in more than one category. In some concepts, the lenses have more flow from one to the next than in others because these categorical headings were chosen only to facilitate discussion.
Concept: Adult/Child Relationship
Open intake lens: (a) how technology is influencing the development of children, and therefore the adults they are in relationship with
Sleep/Digestion lens: c) stages of child development through a holistic lens MYTHOLOGY AND TECHNOLOGY IN HOLISTIC EDUCATION 85
Cycle 2 lenses (Skill/Mastery): (b) the soul dimension of holistic education, (g) mythology in holistic education, (h) technology in holistic education, (i) the adult/child relationship
Cycle 4 lenses: (a) the potential of the adult/child relationship for a co-evolution of the structures of consciousness, (b) the archetypal dimensions of reality
This study began with the recognition that the adult/child relationship in our context of exponential-technology-growth is worthy of consideration. The triphasic Cycle 2 lenses show the progression from a focus on technology to looking at the concept holistically, then considering mythology and technology from the view of holistic education where the whole child (body, heart, mind) is recognized as situated in the environment. I can now see how the literature review and the case study description of incorporating the study of Journey of the Universe into the Live
Education! fifth-grade curriculum initially skewed my attention towards the children, though embodied writing captured my experience throughout the Cycle 3 research.
At the outset of the case study research, I was interested in how my children would respond to the incorporation of digital media and Journey alongside the mythology from ancient civilizations. As the inquiry progressed, I began to discern the direct effects of the dialectic nature of the study on my own perceptions. At times I was able to observe my children with clarity, and in other instances, I could only discern my personal meaning-making or lack thereof.
Especially during step 3) skill/mastery of the three-fold learning process, my own experience frequently dominated my sensory awareness. As relayed in Chapter IV Findings, I had gained recognition of my personal development as concurring with the “hero myth” (Le Grice, 2016, p.
43), and I found myself once again in the company of the shadow as I explored my wound of submission to the perceived authority figure. The primary Cycle 4 lens became the potential of the adult/child relationship for a co-evolution of the structures of consciousness. The MYTHOLOGY AND TECHNOLOGY IN HOLISTIC EDUCATION 86 development of both the adult and the child, together in relationship, has been a topic of continual interest to me before and during my graduate studies (Luvmour, J., 2016; Marshak,
2016). I did not realize until the research stage how much developmental potential the case study held for me, as an adult. The Cycle 4 lens of the archetypal dimension of reality pertains to the adult/child relationship because if the adult recognizes the archetypes as existing and valid, this perception will influence the adult’s way of being (with the child) in the world.
Concept: Technology
Open intake lens: (a) how technology is influencing the development of children, and therefore the adults they are in relationship with
Sleep/Digestion lens: (e) technology as care of the soul in education
Cycle 2 lens (Skill/Mastery): (h) technology in holistic education
Cycle 4 lenses: (b) the archetypal dimensions of reality, (f) the role of technology in transformative learning
A catalyst for this study was my contemplation of adolescents and how the exponential growth of technology is influencing their development. Initial research encouraged my reflection on their worldview, which led to a consideration of specific generations. The open intake lens of generational theory reflects the concept of individuals born in a particular time and place as having a shared worldview and perhaps even a shared entelechy, or inner aim. Before this research, my perception of children using smart devices was shaped by various holistic educational resources, which in general recommend limited use. This new consideration of technology as the possible entelechy of the youngest generations opened my mind to new possibilities. The idea of technology as care of the soul, providing nourishment through the recognition of the entelechy, became a consideration in the sleep/digestion lens, yet was reigned MYTHOLOGY AND TECHNOLOGY IN HOLISTIC EDUCATION 87 in as possibly too esoteric to consider within the broad scope of this transdisciplinary study. The
Cycle 2 lens became technology in holistic education.
The primary Cycle 4 lens for the concept of technology is the archetypal dimension of reality. Over the course of this inquiry, I observed my children using multiple technologies that were new to them. The children emanated joy and quick understanding (except during slow
WIFI moments!) and I perceive a different demeanor about them, a sort of embeddedness and assurance that I could detect almost immediately after they received their iPod touches and a limited timeframe to play each day. Tarnas’s research indicates that our present moment in history is most comparable to the period five hundred years ago that was shaped by the rapid spread of the printed book. Printed books allowed the dissemination of ideas and created connections that were previously not possible, just as digital media does today. When considered in light of archetypal cosmology, technology is an essential consideration for those educating with attention to the learner’s entelechy and a holistic worldview.
My perception of technology echoes the view of Klaus Schwab: we stand at a pivotal moment of peril or opportunity. One opportunity is for technology to serve as a tool for community connection from the micro level of the family to the macro level of our global civilization. The peril rests in the hands of today’s adults. Without adult guidance, the four types of intelligence that Schwab emphasizes are unlikely to manifest in full potential in the youngest generations’ (Generation Z and Generation Alpha) use of technology; “We can only meaningfully address these challenges if we mobilize the collective wisdom of our minds, hearts, and souls. To do so, I believe we must adapt, shape and harness the potential of disruption by nurturing and applying” (Schwab, 2016, p. 106) contextual, emotional, inspired (soul), and physical (body) intelligence. Schwab’s words take on new meaning for me after my research as MYTHOLOGY AND TECHNOLOGY IN HOLISTIC EDUCATION 88 he writes about the possibility to flourish in the emergent environment. The adult finds him or herself “standing at the precipice” as reflected in the title of six teachers’ exploration of teaching in our time in the book Teaching in the Fourth Industrial Revolution: Standing at the Precipice
(Doucet et al., 2018). Either we are willing to embrace the time and effort required to navigate
(digital media) with wisdom and care or risk a continuation of the mechanistic view that does not allow an understanding of emergent technologies and how they interrelate with the whole of the earth system.
The secondary Cycle 4 lens is the role of technology in transformative learning.
Transformative learning requires a shift in worldview, and the term is used increasingly today concerning adult development. A standard citation throughout the literature is Dean Elias 1997:
Transformative learning is the expansion of consciousness through the transformation of
basic worldview and specific capacities of the self; transformative learning is facilitated
through consciously directed processes such as appreciatively accessing and receiving the
symbolic contents of the unconscious and critically analyzing underlying premises.
(Transformative Learning, n.d.)
I posit that technology encourages transformative learning by enabling a global worldview and connecting learners and educators who do not share physical proximity yet share a desire to
“open new pathways and inspire transformative action for the flourishing of the Earth community” (Mickey et al., 2017, p. xiv). Through the use of technology, the adult can potentially engage in a more effective life-long learning process while providing ever-expanding wisdom and guidance regarding technology to children in their care.
