pEmotional Literacy Education Course 101

What Is Emotional Literacy Education?

by Mark Zimmerman

Content: Lesson 1
Title: What Is Emotional Literacy?
Author: Mark Zimmerman
Copyright: © 2003 Mark Zimmerman. All Rights
Reserved.

Content: Lessons 2 through 10

Title: Emotional Literacy Education Course 101
What Is Emotional Literacy Education?
Author: Mark Zimmerman
Copyright: © 2004 Mark Zimmerman. All Rights
Reserved.

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Lesson 1: What Is Emotional Literacy?

The following lecture is a demonstration of the use of

the Emotional Literacy Language. The views expressed
are examples designed to inspire the student to
develop their own unique ideas, language and
Emotional Literacy Skills, and are not intended to
promote anyone's philosophy.

001 Commentary On Susie Orbach #1 11:48

In the spring of 2001, I came upon the concept of

Emotional Literacy for the first time. Most of my adult
life, I've used the term Self-Knowledge. Where the idea
of Self-Knowledge falls short is in the social context; and
how it relates to others. Emotional Literacy, on the other
hand, has a social connection - which for me
immediately meant education. Because the term
literacy comes from education. The term literacy
means, or it has come to mean, acquiring specialized
skills, for example, computer literacy. And I understood
immediately that Emotional Literacy was a skill, that
could only be learned through an educational system.
Self-Knowledge, on the other hand, is primarily self-
taught, but very few people are capable of teaching
themselves such a complex subject.

The first time I came across the concept of Emotional

Literacy was at the Antidote Website, where I read Susie
Orbach's definition. She is a Psychologist who wrote in
The Guardian on August 12, 1998, "Emotional Literacy
means being able to recognize what you are feeling, so
that it doesn't interfere with thinking."

Self-Knowledge means exactly recognizing what you are

feeling, so immediately I saw the connection between
Self-Knowledge and Emotional Literacy. I have spent the
last two years working with Emotional Literacy, trying to
see where it connects with my work in Self-Knowledge.
And I have been modifying my own work, so that it
meets educational standards.
Susie Orbach wrote, "Emotional Literacy means being
able to recognize what you are feeling, so that it doesn't
interfere with thinking."

I also became very interested in the concept of

Emotional Literacy, because it involved both psychology
and education. And combining the two for me means
Emotional Literacy.

Where psychology becomes important is that

psychology is the study of the human psyche. It's the
science of studying the human mind. And psychology
has made tremendous progress since the time of
Sigmund Freud. And it has gradually moved away from
a psychology of pathology, and the study of human
mental illness, towards a new kind of psychology
started by Abraham Maslow.

Freud studied mental illness, but he never really

explained completely why people were mentally ill. He
failed in one area, and that was the study of human
health - human mental health. And Abraham Maslow
chose to study healthy human beings as a model for his
new psychology, which he called the Psychology of
Being. His contribution to psychology is as great as
Sigmund Freud's for showing that man is not merely a
set of pathologies or mental illnesses and neurosis, but
that man has human potential far beyond our
imagination.

Abraham Maslow showed us that human beings can be

psychologically healthy. He also demonstrated why
humans become psychologically unhealthy. He
determined that we become psychologically neurotic,
when our needs are thwarted; when we as human
beings are blocked in fulfilling our human needs. That
this blocking causes us frustration and a rerouting of
our behavior into neurosis.
Susie Orbach wrote, "Emotional Literacy means being
able to recognize what you are feeling, so that it doesn't
interfere with thinking."

Why do feelings interfere with thinking? Mankind, in its

philosophy, likes to separate feeling from thinking.
They're not separate at all. Every thought has a feeling
attached to it. If we are frightened or angry or confused,
it's going to affect the way we think.

What is happening here is that we do not recognize our

feelings. We're unconscious of feeling. What is
conscious is our thoughts. What's not conscious are the
feelings attached to those thoughts.

"Emotional Literacy," as defined by Susie Orbach,

"means being able to recognize what you are feeling, so
that it doesn't interfere with thinking. It becomes
another dimension to draw upon when making decisions
or encountering situations."

It can become another dimension to draw upon when

making decisions or encountering situations. That is, if
we were able to recognize our feelings, we would
understand how they affect our thoughts. So her
statement is conditional. If we became more aware of
our feelings, we would be able to use them to help us
make decisions. Feelings which are properly associated
with thoughts are what helps us to decide. They lend
meaning. They lend gravity. They lend weight to our
thought processes. Without feelings our thoughts would
be like words in a computer. It's our feelings which give
meaning to our thoughts. Its our feelings which help us
to decide our behavior, whether we're conscious of it or
not. We all start out life unconscious. Becoming
conscious requires a special effort.
Susie Orbach continues, "Emotional expression by
contrast can mean being driven by emotions, so that it
isn't possible to think."

For most people thinking is an unreliable process. We

like to think that it's our thought processes through
which we decide what we're going to do, but ultimately
it's our emotions that drive our behavior, unconsciously.
Only when emotional experiences reach a certain level
of intensity of confusion or pain or depression does it
make it impossible to think. And it's when we become
conscious of our emotions, that our immediate response
is to repress them. What we don't realize is that our
emotions influence our thoughts more than our
thoughts influence our emotions.

Susie Orbach continues, "These two things are often

confused, because we are still uncomfortable with the
idea of the validity of feelings."

It's our feelings that need to be sorted out, because our

feelings are driving both our thoughts and our
behaviors. Men and women function differently when it
comes to their thoughts and feelings. Men usually deny
that they have feelings. Men are better able to suppress
into their unconscious - emotions. And they rely more
heavily on their intellect, and this has been hailed by
men as a strength. But it is a self-defeating attitude,
because their emotions are there, they just block
consciousness of them, and amplify their thoughts. And
women do just the opposite. In women emotions are
stronger, consciously, than in men. Yet, maybe it's
these strong emotions which do interfere with their
thoughts, because emotions are scary, and fear does
interfere with rational thought.

For me Emotional Literacy means sorting out thoughts

and emotions, because they can work together, when
both are made equally conscious. But so much of our
psyche is unconscious, that we have problems working
within the framework of our own capacities and mental
functions.

And we tend to work outside in a social context, where

we accept direction from without largely because of the
uncertainty within.

Emotional Literacy means becoming literate, becoming

skilled in reading your own emotions.

England is far ahead of the United States in advancing

Emotional Literacy both politically and in the education
system.

At the Antidote Website Emotional Literacy is defined

as, "Emotional Literacy is the practice of engaging with
others in a way which facilitates understanding of our
own and others' emotions, then using this
understanding to inform our actions."

Emotional Literacy should be understood in the social

context, because it is the practice of engaging with
others, learning from others ways which facilitate
understanding of our own emotions, and the emotions
of others.

Our emotions do inform our actions. They drive our

actions, instinctually, and in an unconscious way. But
they can also act to inform our actions. Our emotions
can provide us with information about ourselves, and
about our behavior and about the behavior of others.

002 Commentary On Claude Steiner #1 16:57

Claude Steiner is a Psychologist who works in the field

of Transactional Analysis. What is important about this
field of psychology is that it focuses on understanding
the exchanges in relationships. Which psychologists call
transactions. Transactional Analysis helps by focusing
on relationships and their emotional interactions.

Claude Steiner wrote in his book Emotional Literacy,

Intelligence with Heart, "To be Emotionally Literate is to
be able to handle emotions in a way that improves your
personal power, and improves the quality of life for you,
and equally important, the quality of life for the people
around you."

Claude Steiner realizes in this statement, the

importance of handling emotions. If we don't get a grip
on our emotions, we're essentially out-of-control. Which
causes us to rely heavily on social convention, instead
of listening to our own inner impulses; which can give us
information more detailed and more specialized about
our own lives.