I was very inspired by Jordan Shapiro’s engagement with technology in relationship with his children as told in his book The New Childhood: Raising Kids to Thrive in a Connected MYTHOLOGY AND TECHNOLOGY IN HOLISTIC EDUCATION 89
World (2018). Shapiro writes that video games are the newest form of narrative and describes playing video games with his children as a way of connecting after school. He describes the virtual world of gaming where players interact as the new sandbox. As a homeschooling parent already immersed with my children throughout the day, I did not find this same dynamic easy to manifest while engaging my new skill of academic writing. However, I can sense my children’s eager excitement for my husband and me to enter their brand-new worlds in Minecraft (available to them only once my perspective shifted during this study). When I do play, my daughter perches at my elbow and guides me through every uncertainty while my son provides advice from nearby as we all interact in the digital environment. My children know that I have plans to delve further into Minecraft and programming Ozobot EVO, Anki Cosmo, and Lego EV3 after this thesis is written. I was impressed with Diana Graber’s cyber civics, as described in Raising
Humans in a Digital World: Helping Kids Build a Healthy Relationship with Technology (2019).
Graber has developed a three-year middle school curriculum in addition to her book that emphasizes a strong foundation of social and emotional skills and then building with the pillars of reputation, screen time, relationships, and privacy. I plan to begin utilizing Graber’s curriculum with my children in the coming months. Shapiro and Graber inspire consideration of the role of technology in transformative learning in both the adult and the child, in relationship.
Concept: Mythology
Open intake lens: (f) the New Story paradigm
Sleep/Digestion lenses: (a) Journey of the Universe, (c) stages of child development through a holistic lens (d) mythology as care of the soul in education
Cycle 2 lenses: (f) Journey of the Universe, (g) mythology in holistic education MYTHOLOGY AND TECHNOLOGY IN HOLISTIC EDUCATION 90
Cycle 4 lenses: (b) the archetypal dimensions of reality, (c) the universe story as a new cultural mythology
My graduate studies introduced the term “New Story” with a focus on the work manifesting at The Findhorn Institute in Scotland. The main website for this work is called The
New Story Hub (The New Story Hub, n.d.). The contributors and content form an interconnected message towards the theme “change the story, change the world.” During the writing of my proposal, my original concept of the New Story as a new cultural mythology became a new cultural narrative instead. “Narrative” is a term more widely accepted today, and I was not finding a basis for claiming the New Story as mythology. I submitted my proposal to the thesis committee, and while awaiting their feedback, I was reading the Live Education! fifth-grade curriculum book Ancient Mesopotamia (Bischof, 2006). I noticed that what seemed to be missing from my proposal was the concept of mythology. I received feedback from my committee to narrow my focus to achieve my desired outcome, and immediately after that, I discovered the methodology of intuitive inquiry. I reengaged Berry’s The New Story essay as my
Cycle 1 text and began exploring the concept of mythology again. I quickly traced the lineage of
Berry’s work, connecting it to Swimme and then Tucker and the most recent evolution of the work as the Journey of the Universe project. The sleep/digestion lenses and then Cycle 2 lenses reflect my focus on Journey and incorporating it into holistic education, specifically with ancient mythology.
The primary Cycle 4 lens for the concept of mythology is the archetypal dimension of reality. The literature supports mythology manifesting in direct relationship to archetypal dynamics throughout human history. After this research, I claim that the relationship is reciprocal in that mythology can also centralize the archetypes in an individual’s awareness. The MYTHOLOGY AND TECHNOLOGY IN HOLISTIC EDUCATION 91 secondary lens, the universe story as a new cultural mythology, arises from the first lens as archetypal dynamics situate our place in time and space (illustrated by Sean Kelly’s figures in
Chapter II Literature Review). Throughout this thesis, there is a reference to both the universe story and Journey of the Universe. Journey is one manifestation of the universe story, so either phrase describes the new cultural mythology. The phrase “the universe story” acknowledges the many expressions that this new cultural mythology might take to appeal to developmental stages in childhood and structures of consciousness throughout the lifespan.
Concept: System
Open intake lens: (d) Bronfenbrenner’s Bioecological Systems Theory as a theoretical framework
Sleep/Digestion lens: (b) integral philosophy and spiral dynamics theory
Cycle 2 lenses: (c) integral ecologies, (e) triphasic pattern, (f) Journey of the Universe,
Cycle 4 lens: (b) the archetypal dimensions of reality (d) bringing attention and intention to the triphasic pattern of thinking, feeling, willing, and (e) building an archetypal vocabulary in service to the soul dimension of life and toward integral ecologies.
The recognition of systems thinking was present from the initial engagement period, yet I found myself without a well-formed vocabulary to express my inner knowing. Enki Education’s emphasis on the “ecosystem of education” (Sutton, 2005) had already provided me with the conviction that everything is interconnected, yet I needed a broader framework for my study.
Bronfenbrenner’s theory of human development has been widely utilized, and his bioecological systems theory incorporating time as well as space seemed like an appropriate framework. In my review of the literature, I began to come across Capra’s name, and I realized that his work was often associated with the new-science paradigm. With my topic entirely situated within the new MYTHOLOGY AND TECHNOLOGY IN HOLISTIC EDUCATION 92 paradigm, The Systems View of Life (Capra & Luisi, 2014) became a foundational text to bridge the transdisciplinary nature of my study.
As mentioned in the introduction to this section, the concepts were identified to facilitate discussion. The Cycle 4 lenses of (b) the archetypal dimensions of reality (d) bringing attention and intention to the triphasic pattern of thinking, feeling, willing, and (e) building an archetypal vocabulary in service to the soul dimension of life and toward integral ecologies were not formulated directly to illustrate the systems concept; what I notice is that a systems view is inherent to these lenses.
Concept: The Unseen
Open intake, Sleep/Digestion, Cycle 2: all lenses
Cycle 4 lenses: all lenses, with a focus on (b) the archetypal dimensions of reality, (d) bringing attention and intention to the triphasic pattern of thinking, feeling, willing, (e) building an archetypal vocabulary in service to the soul dimension of life and toward integral ecologies
The concept of the unseen is central to this study. All of the other concepts and every lens could integrate into this one. The dialectic process of three-fold learning and the cycles of intuitive inquiry provided the necessary containers within which to explore and expand my understanding of the intuitive knowing that catalyzed the study. The triphasic Cycle 2 lenses reflect the three-fold progression of the literature review. Two research questions and three Cycle
4 lenses are discussed concerning this concept:
Research question: Does Journey of the Universe as a new cultural mythology, when studied in relationship with the mythologies of ancient civilizations, invoke numinous wonder in the 8-12- year-old child or in the adult guiding the study? My intention in using the term “numinous wonder” in this question is to refer to Tarnas’s first meaning of wonder as described in the MYTHOLOGY AND TECHNOLOGY IN HOLISTIC EDUCATION 93
Introduction: numinous mystery, with numinous defined by Merriam-Webster as appealing to the higher emotions or the aesthetic sense; spiritual. In essence, my research question inquires if the participants experienced spiritual wonder, or spirituality when studying Journey of the Universe in relationship with the mythologies of ancient civilizations. I did experience numinous wonder, or a spiritual aesthetic, often during my Cycle 3 research. Most notably, I experienced wonder during my day at the farm as the archetypal dynamics present in nature revealed themselves (a moment of which is relayed in the sleep/digestion stage of Chapter IV Findings). I reflected on
Journey’s Chapter 6 Living and Dying in Chapter IV Findings, and then when my children and I began our study of Ancient Egypt, I experienced numinous wonder during our weekday repetition of a verse from the Egyptian Book of the Dead (Bischof, Ancient egypt, 2006). The verse resonated with truth for me about life and death.
Had I further incorporated Natural Learning Relationships (NLR), the work of developmentalists Ba and Josette Luvmour, into my Literature Review, I may have reworked this question early on. Ba Luvmour states that there is “absolutely no need for any parent or educator to concern themselves with these unseen forces. The child’s spiritual potential can be fully realized by meeting the needs of the organizing principle, wisdom, and relationship” (Luvmour
B., 2006, p. 77). NLR refers to the 8-12-year-old child as FeelingBeing. The organizing principle for FeelingBeing is trust, with a secondary organizing principle of reciprocal cooperation. “Wisdom is the medium in which well-being resides” (Luvmour B., 2006, p. 67).
“The essence of existence – of being – is relationship. It is the way we know, the reality we live, the pattern that connects. And the sacred is immanent within those relationships” (Luvmour B.,
2006, p. 76). As I reflect on the insight provided by NLR, I have a snapshot in time of each child in my mind: my 11-year-old-son with a perceptible smile on his face while listening to me read MYTHOLOGY AND TECHNOLOGY IN HOLISTIC EDUCATION 94 aloud from Journey of the Universe (2011), and following the official research stage, my 9-year- old daughter referring to Journey of the Universe as a mythology to justify her current worldview. Did the study invoke numinous wonder for the children? I cannot name specific instances, but I can affirm that their developmental trajectory remains intact. My change in understanding over the course of the study is that I would no longer ask this question.
Research question: What experience(s) of an archetypal dimension of reality does the interweaving of technology, ancient cultural mythologies, and the study of Journey of the
Universe invoke for the participants of the study? In answering this question, I’m also interpreting my Cycle 4 lens (b), the archetypal dimensions of reality. By studying ancient mythologies as outlined in the Enki Education and Live Education! curriculums, the study participants have had repeated exposure to the creation myth, the hero myth, and transformation myth. Tarnas writes that “archetypal cosmology’s foundational concept of archetypal principles can be understood in three different senses” (Tarnas, 2007, p. 86). The archetype of Venus is provided as an example, understood as Mesopotamian Ishtar or Greek Aphrodite on the Homeric level, the metaphysical principle of Eros and the Beautiful on the Platonic level, and the psychological tendency towards beauty, love, and attraction on the Jungian level. Before and during the Cycle 3 research, the participants did not discuss the concept of archetypes directly, yet the repeated exposure to archetypal principles on the Homeric level has established a familiarity that can be connected to the universe story. The flash of light as a commonality in creation mythology and in Journey was discussed by the participants and is depicted in the participant artwork in Chapter IV Findings.
Anderson and Braud (2011) write about archetypal experiences as an aspect of the intuitive mode of knowing they call unconscious, symbolic, and imaginal processes. I credit this MYTHOLOGY AND TECHNOLOGY IN HOLISTIC EDUCATION 95 kind of intuition with catalyzing this study and discuss this further in Cycle 5 in relation to intuitive modes of knowing. I began the investigation without an established familiarity with archetypes as they correlate across Homeric, Platonic, and Jungian levels. As I continued my literature review and initial research into archetypal cosmology, I often felt frustrated by this lack of knowledge. However, I did have a basic familiarity with Jung’s work and the ancient mythologies. As described in Chapter IV Findings, I identified the trickster archetype and the hero mythology as a sensed reality in the fall. I read an account by Le Grice of Joseph
Campbell’s description of “a typical dream image that reflects the individual’s reconnection with the long-submerged child within – that of looking down into the sea and seeing there, strewn on the sea-bed, an assortment of old toys and childhood paraphernalia” (Le Grice, 2016, pp. 43-44).
I recognized the child archetype in my own imaginal processes and reflected on the lack of paraphernalia in my underwater swimming images from the fall. I theorized that perhaps my immersive engagement with my children for the entire duration of their lives had yielded this difference in imagery for me. Later, I came to realize that the psychological hardship I experienced with my lack of knowledge about qualitative research mirrored the description of an encounter with the shadow archetype (Le Grice, 2016, pp. 44-48).
I generated the Cycle 4 lens (e), building an archetypal vocabulary in service to the soul dimension of life and toward integral ecologies, to emphasize the potential within holistic education to connect the concept of archetypal principles over time as described in the Literature
Review. The change from Cycle 2 to this lens is a shift from broad, categorical concepts to a very specific action plan. Building the vocabulary over time and relating new knowledge to what is already known, provides care to the soul, as defined by Thomas Moore in Chapter II.
Additionally, Moore writes: MYTHOLOGY AND TECHNOLOGY IN HOLISTIC EDUCATION 96
Soul-oriented teachers need wisdom rather than information and a strong imagination.
They have to be open to the deepest archetypal thrusts at work in human life and also
focused on the absolutely unique individuals in front of them…. You educate for soul by
giving it the things in life it needs: love, beauty, spirit, pleasure…. You create the
conditions and allow the soul to manifest itself. (Moore, 2005, p. 15)
I perceive Moore’s guidance as aligned with Luvmour’s writing about the child’s spiritual potential being realized by meeting the needs of the organizing principle, wisdom, and relationship (Appendix C). NLR’s developmental sequence leads toward integral consciousness
(Appendix B), a consciousness structure which I perceive as an adjuvant for integral ecologies.
Integral consciousness leading to integral ecologies is further discussed in the concept: earth- human relationship.
The third lens of focus within the concept of the unseen is (d), bringing attention and intention to the triphasic pattern of thinking, feeling, willing. Thinking, feeling, willing is the triad of terms identified by Steve McIntosh (2007) as the primary lines that consciousness is organized around before he became aware of Hinduism and Theosophy as supporters of the same three aspects. Again, the shift from Cycle 2 lenses to this lens is a shift from concept to action thinking. As a reader of Steiner and Waldorf education curriculum, thinking, feeling, and willing is familiar to me. I specified bringing attention and intention to the triphasic pattern of thinking, feeling, willing as a Cycle 4 lens because I believe it warrants conscious attention from the adult concerning their own development and the development of the child. If this triad of terms is held consciously for the child throughout childhood, and even throughout adult life if an individual can identify which line of consciousness is taking center stage, it has potential to act as a catalyst for transformative learning and the evolution of consciousness. MYTHOLOGY AND TECHNOLOGY IN HOLISTIC EDUCATION 97
Concept: Our Place in Time and Space
Open intake lenses: (c) the Fourth Industrial Revolution as context, (g) paradigm shift
Sleep/Digestion lenses: (b) Integral philosophy and spiral dynamics theory (f) Second Axial Age
Cycle 2 lenses: (d) our place in time and space, (e) triphasic pattern, (f) Journey of the Universe,
Cycle 4 lenses: (b) the archetypal dimensions of reality, (c) the universe story as a new cultural mythology
In my initial engagement with The New Story essay (Berry, 2003), I was intrigued by
Berry’s description of a new mythic age and the relationship between humanity and the earth:
…the human appears as the moment in which the unfolding universe becomes conscious
of itself. The human being emerges not only as an earthling but also as a worldling.