Social convention deals primarily with group survival. It

doesn't recognize the individual and their survival.
Social convention has limitations in fulfilling the needs
of the individual within the social group. Social
convention is primarily focused on fulfilling the needs of
the group, but not the individual. And even though this
has been a successful survival strategy for mankind, it
is also the technology which allows human beings to
commit the worst tragedies to other human beings.

War itself is the outcome of social convention. If society

was worried about the individual, the need of the
individual, society would change its convention about
the concept of war. The group never dies in war, only
the individual. And the group, the social convention,
feels sacrifice of the individual is a noble cause, but it's
really a selfish act by the society to preserve itself at
the expense of the individual.

Social convention and relying on social convention,

limits our own potential, our own possibilities. Within the
social convention, there's no room for the individual
idea, or the individual need, or the fulfillment of the
need.

Emotional Literacy is not the technology of the

individual. It is a technology of learning how to interact
with oneself, and in that context, how to interact with
others.

When we are better able to handle our own emotions,

we can improve our relationships, our own quality of
life, and as Claude Steiner said, "the quality of life of the
people around us." Because every emotion that stirs
within our unconscious becomes manifest in our
behavior, and affects the people around us. And if we
are fearful or confused or angry, we can hurt those
around us without knowing it.

Claude Steiner continues, "Emotional Literacy helps

your emotions to work for you instead of against you."

Emotions are signals that carry information. And by

ignoring our emotions, by ignoring those signals, we
also miss out on the information they provide us. Our
emotions also inform us about our environment,
because how we feel directly relates to our relationships
with others - and how they interact with us.

Emotional Literacy is the process of learning about

emotions, and learning how to make them work in a
positive way. When we are informed by our emotions,
they can provide us with guidance. When we are
unconscious of our emotions, they always work against
us.

Claude Steiner continues, "It improves relationships,

creates loving possibilities between people, makes
cooperative work possible, and facilitates the feeling of
community."
Emotional Literacy is Self-Knowledge in social context.
Emotional Literacy is using Self-Knowledge to figure out
the dynamics of relationships. Emotional Literacy is the
technology of understanding the dynamics of emotions
in relationships. Therefore, it does improve
relationships, because it provides us with an array of
emotional choices - and how we are going to respond to
others.

It's not always about being positive in relationships. It's

not about never being angry or never being afraid.
When we are afraid, what is that telling us. And is it
rational? Is our fear rational? Does it have an object
that's real, or are we afraid of something inside our own
imagination?

It's these skills that we have to learn to properly

manage our emotions. It's not about eliminating
negative emotions. It's about understanding what each
individual emotion can do for us.

There are times when anger is justified. There are times

when fear will save your life. And there are times when
anger and hatred will destroy your relationship, impede
your relationship. And there are times when fear has no
validity.

I like to describe two types of emotions. Anger, fear,

guilt, frustration can be either functional or
dysfunctional. And what I mean by that is, it can be
either an appropriate response or an inappropriate
response. If it's inappropriate, you're disrupting your
relationship, unnecessarily. If it's an appropriate
response, if it's functional, then it can be exactly the
right response for the given situation.

There is no one who can advise you which emotion is

right for which circumstance, because circumstances
are spontaneous happenings. And emotional responses
happen in the moment. And you're not going to have
time to consult anyone about the proper emotion or
response. Therefore, the only way to determine whether
the use of your emotions is functional or dysfunctional -
is by becoming conscious of them; by gaining
knowledge of them, by understanding them. So that you
can learn how to employ them at the right time, and
learn how to disemploy them at the wrong time.

There is the possibility that Emotional Literacy can

improve our relationships. Possibility, because this is a
capacity that we have to actualize. It's only a potential.
But when this potential is actualized, loving
relationships can be made possible between humans.

The workplace will become more cooperative and less

competitive. And not only will Emotional Literacy
facilitate the feeling of community, it will transform the
community from what it is now into a community where
feelings are as respected as thoughts, and where
behaviors are contemplated, rather than automatic.
And where the power of the individual is respected as
much as the power of the group.

Claude Steiner continues, "But Emotional Literacy is not

a mere unleashing of the emotions - it is also learning to
understand, manage and control them."

That's what we do, unleash emotions onto others in our

relationships, or one group against another group. We
unleash them, unconsciously, without any
understanding of the consequences. We unleash them
automatically. And this is our fundamental problem,
because emotions are directly linked to our instincts.
And our instincts are often inappropriate responses to
the given situation.
Who's to determine, how to determine, if your response
is appropriate, if you are not conscious of it?

In searching the Internet for definitions of Emotional

Literacy, there is one common theme among the
definitions.

As Claude Steiner said, "It is also learning to

understand, manage and control them."

Understanding emotions is the most common definition

for what Emotional Literacy is. It's through
understanding that we learn how to manage and control
them, and make them work for us, rather than against
us. The only way to understand our emotions is to learn
about them through an educational process.

Claude Steiner continues, "Being Emotionally Literate

means that you know what emotions you and others
have, how strong they are, and what causes them."

We have a rainbow of emotions - both positive and

negative. Some of them attract us to others. Some of
them cause us to move away from others.

"Being Emotionally Literate means that you know what

emotions you and others have...."

Emotional Literacy is the exploration of this rainbow of

emotions, because each emotion has a specific
function.

It's not an effort to get rid of emotions. It's actually an

effort to bring emotions into our consciousness, into our
awareness, into our understanding, into our thought
processes, so that they better serve us. So that they
guide us in our relationships, and so that we know what
we're doing, and the consequences of a particular
emotion.
Claude Steiner mentions the strength of emotions. Not
only must we learn the specific use - for a specific
function, but we also must learn how strongly to use a
particular emotion. Or, when a particular emotion is
very strong within us, how do we interpret that? And
what does cause our emotions? Emotional Literacy will
also explore what causes emotions.

Claude Steiner continues. "Being Emotionally Literate

means that you know how to manage your emotions,
because you understand them."

There is a process that one must go through to reach an

understanding of our emotions. Through this process we
use our thoughts to make pictures, word pictures, of our
emotions. We use our thoughts in combination with our
emotions.

When our thoughts are in agreement with our emotions,

that is understanding. When we have no knowledge
about our emotions, that is ignorance. When our
emotions agree with our thoughts, they harmonize into
understanding. They work together.

Claude Steiner continues, "With Emotional Literacy

training, you will learn how to express your feelings,
when and where to express them, and how they affect
others."

That's a pretty good summation of everything I've just

said. First, that Emotional Literacy is a training process.
It's a learned process. It's an educational process in
which you will learn how to express your feelings.

We are, every day, continuously, without knowledge,

expressing our feelings. Without knowledge, how can
we know the appropriateness of our expression? When
and where and how to express our emotions - is what
Emotional Literacy is concerned with. It's what it
teaches.

And since our emotions are primarily used in

relationships, we must learn how emotions affect
others. When we express an emotion, how it affects
others will help us to understand the consequences of
our emotional expression. Did our expression, and the
way that it affected another person, turn out the way
that you anticipated it to, or did it come out in a way
that was harmful; or affected the other person in a
negative way?

And without Emotional Literacy, without being able to

read your own feelings, your own emotions, and your
own behaviors, using your thoughts, you will never be
able to know if what you did, or said, was beneficial - or
harmful to the relationship.

How your emotions, and their expressions, affect others

is important, because how you respond to others is
going to affect the way that they respond to you.

And if you want others to interact with you in a positive,

loving, caring, respectful manner, the first place to start
is through emotional expressions of warmth and caring
and understanding.

Claude Steiner continues, "You will also develop

empathy, and will learn to take responsibility for the
way your emotions affect others."

He says Emotional Literacy is developing empathy.

003 Commentary On Dictionary Definitions 9:43

What is empathy?
A dictionary definition for empathy is the, "identification
with and understanding of another's situation, feelings
and motives."