Human persons bear the universe in their being as the universe bears them in its being.
The two have a total presence to each other.
If this integral vision is something new both to the scientist and to the believer,
both are gradually becoming aware of this view of reality and its meaning for the human.
It might be considered a new revelatory experience. Because we are moving into a new
mythic age, it is little wonder if a kind of mutation is taking place in the entire Earth-
human order. A new paradigm of what it is to be human emerges. This is what is so
exciting, yet so painful and so disrupting. One aspect of this change involves the shift in
Earth-human relations, for the human now in large measure determines the Earth process
that once determined men and women. In a more integral way we could say that the Earth
that controlled itself directly in the former period now to an extensive degree controls
itself through human beings. (Berry, 2003, pp. 83-84) MYTHOLOGY AND TECHNOLOGY IN HOLISTIC EDUCATION 98
The emergent technologies invited my further consideration of Berry’s insight, and I focused on the Fourth Industrial Revolution as our current context.
My literature review changed significantly once I formally engaged The New Story essay as my Cycle 1 text. I repositioned the Fourth Industrial Revolution as context into Chapter III
Methodology. The sleep/digestion lenses begin to reflect the current literature review section entitled Our Place in Time and Space, but it was not until after the generation of these lenses that a further inquiry into the definition of the Second Axial Age led to the inclusion of Kelly’s
(2010) work in Chapter II Literature Review. As I refined and transformed the Cycle 2 lenses, I found that fewer lenses were necessary for Cycle 4 because the archetypal dimension of reality had begun to figure so prominently in my perception. The archetypal dimension of reality became the only lens needed to capture the essence of our place in time and space. In the literature review, I quote Kelly (2010) in his description of our current moment as at the liminal stage between the initiation (second stage: initiation or difference) of the mythological hero’s journey and the return (third stage: return or new identity). The second lens of the universe story as a new cultural mythology further confirms the first lens as “the human psyche participates as a microcosm of the whole” (Tarnas, 2007, p. 86). As the universe moves towards ever-increasing complexity (Chapter 1 The Universe, n.d.), Berry and Swimme (1994) capture the first moment in time and space that the story of the universe can be told, and now technology enables the story to be shared on a global scale through multiple digital formats and by storytellers engaging an integral structure of consciousness.
Research question: Does the study of Journey of the Universe as a new cultural mythology aid the 8-12-year-old child in situating themselves in time and space? Educators within the Journey conversations indicated teaching the universe story at the high school level. My research, as well MYTHOLOGY AND TECHNOLOGY IN HOLISTIC EDUCATION 99 as Montessori’s incorporation of Cosmic Education, confirms that children younger than high- school-age can connect with and benefit from the universe story. Initially, Journey’s book, film, participant artwork, embodied-action of the star process, and the OneNote project contributed to situating my children in time and space. As the study participants re-engaged Journey in the final step of the three-fold learning process, creating a timeline became the focus. The two timelines created during the case study were directly inspired and influenced by Journey, and further situated the children in time and space.
Concept: Earth-Human Relationship
Open intake lenses: (e) Riane Eisler’s partnership education alongside the Earth Charter to guide
21st-century curriculum towards systems recognition and value identification for a sustainable
Earth-human relationship, (f) the New Story paradigm
Sleep/Digestion lens: (b) integral philosophy and spiral dynamics theory
Cycle 2 lenses: (a) archetypal cosmology, (c) integral ecologies, (f) Journey of the Universe,
Cycle 4 lenses: (b) the archetypal dimensions of reality, (c) the universe story as a new cultural mythology, (e) building an archetypal vocabulary in service to the soul dimension of life and toward integral ecologies
Berry refers to both the “Earth-human order” and the “cosmic-Earth-human process” in
The New Story (2003). During the period of initial engagement, I wrestled mightily with how to acknowledge and explore this aspect that I felt should not be left out. Berry focuses on creating and identifying values and offers differentiation, subjectivity, and communion. This triad is referred to as differentiation, autopoiesis, and communion in The Universe Story (Berry &
Swimme, 1994). The evolution of the universe is characterized by these three terms, which “refer to the governing themes and the basal intentionality of all existence” (Berry & Swimme, 1994, p. MYTHOLOGY AND TECHNOLOGY IN HOLISTIC EDUCATION 100
71) across time, space and all levels of reality and together form the cosmogenetic principle. I concentrated on Eisler’s partnership education and the Earth Charter as current forms that I could link to these values. It wasn’t until I became familiar with the concept that values are contained within the paradigm (Capra & Luisi, 2014) that I realized I could narrow my study by letting
Eisler’s partnership education and the Earth Charter go. The progression of the sleep/digestion lens to Cycle 2 lenses illustrates my continued research into the work of faculty in the PCC department at CIIS.
I began to understand integral ecologies in the period between the Sleep/Digestion lenses and Cycle 2 (Skill/Mastery) lenses. During my graduate studies, I was introduced to the Earth
Charter by Sam Crowell, who designed and mentored a new course at the request of the learners entitled Teaching What Really Matters: How Perspectives of Holism and Sustainability
Transform the Educational Landscape. I read part of The Tao of Liberation: Exploring the
Ecology of Transformation (Hathaway & Boff, 2009) during that course. I returned to The Tao of
Liberation during this study and found that I could discern its message with profoundly more understanding. I embraced the term “integral ecologies” in its recognition of Berry’s value of differentiation, which for me, translates to multiple approaches “to respond to the critical urgency and gravity of current ecological, or more generally, planetary, problems” (Mickey et al., 2017, p. 2).
Cycle 4 lenses about the earth-human relationship center around archetypes and mythology following the data collection. The archetypal dimension of reality affirms an Earth- human relationship in the very nature of the microcosm of the psyche embedded within the macrocosm of the world soul, or anima mundi. The lens of the universe story as a new cultural mythology tells the story of the Earth-human relationship in scientific and poetic form, and the MYTHOLOGY AND TECHNOLOGY IN HOLISTIC EDUCATION 101 literature suggests that it addresses the four functions of myth: mystical, cosmological, sociological, and pedagogical. The third lens, building an archetypal vocabulary in service to the soul dimension of life and toward integral ecologies, relates to the Earth-human relationship through every stage of human development and changing structures of consciousness. Holistic educators can build an archetypal vocabulary by incorporating ancient mythologies and the universe story into the curriculum.
While the Earth’s increasing complexity evolves very slowly in time-developmental sequence, a developing child’s perception grows in complexity at multiple intervals before reaching adulthood. My nine-year-old daughter stated that there “are no gods” in the universe story, yet I wonder if she will make this statement after studying Greek mythology, or after progressing through another stage of child development. Building an archetypal vocabulary in service to the soul dimension of life and toward integral ecologies speaks to the adult utilizing a repeating three-fold learning process on the micro-scale of day to day up to a larger dialectic that corresponds with the child’s stage of development. This type of adult wisdom and care towards the child increases the likelihood of the child developing to the increasingly complex structure of consciousness known as integral consciousness. At the level of integral consciousness, the relationship among all things becomes clear and therefore leads toward the manifestation of integral ecologies.