It's important for us to understand the situations and

the limitations that others find themselves. Those who
are born in poverty, those who are born in a situation
that doesn't offer the opportunity of education -
requires us to take into consideration their situation.
How it makes them feel. And how it makes them
behave.

Empathy comes from the desire to want to improve the

lives of others; to at least to the situation of our own.
Without understanding the suffering that poverty
causes, people are unable to understand the situation
that others find themselves, when it is conditions
beyond their control.

When it is within our control to improve the lives of

others, through a simple concept, we are employing the
compassionate emotion of empathy. We are caring
about their situation. We are understanding the
circumstances which brought them to their situation.
We are understanding our own involvement in creating
these adverse conditions. And we are actively doing
something to improve the lives of others.

And why would we want to improve the lives of others?

By improving the lives of others, we are improving our
own lives.

Empathy is comprised of the suffix 'pathy' which means,

"feeling; suffering; perception."

It means being able to feel, not only your own life, but
the lives of others. It means caring, but most
importantly, it means feeling. And we tend to go
through our lives without feeling. And without feeling,
there is very little sense of being alive. So being
empathetic has more to do with the selfish need of
feeling alive, rather than feeling numb.

We live in a society which identifies the strong as those

who can function without feeling. Who can act
rationally, coldly, steely. Little boys are taught not to cry
and not to feel. In the end this only blocks out the world
around them, because the only relationship we have to
the world around us is how we feel it. Ultimately, this
cripples, not strengthens, our children.

'Pathy' comes from the Greek word 'pathos' - which

means, "as of an experience or a work of art, that
arouses feelings. Feelings of sympathy, tenderness, or
sorrow."

'Pathos' is defined this way, because when we feel, we

tend to sense the suffering and the misery that
surrounds us. But 'pathos' means far more than sorrow.
Pathos means feeling, and there's more to life than
feeling sorrow.

'Pathos' also means joy. It means pleasure. It means

tranquility. But we only reach those emotions after we
begin to deal with the world around us - in a responsible
way.

As Claude Steiner says, "You will also develop empathy,

and will learn to take responsibility for the way your
emotions affect others."

We reach joy through responsibility; for taking

responsibility for the way our emotions, and our actions,
affect others. If our emotions cause pain and suffering
to others, our reward will be suffering and pain. The
source of the affliction is within us. And when we affect
others negatively, we may not realize it, but that
negativity is coming from within.
It's our own unconsciousness, that causes us not to feel
the pain within ourselves - that is the source of the pain
we cause others.

So Emotional Literacy is learning how to become

responsible for your own emotions, and the positive or
negative impact that they have on others. Emotional
Literacy means social responsibility.

'Pathos' means sympathy, and sympathy means, "A

relationship or an affinity between people or things in
which whatever affects one correspondingly affects the
other."

Emotional Literacy teaches us that we do not live in

isolation, but rather in relationships with others.
Therefore, what affects one person affects ourselves,
and what affects ourselves affects others.

We dwell in a state of interdependency. I have defined

sympathy as the simultaneous vibration or feeling that
exists in two or more persons. We share the same
feelings. We feel the same things. And whatever affects
one person correspondingly affects the other.

The dictionary definition continues, sympathy is a,

"mutual understanding or affection arising from this
relationship or affinity."

Once again we return to the recurring theme of

understanding as the basic fundamental definition of
what Emotional Literacy is.

It's through this understanding, that we achieve

affection for others - that arises out of our relationship,
and our knowing affinity with others.
The dictionary continues, "The act or power of sharing
the feelings of another."

We all share the same feelings. We just share them

unconsciously. We all hurt each other, we just do it
unconsciously. And it's only through knowing this - can
we stop the hurt that we pass from one person to the
next, and from one generation to the next.

"Sympathy is the act or power of sharing the feelings of

another."

We all share the same feelings. There is something

universal about feelings. We all share the same nature.
And it's out of this nature, our feelings are derived.

The definition continues, "A feeling or an expression of

pity or sorrow for the distress of another."

Why, through empathy, do we experience sorrow? It's

because we have caused each other such great misery,
that when we open our hearts, we find that's all that's
there. But there's more to life, if we get beyond the
mutual hurt that we cause one another. But first, we
have to understand what we've done to each other,
because that's the only way to stop it, and to find new
ways of joy to share in our lives.

Another definition of sympathy is commiseration.

Emotional Literacy is not about commiseration. It's not
about wallowing in the suffering of others. It's about
rising above the suffering of others - by ceasing one's
own participation in causing the suffering of others.

Sympathy, the dictionary continues, means,

"Harmonious agreement."

That's the ultimate goal of sympathy. That's the

ultimate goal of understanding. That one falls within a
harmonious agreement with oneself, and therefore with
others. But this is not our current situation. Our current
situation, in relationships, is one of continuous
disagreement; continuous discord and continuous
conflict. And it's this conflict, and continuous fighting in
relationships, primarily for dominance, that continues
this suffering that we induce upon each other.
Emotional Literacy is the only avenue that I have seen
for humanity out of its current situation.

004 Commentary On Claude Steiner #2 4:55

Claude Steiner continues, "Through this training," he

says 'training', because Emotional Literacy must be
learned, "you will become an emotional gourmand -
aware of the texture, flavor and aftertaste of your
emotions."

Each emotion is different. It has a different use. It has a

different source. It has a different feeling. It's
accompanied by different kinds of thoughts. Different
emotions produce different kinds of behaviors. And
Claude Steiner is making us aware that we can
differentiate the texture and flavor of our emotions.

And he makes another very interesting statement about

the aftertaste of our emotions. That our emotions leave
an impression upon our mind, in our memory, after
they've occurred. By tapping into our memory, we can
discover the aftertaste of an emotion.

We can also learn if we used that emotion

appropriately, functionally. When I say functionally, a
functional emotion, did the use of that emotion help us
to get what we needed, or did the use of that emotion
turn out to hinder us from getting what we needed?
Claude Steiner continues, "You will learn how to let your
rational skills work hand-in-hand with your emotional
skills."

Our rational skills, in many ways, work independently

from our emotional skills. And by doing so, creates an
imbalance, because where emotion does not match our
intellect, we have created within ourselves discord.

As Claude Steiner says, "You will learn how to let your

rational skills work hand-in-hand with your emotional
skills."

We use our rational skills to make decisions. If we are

unaware of our emotional associations with our
decisions, we can often find them in conflict, working
against each other, defeating each other. But through
Emotional Literacy, we can learn how our decisions
affect our emotions, and how our emotions affect our
decisions, and how, when they work together, work for
our benefit.

Emotional Literacy is not limited to the training or

education in emotions. Emotional Literacy is a holistic
educational process - in which we learn about the
human self as a whole.

With Emotional Literacy we learn about our needs, our

emotions, our intellect and our relationships. And what
we learn are skills. What we grow are capacities. And
what we achieve is our highest possibilities.

Claude Steiner continues, "Adding to your ability to

relate to other people."

Human beings, functioning to survive, have developed

social instincts. And a large part of our mental
capacities are devoted to relating to other people.
Knowing how to relate intellectually, knowing how to
relate emotionally, knowing how to relate to others in
our behavior - is the very foundation of our emotional
condition. When we relate to others poorly, our social
condition will be poor.

Claude Steiner continues, "Hence, you will become

better at everything you do with others: parenting,
partnering, working, playing, teaching and loving."

These are all social skills: parenting, partnering,

working, playing, teaching. Emotional Literacy is the
process by which we enhance our social abilities, our
social skills, and our capacities to interact with others.

005 Commentary On Susie Orbach #2 3:35

At the Antidote Website Susie Orbach wrote, "Our aim is

to create an Emotionally Literate Culture, where the
facility to handle the complexities of emotional life is as
widespread as the capacity to read, write and do
arithmetic."

Emotional Literacy is a cultural enhancement achieved

through education. In which we are not only expanding
the capacities of our emotions, but also we are
expanding the capacity of our intellect.

We are giving ourselves more choices in our behaviors'

to others in our relationships. And we are learning how
better to fulfill our own needs, thereby bringing more
satisfaction into our lives.

Our culture is going round and round in circles with the

same emotional responses. We are trapped inside of our
own emotions.

It's our emotions which create our culture, which create

our social structures. A change to our society will only
come from a conscious and informed effort through
education - to discover new ways to respond to each
other.

These new ways are known. For example, learning how

to cooperate with each other rather than compete.
Learning how to treat others with respect and dignity,
rather than trying to dominate them. We create our own
misery in our society.

We beat each other down, as we struggle to make it to

the top. And in doing so others are trying to beat us
down. And no one ever really makes it to the top. It's
just a continuous process of pain inflicted on each other
by our own behavior, which makes all of us numb to our
emotions, and makes us incapable of utilizing them in
ways which are beneficial, and in ways which will
enhance our own survival.

So this statement by Susie Orbach is of tremendous

importance, because she says our aim is to create an
Emotionally Literate Culture. It means we have to
create it, because we don't have an Emotionally Literate
Culture. Our culture is emotionally illiterate. Each one of
us every day suffers the consequences of that illiteracy.

Susie Orbach continues, "Where the facility to handle

the complexities of emotional life is as widespread as
the capacity to read, write and do arithmetic."

I particularly like this statement. It implies we can learn

this. It's within our current educational technology, if we
have the will to pursue it.

006 Commentary On Peter Sharp 7:04

Peter Sharp, Psychologist, wrote in his book, Nurturing

Emotional Literacy, "Nurturing Emotional Literacy helps
people to recognize, understand, handle and
appropriately express their emotions. How we manage
our emotions, and the positive impact that Emotional
Literacy can have on improving standards in schools
has been overshadowed recently by the attention given
to the three R's. This handbook seeks to redress this,
and looks at the importance of the fourth 'R'
relationships."

I like this particular statement by Peter Sharp, because

it defines Emotional Literacy in the context of
relationships. Which he describes in education as the
fourth 'R'. In our schools children are put together in a
classroom, and they are taught how to read, write and
do arithmetic. But they're not taught how to interact
with one another. Even though we put them in the same
room together, and we force them to interact with one
another, yet we give them no guidance.

Peter Sharp also reiterates and agrees with the other

definitions of Emotional Literacy, that we've already
heard. That he says, "Emotional Literacy helps people to
recognize, understand, handle and appropriately
express their emotions."

But before we can teach children about how to

appropriately express emotions, we as adults must
learn how to appropriately express our emotions. We
must educate ourselves, before we can educate our
children. And this is extremely difficult for adults to
learn how to, and to relearn how to respond in
relationships.

Emotional Literacy for adults is fundamentally different

than the education of children in Emotional Literacy.
And the reason for that is - that during our own
emotional development as children, we have
constructed automatic behaviors in response to our
needs; and in relationship to acquiring those needs
through others.
We have learned, and we have made a habit out of our
negative emotions. And it's extremely difficult to
change these habits. It's much easier to teach children
before their habits have formed, but once our emotional
habits have taken up residence in the neurological
networks of our brain, it's very hard to change those
neurological networks, though it is possible.

It is possible through the process of education. It is

possible for us as adults to modify our own behaviors,
and to modify the way we feel, and to change our
perception.

Emotional Literacy will never become a part of the lives

of children, until it becomes a part of the lives of adults.
We must find a way to nurture Emotional Literacy in one
another as adults. We must be supportive of one
another in this effort.

I agree with Peter Sharp. That the most important

aspect of Emotional Literacy is that it nurtures the
development of our relationships. Our relationships are
all that we really have. They are all that's really
important in life.

Western culture has wrongly made of the highest

importance the pursuit of money. And we do this at the
expense of our relationships. We do this at the expense
of our emotional happiness, because the pursuit of
money is not the same as learning the capacity, and the
potential, of our relationships. So I agree with Peter
Sharp. The fourth 'R' in education, whether it's for
adults or children, is relationships.

And it is of the greatest importance that we understand

the value of our fellow human beings, and that we put
money, and its pursuit, in its proper perspective.
Whenever I think about money and relationships, it
always reminds me of Howard Hughes, who spent his
entire life accumulating wealth, until he became the
richest man in the world. What he was unable to
cultivate were human relationships. For he saw other
people as only objects of his benefit, of his use; whether
it was using starlets that worked under contract for him
sexually, or using the people around him to help make
himself rich. The end of his life is a sad and pathetic tale
of a lonely, narcotic addicted man - who saw no value in
other people.

Relationships are incomparable with money. They are

not in the same category. We can't even say our
relationships are priceless, because to do so implies to
put a value on them, a monetary value. And there is no
monetary value that can be placed on relationships. So
Western culture has been barking up the wrong tree,
has been walking down the wrong alley, and has found
itself pursuing the object that ultimately becomes the
cause of its own misery. Because when we place the
value of money over relationships, people become
property, commodities, something we buy, something
we sell, something we trade.

007 Commentary On Asuman Martone 4:55

Asuman Martone, a Transactional Psychologist, wrote,

"Emotional literacy is the recognition and consequent
development of skills and abilities to deal with our many
powerful forces. We must learn about our emotions
before we can climb to the next level of development."

Of all the definitions of Emotional Literacy, this one has

the most profound implications. The statement that,
"Emotional Literacy is the recognition and consequent
development of skills and abilities," is a very clear
picture of what Emotional Literacy is. Because it's the
development of skills which help us as human beings to
fulfill our needs. And it's only through need fulfillment,
that we achieve satisfaction in our lives. So Emotional
Literacy is the development of skills, that help us fulfill
our needs and achieve satisfaction.

She says that, "It gives us abilities to deal with our

many powerful forces."

That Emotional Literacy is not a concept confined to

emotions. It's a concept which encompasses the whole
of a person. That each person has many powerful forces
within them, the power to create, the power to destroy.
And it's how we harness these powers, that makes our
lives either empty or full.

What powerful forces is Emotional Literacy going to

enhance? First, a human being is a composition of
needs. These needs are our motivations, and all of the
rest of the powers within us revolve around satisfying
those needs. So Emotional Literacy has, as its
foundation, education in need fulfillment skills - using
our other powerful forces of emotions, intellect and
relationships. And by becoming skilled in these, through
Emotional Literacy, we achieve the satisfaction of our
needs.

We are adversely affected when our needs are not met.

Psychologist Abraham Maslow described this thwarting
of our needs as the cause of neurosis and human
psychopathology. That as our needs are thwarted, we
develop unwanted emotions and behaviors, which are
both self-destructive and destructive to others.
Therefore, Emotional Literacy is an education in how to
overcome the habit of not getting what we need.

Asuman Martone continues, "We must learn about our

emotions before we can climb to the next level of
development."
Human beings are fortunate, because mammals have
emotions. They have fear. They have aggression. They
have domineering behaviors and social structures. But
they don't have the intellect to understand, nor the
ability to change their own nature.

That we start with emotions is clear. That emotions

motivate our behavior is obvious. And the only way to
make our emotions work for us is by causing them to
have a closer match to our environment and our
circumstances. The only way to make this change is
through learning. And it's through learning, and
subsequent growth, that we climb to the next level of
development.

Abraham Maslow has written extensively on human

development, and spoke eloquently about human
potential. That man doesn't have to be a static
creature. That human development is a lifelong
adventure. And Emotional Literacy will rely heavily on
the work of Abraham Maslow in the education of human
potential.

008 Commentary On Paula Cole 2:59

I have always liked this song by Paula Cole. Paula Cole,

Musician and Songwriter, wrote in her song, The Ladder,

"I am climbing a ladder of urgency.

"Climbing a ladder of hope.