Summary
The triphasic Cycle 2 lenses illustrate a journey towards understanding the literature in a review that justifies the numinous wonder experienced in the initial engagement of The New
Story (2003). The pervading influence of the triphasic pattern allowed the resulting series of lenses to be included in the Cycle 4 discussion, which I believe highlights the literature review MYTHOLOGY AND TECHNOLOGY IN HOLISTIC EDUCATION 102 process in an appropriate manner for this study. By the third and final phase of the literature review, a theoretical basis for the study had been outlined. The shift from Cycle 2
(Skill/Mastery) lenses to the Cycle 4 lenses was not drastic in concept. Instead, the research confirmed the ideas as valid, and the Cycle 4 lenses shifted toward recognition and action.
Cycle 5
In Cycle 5 of an intuitive inquiry, “the researcher presents an integration of the Cycle 4 lenses with the empirical and theoretical literature of the topic and discusses the implications”
(Anderson & Braud, 2011, p. 28). The inquirer engages in an experiential exercise to ask: What is left unsaid? Possibilities unimagined? Visionary trajectories based on this study? The reader is invited to understand the intuitive style of the researcher and how the intuitive processes and manner of manifestations shaped the “flow of the unconscious journey” (Anderson & Braud,
2011, p. 59). The discussion includes “(a) mistakes made, (b) procedures and plans that did not work, (c) the researcher’s apprehensions and puzzlements about the study and findings, (d) the style of intuitive interpretation used, and (e) what remains unresolved or problematic about the topic or the method” (p. 59). Intuitive inquiry recognizes the transformative potential for the researcher and others and asks the researcher to unapologetically “speculate about the possibilities implicit in the data that draw us closer to understanding the deeper and more restorative and transformative elements of human experience” (Anderson & Braud, 2011, p. 59).
Integration of Cycle 4 Lenses with Literature Review and Findings
The comparison of lenses in Cycle 4 already held an invitation for partial integration of the Cycle 4 lenses with the empirical and theoretical literature on the topic. I will summarize and expand as necessary here. Cycle 4 lens (a), the potential of the adult/child relationship for a co- evolution of the structures of consciousness is directly addressed in the Review section entitled MYTHOLOGY AND TECHNOLOGY IN HOLISTIC EDUCATION 103
The Potential of the Adult/Child Relationship. The view maintained in the literature was confirmed in the research, and this lens fully reflects the literature with the certitude of the empirical data from Cycle 3. Cycle 4 lens (d), bringing attention and intention to the triphasic pattern of thinking, feeling, willing reflects a similar pattern. The triad of thinking, feeling, willing is discussed in Chapter II under the heading Integral Philosophy and Integral
Consciousness. An in-depth analysis was beyond the scope of the literature review itself.
However, my familiarity with thinking, feeling, willing from my studies of Steiner and holistic curriculum was alive throughout the research cycle, and this lens affirms the triad, encouraging conscious attention and intention to support the evolution of consciousness structures.
The Literature Review provides the background of archetypal cosmology and archetypal principles and links these concepts to our place in time and space, mythology, technology, and soul in education. The Cycle 4 lens (b), the archetypal dimensions of reality, offers a full embrace of these concepts following the empirical research. The remaining three lenses derive from and support this one. Lens (e) building an archetypal vocabulary in service to the soul dimension of life and toward integral ecologies links back to the following sections in Chapter II:
• Look to the Stars: A Path Toward Integral Ecologies
• The Historical Dialectic of Archetypal Principles
• Understanding Archetypal Principles in Childhood
• Care of the Soul in Education
The research generated initial steps towards actualizing this lens. Cycle 4 lens (c), the universe story as a new cultural mythology exudes the same essence as the above discussion regarding (a) and (d). The concepts are within the review and then certified in the research cycle.
The universe story as a new cultural mythology is strengthened by interrelation to lens (b), the MYTHOLOGY AND TECHNOLOGY IN HOLISTIC EDUCATION 104 archetypal dimensions of reality. Finally, lens (f), the role of technology in transformative learning is not specific to the review of the literature. Instead, it arose as an extension of the literature’s technology discussion and has more reach into the review’s consideration of technology as the possible entelechy of the youngest generations and related by archetypal dynamics to our period in history.
What is Left Unsaid?
As mentioned by Moore in the International Handbook for Holistic Education (2019), holistic education happens anywhere and anytime. The incorporation of digital technology into my children’s learning was not limited to our school-time. Inspired by this study to reconsider the role of technology in the lives of my children, I shifted my perspective from one of limited technology use to one of allowing regular engagement with select apps and robotics. Outside of specific school-time together, I observed my children using their new iPod touch devices with joy and enthusiasm, interacting together and with friends and family in digital worlds. I could discern the additional level of knowledge they gained about our study of Ancient Mesopotamia after they engaged in the Dig-it! Games Excavate! Mesopotamia app. My children continue to articulate detailed plans and analysis of their time spent in Minecraft worlds and collaborate to gain knowledge.
During this study, my family interacted with the AI (artificial intelligence) of Alexa and the Anki robot Vector, and I interacted with AI in Grammarly. As a family, we enjoyed the visual effects of 4D rides at Universal Studios and Islands of Adventure in Florida and the VR
(virtual reality) ride and games at Denver Museum of Nature and Science. My children and I saw the IMAX film Amazon Adventure 3D, which tells the true epic story of naturalist Henry Bates in the 1850s. Because I have had an immersive nature experience in many ecosystems, I felt like I MYTHOLOGY AND TECHNOLOGY IN HOLISTIC EDUCATION 105 was in the rainforest and I pondered the potential of 3D films of this quality to invoke an understanding of ecosystems around the planet that need protection from human destruction or restoration. During this study, I also experienced the necessity of monitoring and limiting screen time to balance the child with time in nature and engagement of the body in the physical world.
This study guided a complete shift in my perspective regarding technology use with children, and I will proceed forward with curiosity and care as I continue to observe and then apply my own wisdom to each engagement with technology as it arises.
Another aspect of this study that has been left unsaid is my growing awareness of the depth-psychological perspective and its alignment with my topic. I began reading The Art of
Inquiry: A Depth Psychological Perspective (Coppin & Nelson, 2017) during my Cycle 3 research. The authors describe depth psychology as more than a scholarly discipline. “It is a way of being in the world” (p. 7) that is in alignment with this study. A depth-psychological perspective calls for writing from an archetypal/imaginal perspective, the source of which may be personal or collective, conscious, or unconscious.