"Climbing a ladder of my emotions.

"Climbing a ladder of unraveling rope."

Understanding our emotions: being able to identify

them; being able to recognize them; being able to
categorize them into function; and what they do for us;
and how they are used; and how they affect others, and
what they mean to us, is like climbing a ladder of
emotional development.

The hope is that our emotions are not a static thing. But
that our emotions can develop into wondrous feelings -
that bring joy to our lives. And it's this process of
learning about our emotions, this process of education -
which will unravel the mystery of our emotions, and
reveal unto us the knowledge of ourselves.

Paula Cole's song ends,

"I am only one thing.

"One thing I see.

"One thing I feel.

"I am the ladder."

The ultimate responsibility for your own emotions, and

whether or not you can bring change to them, lies with
you. Because each of us has defense mechanisms;
which are also emotions; which block out influences;
which may help us to develop. Ultimately, the
responsibility lies with you. At the end of a day, no
education process, or no teacher can break that shell,
that we use to protect ourselves from our own
emotions. That we have to be the ladder of our own
lives. That we have to be the motivation for our own
development.

Paul Cole wrote, "Climbing a ladder of my emotions.

Climbing a ladder of unraveling rope." An analogy for
emotions has been the layers of an onion. And when
you peel one back - a new emotion arises. Thus,
unraveling the mystery of our emotions.
It's when the person goes inside themselves and
unravels their own emotions, using their intellect, that
they begin to discover who and what they are.

009 Commentary On Mark Zimmerman 21:04

I would like to conclude with a quote, which I have

written, and which can be found at my Website:
emotionalliteracyeducation.com.

There I wrote, "Emotional Literacy Education is the

refinement of a knowledge base that has been around
for thousands of years. It has been the focus of religion,
philosophy, science and psychology. It is Self-Knowledge
which has been formulated into a language of emotions
which can be taught."

For Emotional Literacy to progress, it needs one more

component to its definition. That component is
education. Education in the tradition of an educational
system.

What truly makes modern culture stand apart from past

cultures is our educational system. It is truly the great
success story of the last century. For education is the
foundation of our culture. Without education there
would be no doctors or engineers or musicians or
artists. Without education, we would all be illiterate -
unable to read, unable to write, unable to think. Without
education, without the ability to read, learning,
development and human potential cannot be
actualized.

So Emotional Literacy, to make it complete, needs one

more concept in its definition. And that concept is
education.

So I start my quote, "Emotional Literacy Education."

How are we going to become Emotionally Literate?
through education.

Education is a technology that we have developed over

the past 100 years. Education is a process that we have
refined over the past 100 years. Although education still
remains an art, it is also a science. And it has proven
that we can develop children, and give them skills that
they will use for a life time.

How do we become Emotionally Literate? How do we

acquired the skills of Emotional Literacy? It's only
through an education process. And that's where we run
into our own limitation.

What is this educational process through which we learn

these skills?

"Emotional Literacy Education is the refinement of a

knowledge base that has been around for thousands of
years." I have said this, because there have been
Emotionally literate persons who have come before us.
And their knowledge has been described in different
terminology. And it's my preference to organize what
they have achieved as Self-Knowledge. For mankind's
history is one of trying to understand who we are; and
what our relationship is to each other, ourselves and life
itself. That's why it's been the focus of religion,
philosophy, science and psychology.

Deep inside each one of us is the need to know

ourselves. For not to know ourselves, in one sense, is
not to exist. In that sense only the society exists.

In my youth I was confronted with many of the same

issues that has confronted mankind since its beginning.
Who are we? Where do we come from? Why are we
here? It's these profound questions that have motivated
religion, philosophy, science and psychology.
And in my effort to understand myself and others, in a
society that doesn't value Self-Knowledge, or the
individual, I found myself by climbing that ladder of my
emotions.

By understanding myself and others, I created a set of

books titled Knowledge of the Self in Nine Volumes. And
I found something peculiar about this series of books
that I had written.

That even know I understood their meaning, I found that

others were incapable of understanding them. And I
have spent the last 20 years trying to figure out a way
to take this personal language of Self-Knowledge, and
formulate it into a language - which others could
understand. And it's been a long journey. I feel within
my heart that I have been able to take what was
essentially a personal language, that only I could
understand, and I have developed it into a universal
language, which I believe others can learn.

And its this language, which I call the Emotional Literacy

Language, which can be used to educate others to
achieve the skills of Emotional Literacy. It was the
attraction of the concept of Emotional Literacy, that
caused me to embark on this particular journey;
towards creating a universal language of emotions, that
others could learn to interpret their own emotions.

The idea of Emotional Literacy as a skill, that was being

explored by educational psychologists and educators;
and knowing that psychology is essentially an
exploration in Self-Knowledge, gave me the motivation
to try to make this transition from a personal language
of Self-Knowledge to a universal language of Self-
Knowledge.
Without a language, we can't make a picture of what
our emotions are. Without language we have no
structure for education. All education is based upon
structure. Mathematics provides us with a language.
The alphabet provides us with ways to interpret the
sounds of printed words. And education must follow a
structure. And that structure must follow a
developmental path.

Essentially, what is being taught in education are

various languages and various skills. Learning how to
read is learning a language. It's learning the structure of
words. It's learning how to put them in a sentence.
Therefore, Emotional Literacy remains just a concept
without a solid educational process with which to base
it.

Much of Emotional Literacy is the transposing of

psychology, and what has been learned by the
psychologist in the office with their client; and now it's
just being transferred to the classroom. Anger
management for children, anti-bullying programs are
Band-Aids. Because they do not represent a complete
educational system either for children or adults. And as
long as we cling to this, Emotional Literacy won't go
anywhere. Because people will not be able to learn.

What I have done with my own personal Self-Knowledge

is that I have formulated it into a language of emotions
which can be taught. Because I have created a
structured language. And it is taught through the
structure, through the terminology, through the
vocabulary.

I continue, "The fundamental principle of Emotional

Literacy Education is the need for the individual to
understand him or herself and others. The current
educational system is based upon the recognition of the
need for the individuals to learn how to read, write and
do arithmetic. These skills are taught for the economic
benefit of the child. Happiness is an emotional state as
well as an economic state. What we, as adults, were not
taught in school - is how to achieve happiness."

Without the goal of happiness, Emotional Literacy has

no meaning. There has to be some emotional state that
we are trying to achieve. There has to be a reason for
the educational process. There has to be a reward for
the person who seeks Emotional Literacy and Self-
Knowledge. So anything less than happiness as the goal
will keep mankind where it's at.

We were not taught how to be happy in school. They

were preparing us to be of a part of an economic
system, so that we could fulfil our basic needs of food,
clothing and shelter. But at the end of the day when we
come home from work, and we are full because we've
eaten, an emptiness still lingers inside of us. Some
emotional emptiness, something in us has not been
fulfilled. Some human potential in us has gone
untapped. Therefore, the goal of Emotional Literacy
Education is no less than happiness for the individual.
And when the individual is happy, the society will be
happy.

Happiness is not an economic state. Happiness means

fulfilling all of our needs. And we can better fulfil our
needs through a society that learns cooperation over
competition. Our current economic structure is a zero
sum game. And it's composed of winners and losers.
The zero sum game is a competitive game, a
hierarchical game, in which dominance over others is
the goal.

It's the structure itself that keeps us from happiness,

because instead of cooperating, we compete. Instead of
agreeing, we fight. Instead of sharing, we hoard. It's
become a world of haves and have nots. And those that
have are no happier than those that have not.

But society has come to believe that money is the

answer to everything including emotional happiness,
but the experience of Howard Hughes proves that that's
false.

We must find compassion for one another as adults,

forgive our past and work towards an Emotionally
Literate Culture. Because that's the only way that we're
going to achieve happiness as a society, together.

I further wrote, "Emotional Literacy Education is based

upon an Emotional Literacy Vocabulary."

I have taken Self-Knowledge, and I have broken it down

into a structured vocabulary, which can be used in the
educational process for children and adults. The process
for children is different than the process for adults. It is
going to be more difficult for we, as adults, to
understand this language. But it's time that we try.

I wrote, "Emotional Literacy Education is based upon an

Emotional Literacy Vocabulary. It is a means by which
language is used to introduce a student to his or her
own emotional values."

The vocabulary which comes out of the Emotional

Literacy Language is the mechanism that we use to
recognize our emotions. And not only our emotions, but
also our thoughts, and our behaviors and our needs.

We use words to identify and to recognize our world.

The way to recognize ourselves is to have a language
which is based upon ourselves. We don't recognize
ourselves, because we don't have a language that we
study that is about us. All of our language is an
objective language. We speak in terms of objects, the
car, the telephone, our job. But we don't speak in terms
of a language which is self-referential. We don't refer to
our own emotions, our own thoughts, our own
behaviors. And when we do, we do so in a way that
skims the surface, and doesn't produce a detailed
image of our emotional makeup.

This Emotional Literacy Language is used to introduce a

student to their own emotional values. There is no
imposition of values here. It's just a way of defining the
emotions you already have, and a way of educating in
skills in new emotional responses, that help a person
deal with everyday life, situations and relationships.

I wrote, "Emotional Literacy Vocabulary permeates

nearly all literature."

That was one of the great realizations that I had. When I

took this vocabulary, which came out of Knowledge of
the Self in Nine Volumes, and I applied it to classical
literature, I found that the text was peppered with
emotional content. But I also understood that the
authors themselves had a very superficial
understanding of the terminology - that they were using
in their literature.

I took the classical literature at my Website at:

selfknowledge.com, and I hypertext linked this
Emotional Literacy Vocabulary to dictionary definitions -
to offer some depth to the text. And to demonstrate
how common these words are. And how we use them in
everyday language, but actually know very little about
them.

And we don't use knowledge of these words to our

benefit. So, for me, there's been an evolution from Self-
Knowledge, a personal language that I formulated for
myself, to understand myself, to the realization that it is
possible to educate students - both adults and children,
in an Emotional Literacy Language. Which will help
them to have a better understanding of themselves and
others.

I wrote, "Emotional Literacy Vocabulary permeates

nearly all literature."

That's how common it is.

I wrote, "In what we write is how we feel, think, desire

and behave."

Our literature is a reflection of our emotions.

I wrote, "From this vocabulary a structured language

will be taught, which relates to the content of our
human selves. When we study ourselves, new choices in
our feelings, thoughts and behaviors are made available
to us."

Without this exploration, we are stuck with the emotions

that we have. And Self-Knowledge, as it's been
demonstrated through history, shows us that mankind,
that the individual, that society can have a much
broader range of emotions, a rainbow. But those higher
emotions are potentials - not actualities. Just like the
skill of knowing how to read is a potential in the child.
And without education that potential will remain
undeveloped.

I wrote, "What are the features of an Emotional Literacy

Education system?"

The first and most important component of an

Emotional Literacy Education system is a language, a
universal language, the Emotional Literacy Language.
Because in language there is structure. And it's
structure which can be taught. And from language, from
the Emotional Literacy Language, we can derive its
individual components, its parts, which is the Emotional
Literacy Vocabulary.

And its this vocabulary which can be instructed. Step by

step we can learn to understand ourselves. Because we
can use words to make pictures. And those pictures
give us a map of our emotions and our thoughts and our
behaviors. So one small step at a time, we build the
vocabulary in the student. Whether they are adults or
children. And it is because it is a language and a
Vocabulary that Emotional Literacy Education can utilize
the technology of education - that has already been
developed over the past 200 years. So in this sense,
Emotional Literacy Education becomes a normal
educational process, which includes reference material,
the Emotional Literacy Language, a curriculum,
teaching materials, activities and the achievement of
Emotional Literacy Objectives.

010 Susie Orbach Quotes 1:41

The first time I came across the concept of Emotional

Literacy was at the Antidote Website, where I read Susie
Orbach's definition. She is a Psychologist who wrote in
The Guardian on August 12th, 1998, "Emotional Literacy
means being able to recognize what you are feeling, so
that it doesn't interfere with thinking. It becomes
another dimension to draw upon when making decisions
or encountering situations. Emotional expression by
contrast can mean being driven by emotions, so that it
isn't possible to think. These two things are often
confused, because we are still uncomfortable with the
idea of the validity of feelings."

At the Antidote Website Emotional Literacy is defined

as, "Emotional Literacy is the practice of engaging with
others in a way which facilitates understanding of our
own and others' emotions. Then using this
understanding to inform our actions."
At the Antidote Website Susie Orbach wrote, "Our aim is
to create an Emotionally Literate Culture, where the
facility to handle the complexities of emotional life is as
widespread as the capacity to read, write and do
arithmetic."

011 Claude Steiner Quotes 2:22

Claude Steiner wrote in his book, Emotional Literacy

Intelligence with Heart, "To be Emotionally Literate is to
be able to handle emotions in a way that improves your
personal power, and improves the quality of life for you,
and equally important, the quality of life for the people
around you.

"Emotional Literacy helps your emotions to work for you

instead of against you. It improves relationships,
creates loving possibilities between people, makes
cooperative work possible, and facilitates the feeling of
community.

"But Emotional Literacy is not a mere unleashing of the

emotions - it is also learning to understand, manage
and control them.

"Being Emotionally Literate means that you know what

emotions you and others have, how strong they are,
and what causes them.

"Being Emotionally Literate means that you know how

to manage your emotions, because you understand
them.

"With Emotional Literacy training, you will learn how to

express your feelings, when and where to express
them, and how they affect others.
"You will also develop empathy and will learn to take
responsibility for the way your emotions affect others.
Through this training, you will become an emotional
gourmand - aware of the texture, flavor, and aftertaste
of your emotions. You will learn how to let your rational
skills work hand-in-hand with your emotional skills,
adding to your ability to relate to other people. Hence,
you will become better at everything you do with
others: parenting, partnering, working, playing,
teaching, and loving."

012 Dictionary Quotes 1:38

The American Heritage Dictionary, Third Edition,

definition for empathy is the, "identification with and
understanding of another's situation, feelings and
motives."

Empathy is comprised of the suffix pathy, the dictionary

continues, which means, "feeling; suffering;
perception."

Pathy comes from the Greek word pathos, the

dictionary continues, which means, "as of an experience
or a work of art, that arouses feelings. Feelings of
sympathy, tenderness, or sorrow."

The dictionary continues, and sympathy means, "A

relationship or an affinity between people or things in
which whatever affects one correspondingly affects the
other."

The dictionary definition continues, sympathy is a,

"mutual understanding or affection arising from this
relationship or affinity."

The dictionary continues, "The act or power of sharing

the feelings of another."
The definition continues, "A feeling or an expression of
pity or sorrow for the distress of another."

Sympathy, the dictionary continues, means,

"Harmonious agreement."

013 Peter Sharp Quotes 0:49

Peter Sharp, Psychologist, wrote in his book Nurturing

Emotional Literacy, "Nurturing Emotional Literacy helps
people to recognize, understand, handle and
appropriately express their emotions. How we manage
our emotions, and the positive impact that Emotional
Literacy can have on improving standards in schools
has been overshadowed recently by the attention given
to the three R's. This handbook seeks to redress this,
and looks at the importance of the fourth 'R' -
Relationships."

014 Asuman Martone Quotes 0:27

Asuman Martone, a Transactional Psychologist, wrote,

"Emotional Literacy is the recognition and consequent
development of skills and abilities to deal with our many
powerful forces. We must learn about our emotions
before we can climb to the next level of development."