Our approach is archetypal, in that we welcome the spontaneous images that arise in our
thinking and writing as animated persons rather than dead objects and, following Jung
and Hillman, actively seek relationship with them. This relationship is expressed in two
distinct postures that anyone engaged in inquiry can adopt: seeking knowledge and being
receptive to knowledge that seeks us. (Coppin & Nelson, 2017, p. 17)
The depth-psychological perspective (a) deepened my understanding of the archetypal principles defined by archetypal cosmology and the principles’ relationship to Jung’s work; (b) affirmed my attention to the connection of mind, body, and soul; and (c) focused my attention toward the MYTHOLOGY AND TECHNOLOGY IN HOLISTIC EDUCATION 106 unanswered questions of my ancestors, specifically my maternal grandmother, that my own work can take forward.
Procedures and Plans That Did Not Work
During my review of the literature I came across The New Childhood: Raising Kids to
Thrive in a Connected World by Jordan Shapiro and Raising Humans in a Digital World:
Helping Kids Build a Healthy Relationship with Technology by Diana Graber. I planned to utilize indications from both sources during Cycle 3 research. Shapiro’s mention of OneNote inspired me to use it to collaborate notes and writing for Journey of the Universe. OneNote, internet research, and the Coursera Journey courses were reported in my Chapter IV Findings, and I have included additional insight into my technology plans as they relate to these sources in
Cycle 4 Concept: Technology. In summary, I had plans to incorporate more indications from these books that did not manifest during the research cycle.
Mistakes Made
I tend to view mistakes as learning opportunities; therefore, a step backward is required in my own meaning-making to arrive, once again, at the consideration of the event in question as a “mistake.” The glaring mistake I made according to the instructions of intuitive inquiry was to begin my Cycle 3 research only to realize that my literature review was not done. The concept that required further definition was the Second Axial Age. I had included the term in a quote by
Tarnas (Cosmos and psyche, 2007). My search for a description became all important (rather than editing it out) and led me to the work of Sean Kelly. Kelly’s work (2010) with the triphasic pattern became integral to the entire study and allowed me to embrace the concept of the triphasic pattern that was already pervasive in Cycles 1, 2, and 3 of the inquiry. I feel that this
“mistake” was a pivotal moment that shaped the entire study. The triphasic pattern is included in MYTHOLOGY AND TECHNOLOGY IN HOLISTIC EDUCATION 107 the Literature Review, the Methodology, the presentation of the research findings, and the comparison of lenses in Cycle 4. For me, Kelly’s work (2010, 2016) was the catalyst for a new perspective of our place in time and space, a place I now view through the lens of archetypal cosmology.
The Researcher’s Apprehensions and Puzzlements about the Study and Findings
As this research project draws to a close, I hold opposing sensations inside of me. On the one hand, this study has come to its natural end, and I recognize the wisdom in bringing it to completion. On the other hand, my research has barely begun, and I envision continuing forward with a conviction that additional insight is yet to come. I view this intuitive inquiry, specifically the Findings, as a fractal of the larger fundamental pattern with which I am engaged. I perceive my next duration as a continuing engagement with my children over the next three years. I plan to use the Live Education! curriculum as a foundational base from which to explore the concepts of this study. By giving myself over to the dialectic process of each cycle as well as the three- fold learning process, I have constructed a review of the literature that will guide my way forward.
Puzzlement is not a word I would choose to include at this moment of Cycle 5 as I draw
“a still larger hermeneutic circle around the entire study” (Anderson & Braud, 2011, p. 62), yet
Anderson invites this consideration in the outline of what to include in the discussion. What I can offer is the embodied sensation of working a giant jigsaw puzzle at my dining room table. The table is not essential to utilize, so there is an open timeframe yet a creative tension to engage with the puzzle at self-chosen intervals. The archetypal dynamics alive at this moment in time are like the puzzle sections that begin to catch one’s eye, available to be discerned within the smaller pieces. The archetypes are there, within the fragmentary shapes, and once perceived, take MYTHOLOGY AND TECHNOLOGY IN HOLISTIC EDUCATION 108 on an image more akin to holographic theory (Hathaway & Boff, 2009) than the aforementioned two-dimensional jigsaw. The archetypes have a living dimension and seem intimately aware of my attitude. Therefore, a current dynamic between psyche and cosmos is decisively shaping these final words.
The Style of Intuitive Interpretation Used
Five types of intuition are identified by Anderson and Braud (2011) and listed in Chapter
III Methodology of this thesis. The primary kind of intuition utilized in this study was unconscious, symbolic, and imaginal processes. This type of intuitive knowing has been explored in Jungian and archetypal psychology, imaginal psychology, and visionary experiences.
“Individuals who experience such intuitive processes tend to have active symbolic lives, often accompanied by numinous dreams, active imagination, archetypal experiences, and the like”
(Anderson & Braud, 2011, p. 22). While Westerners in industrialized countries tend to describe imaginal processes as “embedded within the human collective psyche in the play of symbols and archetypes” (p. 23), indigenous cultures often experience these as “embedded in the sensorium of the Earth, experienced as patterns, symbols, and visions…in the activities or movements of the natural environment” (p. 23).
Just as I sense the archetypal experience of the present moment, my initial engagement with Thomas Berry’s The New Story (2003) essay felt archetypal. Before encountering a literary description of unconscious, symbolic, and imaginal processes as a type of intuition, I described my engagement with this activity as “listening to the universe” or “asking the universe.” The universe appeared to have a message for me within The New Story (2003). The essay was unassigned yet linked into an article that had been recommended for class discussion. My first encounter with the piece came in the five days when I was doing nothing besides reading and a MYTHOLOGY AND TECHNOLOGY IN HOLISTIC EDUCATION 109 bit of writing while I waited for my children each day in a beautiful mountain setting while they participated in art camps. I enjoyed the time for slow and thorough reading. Numinosity gripped me as I read and reread Berry’s essay, unable to grasp the more profound meaning that I perceived within it. I engaged with Berry’s text in a video assignment several weeks later yet was still unable to discern the essence, so I quoted parts of the essay. A section that I quoted in the video is included in Cycle 4 Concept: Our Place in Time and Space.
As described by Jung in the opening epigraph of this thesis, it is not an unusual sensation for me to feel that an archetype is speaking through me. My encounter with Berry’s The New
Story essay was a synchronicity that allowed a process of individuation to begin, which I have described in this study as following the archetypal pattern of the hero’s journey. “Synchronicities seem to serve the unfolding of the Self and its engagement with the conscious ego, so they tend to manifest when a deeper life meaning, initially unbeknownst to the ego, is trying to break through into conscious awareness” (Le Grice K. , 2016, p. 133). The concept of synchronicity began to populate the field of my awareness in the later stages of my study, and I firmly set the idea aside each time, refusing to welcome it into the broad landscape already before me. Finally, as I “imagine the possible, as though seeking to find trajectories for new and more refined ways of being human in the world,” (Anderson & Braud, 2011, p. 59) I welcome the concept of synchronicity to center stage. To keep this section respectable in length, I refer the reader unfamiliar with individuation and synchronicity (as explored by Jung) to Archetypal Reflections by Kieron Le Grice (2016) for summaries of both. Synchronicity is defined by Le Grice (2016) as “the meaningful coincidence in time of an inner state of consciousness with an event in the outer world” (p. 127). MYTHOLOGY AND TECHNOLOGY IN HOLISTIC EDUCATION 110
To a lesser degree, the other types of intuition were present during the study, and each is worth mentioning. Braud and Anderson (2011) describe psychic or parapsychological experiences as encouraged by heartfelt connections to a topic or participants. “The fact that we are able to access information at a distance, through space and through time, suggests that in some subtle and profound manner, we are interconnected with…those remote places, times, and their content” (Braud as cited by Anderson & Braud, 2011, pp. 23-24). I considered the three- fold learning process as a thesis topic about a year before I began the study, and then experienced
Anderson’s “auspicious bewilderment” (pp. 62-64) when the process revealed itself as permeating Cycles 1, 2, and 3. I also thought I would conduct a case study that included my children, then I put that idea entirely aside for months until it once again made sense when I became aware of intuitive inquiry as a methodology.