015 Paula Cole Quotes 0:38

Paula Cole, Musician and Songwriter, wrote in her song

The Ladder,

"I am climbing a ladder of urgency.

"Climbing a ladder of hope.

"Climbing a ladder of my emotions.

"Climbing a ladder of unraveling rope."

Paula Cole's song ends,

"I am only one thing.

"One thing I see.

"One thing I feel.

"I am the ladder."

016 Mark Zimmerman Quotes 2:27

I would like to conclude with a quote, which I have

written, and which can be found at my Website:
emotionalliteracyeducation.com.

There I wrote, "Emotional Literacy Education is the

refinement of a knowledge base that has been around
for thousands of years. It has been the focus of religion,
philosophy, science and psychology. It is Self-Knowledge
which has been formulated into a language of emotions
which can be taught.

"The fundamental principle of Emotional Literacy

Education is the need for the individual to understand
him or herself and others. The current educational
system is based upon the recognition of the need for
the individuals to learn how to read, write and do
arithmetic. These skills are taught for the economic
benefit of the child. Happiness is an emotional state as
well as an economic state. What we, as adults, were not
taught in school, is how to achieve happiness.

"Emotional Literacy Education is based upon an

Emotional Literacy Vocabulary. It is a means by which
language is used to introduce a student to his or her
own emotional values. Emotional Literacy Vocabulary
permeates nearly all literature. In what we write is how
we feel, think, desire and behave. From this vocabulary
a structured language will be taught which relates to
the content of our human selves. When we study
ourselves, new choices in our feelings, thoughts and
behaviors are made available to us.

"What are the features of an Emotional Literacy

Education system? reference material, the Emotional
Literacy Language, a curriculum, teaching materials,
activities, and the achievement of Emotional Literacy
Objectives."

Lesson 2: Intrinsic Education vs. Associative Learning

The following lecture is a demonstration of the use of

the Emotional Literacy Language. The views expressed
are examples designed to inspire the student to
develop their own unique ideas, language and
Emotional Literacy Skills, and are not intended to
promote anyone's philosophy.

001 Emotional Literacy Education Is Intrinsic Education

7:47

In the previous lecture, I defined Emotional Literacy.

The majority of those definitions were derived from
people who include themselves as members of the
Emotional Literacy Movement. When searching through
these definitions, I could really feel how incomplete they
were. That something psychologists were trying to
implement, as education, lacked true educational
references.

The majority of the definitions for Emotional Literacy

come out of the field of psychology. And even though
there are specialists in the field of psychology, whose
main interest is education, their definitions slant more
towards the psychology field; than they do to the
educational field.
It's my main impression that the current Emotional
Literacy Movement is interested in porting techniques,
that are used in the practice of psychology, into the
classroom. There is a limitation in doing it this way. In
that education, from this perspective, amounts more to
therapy. Which is to be expected, if your field is
psychology. But what we really need is Emotional
Literacy - whose foundation is in the expertise of
education.

First, the foundation, of the education techniques for

Emotional Literacy, is going to be from the field of
education itself. Primarily because education, as a
technique, is more fully developed than psychology.
That is to say, teachers are more successful at
educating, than psychologists are at curing neurosis. So
even though Emotional Literacy has its parts in
psychology, the primary techniques are going to be
based on the acquisition of learning skills.

With that in mind, the concept of Emotional Literacy

needs to be expanded to include the entire educational
field. And all of the expertise that it has acquired,
including all of the skills of educating.

I have taken the concept of Emotional Literacy, and

expanded it to Emotional Literacy Education. Emotional
Literacy, to learn it, requires an educational process;
more so than a therapy process. Emotional Literacy is
acquired through learning and through growth.

In his book, The Farther Reaches of Human Nature,

Abraham Maslow wrote, "If one thinks in terms of the
developing of the kinds of wisdom, the kinds of
understanding, the kinds of life skills that we would
want, then he must think in terms of what I would like to
call intrinsic education - intrinsic learning; that is,
learning to be a human being in general, and second,
learning to be this particular human being.... Certainly
one thing I can tell you. Our conventional education
looks mighty sick. Once you start thinking in this
framework, that is, in terms of becoming a good human
being, and if then you ask the question about the
courses that you took in high school, 'How did my
trigonometry course help me to become a better human
being?' an echo answers, 'By gosh, it didn't!' In a certain
sense, trigonometry was for me a waste of time." From
The Farther Reaches of Human Nature, by Abraham
Maslow, page 164, 1st paragraph.

Much of what is being pulled out of the field of

psychology has been around for thousands of years. It's
very basic to philosophy. That mankind needs a basic
understanding of himself. And it's only within this last
century that psychology has begun to understand this,
and has begun to adopt these philosophies. Which have
been around for thousands of years.

So, what we have here is the convergence of education

and psychology. And it's only been within the past
couple hundred years, that education has been taught
to the masses. And within the past 100 years, great
progress has been made in understanding how people
learn. Which, even though it's been around for
thousands of years, it's only been available to the
wealthy and the elite within the societies. And now the
time is ripe for this great skill of education, combined
with the psychology of learning about yourself.

What is Emotional Literacy Education? It is the

convergence of psychology, in the form of acquiring
knowledge about yourself, with the techniques of an
educational system. It's combining the two skills
together. Taking the best from each and putting them
into a new educational process. Which psychologist
Abraham Maslow has defined as intrinsic education.
Emotional Literacy Education, from my definition, is
intrinsic education.

002 Language Skill: Dictionary Look Up "Intrinsic" 14:20

When I'm studying and learning a new topic, and I come

upon a word that I don't understand, or that I'm not
familiar with, or that seems particularly important to the
subject that I'm trying to grasp, I like to look up the
word in the dictionary. And I find this looking up of
words in dictionaries in itself one of the educational
techniques, that I personally use to teach myself.
Therefore, I want to teach others how to learn. So from
time to time, we will be going through the process of
looking up words in the dictionary. Therefore, if there's
a word I speak during a lecture, that you become
curious about, I encourage you to look it up in the
dictionary. And give yourself some time to think about
it, because it's one very important learning technique.

So, I was curious about the word intrinsic, and I looked it

up in the dictionary, because it's a keyword in Maslow's
definition 'intrinsic education.' So what does the word
intrinsic mean?

From the American Heritage Dictionary of the English

Language, Third Edition, "Intrinsic," the dictionary says
comes from the "Latin intrinsecus, which means inward,
or on the inside. Intra means within. The word intrinsic
means inward, internal."

So intrinsic education means the education of the

internal, or that which is inward.

What is internal?

What is inward?
Looking at the human body from the outside, from head
to toe, we see that it forms a boundary. That boundary
makes up a whole. Your body is a whole. And what we
can observe from the outside is the boundary of the
body. The word intrinsic is referring to anything inside
that boundary - the boundary of your body and mind
together as a whole. Because it makes up a whole.
Therefore, intrinsic education relates to anything within
that boundary. And that's what we define as you. We
have an interior. And intrinsic education is the study
and the learning about that interior.

The word intrinsic has some interesting connotations.

Continuing the dictionary definition, "Intrinsic means
inward, internal, hence, true, genuine, real, reality,
essential, inherent."

Why does the word internal, why does the word inward,
why are those words closely associated with what is
true, what is real, what is genuine? Because, as we're
defining the person within the boundary of their body,
we are defining that as the real you, the genuine you,
the true you. That which belongs to you.

What we're trying to define here, in intrinsic education,

is the education of those things that belong to you. That
are within your boundary. That are within your border.

Nature has played a very strange trick of the eye on

mankind. That trick of the eye is that we are always
looking outward. Evolution of the mind has developed
through a mind that is continuously looking outward -
seeing the other person. And what's interesting about
that is, that the eyes don't turnaround and see what's in
back of the eyes. Which is exactly this boundary of the
body. By the very structure of the way our eyes are
oriented to look outward, we have developed
knowledge based upon the other person; our interaction
with them. Therefore, we become highly developed in
our social skills, yet those social skills are lacking an
essential component. That essential component is
knowledge of ourselves. Because the eyes point
outward, we see the other person, but we don't see
ourselves.