Sensory modes of intuition are described as beyond the five senses and include kinesthetic (movement in space), proprioceptive (orientation in space), and the “visceral sense arising from sense receptors in the organs and tissues of the body [that] may serve as intuitive receptors, conveying subtle forms of information usually unavailable to the thinking mind”
(Anderson & Braud, 2011, p. 24). As previously mentioned in this thesis, during the fall
(proposal stage), I experienced the visceral sense of swimming underwater. My body had the felt sense of swimming underwater whenever the picture was with me. I became familiar with the kinesthetic and proprioceptive senses and the sense of embodiment through my work and training in Enki Education. For me, these senses are a living part of educating holistically.
Kinesthetic and proprioceptive awareness are always present in our opening activities via movement; therefore, these senses were utilized frequently during my Cycle 3 research. MYTHOLOGY AND TECHNOLOGY IN HOLISTIC EDUCATION 111
Empathetic identification as an intuitive mode of knowing is woven into my experience of both Waldorf and Enki Education. Each story is an opportunity to “inhabit the lived world of another person or object of study” (Anderson & Braud, 2011, p. 24) and this “living into” experience is magnified by incorporating movement and the three-fold learning process.
Empathetic identification was a part of this study throughout because “living into” the stories we engage with has become second nature to each of the study participants. Descriptions in the
Chapter IV Findings illustrate empathetic identification when viewing the Journey of the
Universe film, the near-death-experience of the lamb, and my contemplation of death-rebirth as I reflected on Chapter 6 of Journey.
The study of Ancient Mesopotamia during the sleep/digestion stage of Journey of the
Universe led to the type of intuitive knowing that Anderson and Braud name through our wounds. “From a spiritual perspective, these wounds are also openings to the world, enabling personal and research explorations along the fault lines of the personality to invite change that transforms these wounds to sources of inspiration for others” (Anderson & Braud, 2011, pp. 25-
26). For some researchers, their topic centers around their wounds. My experience of the through our wounds intuition appeared in the Skill/Mastery stage when we re-engaged with Journey of the Universe. What I have now identified as a reencounter with the shadow archetype ultimately allowed the potential for transformative learning in the adult to become obvious to me and has been articulated in a Cycle 4 lens.
What Remains Unresolved or Problematic About the Topic or the Method?
A common language does not yet exist for an open discussion of archetypes across the fields. This difficulty is mirrored as Robert Greenway searches for a language to describe the human-nature relationship in The Wilderness Effect and Ecopsychology: MYTHOLOGY AND TECHNOLOGY IN HOLISTIC EDUCATION 112
It became crucial to communicate what happened to people in the wilderness. Thus, the
wilderness experience gave rise to a search for a language that could reveal the dynamics
of the human-nature relationship; the growing public concern over environmental
degradation became the motivation. (This reveals my central bias: both ecology and
psychologies are, at base, languages, and thus the search for an “ecopsychology” is a
search for a language as well.) (Roszak, Gomes, & Kanner, Ecopsychology: Restoring
the earth healing the mind, 1995, p. 123)
Is archetypal cosmology also a search for a language? In the new-science paradigm, accepted concepts are abstract. As transdisciplinary research and dialogue become more prevalent in academic scholarship, common terminology will aid understanding across the fields. While it is possible for holistic educators to learn about archetypes on the Homeric, Platonic, and Jungian levels in all of their complexities and nuances, a primary language will at least aid an initial understanding. Perhaps a starting place for developing a transdisciplinary dialogue is with the archetypal symbols offered as a focus by Thomas Berry in The Great Work (1999) as applicable to our times: the Great Mother, the Great (hero) Journey, Death-Rebirth, the Cosmic Tree, and the Sacred Center.
Summary
Summary Implications and Visionary Trajectory
As holistic educators, we value the education of the whole person, mind, body, and soul.
The health of the earth is also a common concern. Some of our curriculums are based on ancient civilizations and their mythologies. Others situate our place in time and space through science.
The new technologies may be a part of our learning environment, or we may keep our focus on nature. This thesis offers an interweaving of mythologies from ancient civilizations, the universe MYTHOLOGY AND TECHNOLOGY IN HOLISTIC EDUCATION 113 story as a new mythology for our time, and technology as a form of community connection as a way to strengthen the soul dimension of holistic education and lead towards the integral ecologies that can actualize humanity as mutually enhancing to the earth community. I presented
Miller’s (2008) definition of soul in the Introduction: “a vital and mysterious energy that gives meaning and purpose to one’s life” (p. 178). Moore’s description is in the Literature Review:
“Soul is that element in us that is our mysterious depth and makes us an individual while feeling connected to others and to the human community” (Miller et al., 2019, p. 54). I believe that it is the soul that wonders at the depth of creation throughout the cosmos, generation after generation.
Soul, both individual and collective, in both embodied and disembodied forms, connects humanity across time and space and manifests the soul dimension of every human endeavor. The visionary trajectory that I offer is to open to the concept of “the stars lead us to wonder” and embrace archetypal cosmology as a legitimate lens through which to view the practices of holistic education.
Implications for Practice
This study demonstrates that mythology and technology within holistic education have the potential to encourage development in structures of consciousness across the lifespan.
Introducing the universe story alongside ancient mythologies during middle childhood allows an understanding of archetypal principles on the Homeric level to be established. Montessori education and my research demonstrate that there is no need to wait until adolescence to introduce the universe story. The lens of archetypal cosmology invites the consideration of technology as an essential form of community connection in our time.
Limitations of my Research MYTHOLOGY AND TECHNOLOGY IN HOLISTIC EDUCATION 114
My case study consisted of three participants: a nine-year-old girl, an eleven-year-old boy, and a 41-year old woman. This is a small sample size. I’ve also determined that the duration of my research was shorter than I’d recommend for future studies.
Future Research
Additional studies are necessary to determine the potential for transformative learning within the proposed structure. Studies of a longer duration will also yield results of greater depth since the thesis suggests building an archetypal vocabulary over time. While Journey of the
Universe (2011) was well-received by my eleven-and-a-half-year-old son, my nine-year-old daughter was not so well met. Curriculum specific to various developmental moments within the middle-age of childhood would greatly benefit the implementation of the universe story in poetic form alongside ancient mythologies. Future research could include proposed models of application that relate developmental age to specific concepts within ancient mythologies, the universe story, and emerging technologies. Studies could also examine technology as an expressive aspect of the learning experience.
The literature offers an expansion of this study’s concepts. As mentioned in the introductory paragraph of the Literature Review, the transdisciplinary nature of the study made an exhaustive review impossible for a single thesis chapter, and the exercises of Cycle 2 guided the coverage approach of the intuitive inquiry. During my Cycle 3 research, I utilized Tobin
Hart’s gateways to knowing or inquiry, as included in the International Handbook of Holistic
Education (Miller et al., 2019). As this thesis nears completion, I’ve realized that Hart’s additional published works cover topics directly related to the framework of this thesis, including children’s spiritual nature, technology and education in our time, and education for the evolution of consciousness. The cycles of an intuitive inquiry shape the study and the resulting Cycle 2 and MYTHOLOGY AND TECHNOLOGY IN HOLISTIC EDUCATION 115
Cycle 4 lenses; therefore, I include Hart’s publications as one example for further consideration within the literature. A second example is the work of Clifford Mayes, who has written numerous works on what he has termed archetypal pedagogy. Mayes’s research also came into my awareness only recently.
Recommendations
This study demonstrated potential benefits for holistic educators and children in their care. For educators who already have an established base of ancient mythologies, determining an appropriate age for which to incorporate a study of the universe story is well within reach. All teachers can consider how the research and literature review, or even the lens of archetypal cosmology, might be of benefit to their teaching.
Le Grice (2016) calls for a depth-psychology for psychospiritual transformations and the psychological experience of archetypal patterns. A repeating triphasic pattern of learning could aid a child or an adult in building knowledge of the historical dialectic (Homeric, Platonic,
Jungian). This archetypal base of knowledge would benefit the depth-psychology to which Le
Grice refers and could aid therapists as well as educators.
Final Reflections
This intuitive inquiry has created a guide with which I will move forward with my children in our home-learning endeavors. The evolution of human consciousness has been a central theme in my graduate studies and will remain central to my life’s work in whatever form that takes. I am inspired by the vision of archetypal cosmology to further our understanding of the relationship between psyche and cosmos. My own transformative learning during this study was a possibility unimagined, and I am especially thankful to my children for their participation in my research, and who enable my continual path of unfoldment. MYTHOLOGY AND TECHNOLOGY IN HOLISTIC EDUCATION 116
Appendix A
Key Points of a Spiritual Research Paradigm
As explored in the book Toward a Spiritual Research Paradigm: Exploring New Ways of
Knowing, Researching, and Being (Lin, Oxford, & Culham, 2016)
• ontogeny – all reality is multidimensional, interconnected, and interdependent
• epistemology – integrates knowing from both outer sources and inner contemplation,
acknowledges integration of body, mind, soul, and spirit
Three additional useful aspects include:
• axiology- what is valued, good, and ethical
• methodology – an appropriate approach to systemic inquiry
• teleology – “an explanation of the goal or end (telos) to which new knowledge is applied”
(p. x)
Thoughts toward developing a spiritual research paradigm (SRP):
• SRP is relevant for examination of inner experience and promotion of meaning, purpose,
inner experience of nature and other beings, compassion, tranquility of mind and heart.
• To explore deep experiences related to sacred, divine, intuitive knowing, profound
revelations, interconnection. Interrelation of quantitative, qualitative, and SRP (example:
“new findings in neuroscience have provided intriguing insights regarding the role of
numinous experiences in our lives” (p. xi)).
• New and creative ways to research spiritual knowing, which is personal and internally
focused.
• A focus on the elevation of our energy that results from contemplative practice:
expansion and elevation of outlook and an integration of body, mind, soul, and spirit. MYTHOLOGY AND TECHNOLOGY IN HOLISTIC EDUCATION 117
Appendix B
Natural Learning Relationships in Relation to Jean Gebser’s Structures of Consciousness Throughout Childhood
Integral Mental Mythic Magic Archaic Aperspectival Perspectival Uniperspectival Preperspectival Nonperspectival
Toward the end IdealBeing of 13 - 17 FeelingBeing BodyBeing Newborn baby Reasonable Being and 8 - 12 Infancy - 7 (no differentiation) and beyond ReasonableBeing “I and others are “The world is an there is only Transcendent 18 - 23 in relationships; extension of me; I-experience opportunity in “I am my I feel.” I belong, and I parenting. perspective” have a place.”
Organizes values with Organizes broader ideas and Organizes interconnected Organizes themes, such as the belonging of Organizes relationships and Individual agency. “trust.” the self in the no subject-object systems. I am an individual. “I have the world as distinction I can think complexity to I and other are between self and Self-transforming abstractly. internalize and interconnected. others. the self toward an identify with the Label objects with Parent & self are integral Freedom in a self- values of my words and come to one perspective on authoring and self- social understand the life. governing self environment immediate world. (tribe) and the cycles Autopoetic self of nature.” “I and others are a Learns best from continuum.” myth and story. Embeddedness Embeddedness Embeddedness “I enter into Embeddedness “I engage “I am the center of meaning and “I name myself—I relationship” the world—the purpose” am an individual.” world is an Embeddedness The child is extension of my no separate I. Integration of all The child is embedded in body.” “The world and I are previous stages of embedded in feeling The child is one.” development into learning to relationships embedded in the a unified “I,” who self-govern and with others and moment and in his lives in optimal navigate social peer with a community. or her world. well-being relationships Meaning-making Meaning-making I in relation to other. Meaning-making new Meaning-making is time-free IB has the ideal of subject- is subject-object integrity in the someone who can object relationship relationship Meaning-making moment between make a great between I and other. between existence subject and contribution to This relationship I and object. “I can and object, as one others. opens potential for give objects survival unity with the “I become self- love, trust, and meaning.” intelligent energy authored with an spiritual devotion. of the whole internal authority.”
(Luvmour, J., 2017, Appendix J, p. 289) MYTHOLOGY AND TECHNOLOGY IN HOLISTIC EDUCATION 118
Appendix C
Natural Learning Relationships (NLR)
Table 5-2 Developmental Table with Nourishments
Characteristics of BodyBeing FeelingBeing IdealBeing ReasonableBeing Each Stage
Primary Loving touch Feeling Sensitive Mature recogni- Nourishment mentors respect tion, recognition of: commitment, equality, achieve- ment, recognition
Secondary Security, Fairness, jus- Challenges, Comparison, Nourishment warmth, tex- tice, caring, adventure, exploration, tured sensory concern, hon- peer sensitivity, experimentation, environments, esty, adventure, personal space, discernment, reca- flexibility adaptability opportunity to pitulation explore ideals
Primary Rightful Trust Autonomy, Interconnected- Organizing place self-governance ness, Principle humor, humility
Secondary Boundaries, Reciprocal Identity con- Systems creation, Organizing strength cooperation struction, intentionality, Principle(s) personal power, incisiveness freedom
(Luvmour B. , 2006, p. 79)
MYTHOLOGY AND TECHNOLOGY IN HOLISTIC EDUCATION 119
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