Take the chimpanzee for example. They never see their

own face. They see the face of the other. Therefore,
facial expression has evolved from an indirect way. That
is, our own facial expressions have evolved through how
we see them affecting others. Chimpanzees have no
mirror. No way to see their own facial expression.

It's the same with the evolution of man. Our very own
facial expressions, which are so intimate and so
personal to ourselves, have evolved without our
knowledge. They're within our boundary. They belong to
us. Yet without a mirror, through millions of years of
evolution, our facial expressions have evolved in a
social context.

We only know our facial expressions, as they're

reflected in other people's response to them. That's a
perfect example of something that's very basic and
important to us - of which we lack knowledge.

We're not aware when we make a happy face, or a sad

face, or an angry face. Although the faces belong to us.
In the same way, our emotions, which can't even be
seen by others, have evolved without our knowledge,
without us being able to see them. In the same way that
we are not able to even see our own facial expressions.

Much of mankind's development has been an evolution

in his social skills. Primarily because the eyes face
forward and see the other, but they don't face backward
and see ourselves. Just like when you're driving a car,
there's a blind spot in back of you on either side - of
which you can't see oncoming traffic. The body also has
blind spots.

And even though we can see our hands, and our feet,
and our torso, and our legs, we can't see our own faces
without a mirror. And we've evolved not seeing
ourselves physically - not seeing our emotions
expressed through our faces. We've also evolved with a
blind spot that relates to our emotions; that relates to
our inner selves; that relates to our mind and all of its
functions and abilities and capacities.

Nature provided this blind spot which forces us to

evolve socially in the context of knowledge. That means
we've developed knowledge of the other person; their
facial expressions, their gestures, their postures. There
is even a blind spot in that situation. In the other person
I can't see their emotions. I can't see their feelings. I
can't see their thoughts. I can only interpret their facial
expressions, or their verbal expressions. Which both can
be false; can be deceptive.

Just like animals use camouflage in nature to protect

themselves from predators, human beings use facial
expressions. They use language as camouflage. So the
eye is tricked again, when looking at the other person.
Because there may be camouflage in their emotions.
They may be protecting something. And what that does
is create another blind spot, because it makes it difficult
to use the other person in acquiring self-knowledge.
Although it's helpful to observe others, and to
understand their emotions. In fact, it's actually easier to
try and understand yourself through understanding
others, because at least you can see their boundary. At
least you can see their border. At least the other person
is displaying behaviors that you can observe.

By the time that you have behaviors, it's too late to

observe your own behavior, making it all but impossible
to use your own behavior to interpret yourself. It can be
done, but it's more difficult. You have to access your
memory, and try to remember how you behaved in an
understanding process. But with another person you
can clearly see their anger, their frustration. And it's
useful to use other people in understanding yourself,
because they can give you clues about yourself.

These are the words that you might consider looking up

in the dictionary: "true, genuine, real, essential,
inherent, and the word that I like best is reality."

From that perspective intrinsic education means

education about the reality that is you. What's inside
you. What's internal. What belongs to you. What's inside
your border. So intrinsic education means studying
what's real about you. And one of the methods for
studying what's real about you, since you can't see
yourself, is to study about what's real about others.

What is true about you? What's genuine? What's real as

opposed to what's false? What is inherent in you? What
are you born with? And after you're born, what skills,
what capacities can you acquire?

We're all born with a specific nature. Abraham Maslow

refers to that nature as our 'specieshood.' What is it
that we're all born with as human beings?

Intrinsic education is the study of your nature - of what

you're born with. It is also the study of what you can
become. What you can become are the skills that you
can acquire. And the skills that you can acquire are
based upon your inherent nature, or that which you are
born with.

Emotional Literacy Education is the study, the exercise

and the acquisition of very specific skills, which I refer to
as need-fulfillment skills. Emotional Literacy Education
is a process by which, through exercise, through study,
through learning and through growth, we acquire the
skills that help us to fulfill our needs.

003 Language Skill: Dictionary Look Up "Extrinsic" 4:29

Continuing the dictionary definition, "Intrinsic is the

opposite of extrinsic, which is defined as the merely
apparent or accidental. Extrinsic comes from the Latin
extrinsecus, which means on the outside. 'Exter' means
on the outside plus 'secus' which means otherwise or
beside. Extrinsecus means on the outside, otherwise or
beside."

Therefore, extrinsic means that which is on the outside

of us - of our body. So, whatever is on the outside of us;
whatever is beyond our boundary; whatever is beyond
our border doesn't belong to us. It's not our nature.

The very word 'definition' means to draw a boundary

around, through words. To define a word, it has to have
a beginning, a middle and an end. And by placing this
boundary around the definition of something, using
words, you're saying what it is, and therefore by
exclusion, you're also saying what it's not. And that's
how we're using the word intrinsic and extrinsic.

We are saying what includes you by definition, by also

stating what does not include you. Anything outside
your body, anything outside of the borders of your mind,
your brain, doesn't belong to you. Therefore, it's not
your nature. It's not intrinsic. It's not what you're born
with. It can't give you any abilities, or any skills,
because those functions lie within your mind, within the
brain.

Continuing the dictionary definition, "The definition of

extrinsic is not contained in or belonging to a body.
External, unessential, opposed to intrinsic. Quoting I.
Taylor, 'The extrinsic aids of education and of artificial
culture.' "

Culture itself comes from without. Therefore, culture is

not our nature. Our nature is to become a social being.
But the particular kind of culture that we acquire is
dependent upon the culture that we live in. Therefore,
culture is extrinsic, and acquired through learning.

If you were born in another culture, you would acquire

the traditions of that culture. And these traditions, by
this particular definition, are extrinsic. They are not
what you are born with, because we acquire them. And
the proof that we are not born with them - is that a child
will acquire the culture which it is born in. But what is
intrinsic is our ability to learn the culture we're born in.
We're given that skill.

What is extrinsic is that which is external. That which is

outward. And that which is external is non-essential,
untrue, ungenuine, unreal, merely apparent or
accidental. It's accidental in the sense of it's an accident
which particular culture you're born into. Therefore, it's
an accident what traditions you acquire.

004 Intrinsic Education: Developing Understanding and

Wisdom 10:30

Abraham Maslow wrote, "If one thinks in terms of the

developing of the kinds of wisdom, the kinds of
understanding, the kinds of life skills that we would
want, then we must think in terms of what I would like
to call intrinsic education - intrinsic learning; that is,
learning to be a human being in general, and second,
learning to be this particular human being."

First, Maslow is defining intrinsic education as wisdom

and understanding. Which are both goals of Emotional
Literacy Education. He also defines it as the life skills
that we would want. And what are the life skills that we
would want? The kinds of skills that will aid in our
survival are the skills that help us to fulfill our needs, to
satisfy our needs. Therefore, Emotional Literacy
Education, as intrinsic education, is the acquisition of
the skills that help us satisfy our needs. I call these skills
need-fulfillment skills.

He goes on to say, "...intrinsic learning; that is, learning

to be a human being in general...."

Because of the way the eyes face outward, we are

missing the human being. That is ourselves. And
Emotional Literacy Education is education in learning
what it means to be a human being. Just what we are
without any cultural add-ons.

What are we born with? What can we become? That is

of the highest value to us as opposed to the current
educational system, which educates us to become what
others value highly. They too are missing themselves.
They too are missing the point of education in which
you learn about yourself. In that sense, we are all
caught up in the social web of education. In which we
are always learning what other people want us to know.
Rather than seeing ourselves, and identifying ourselves,
as a point of which we need to know.

Where is ourself? And what is it that we need to know

about ourselves?

We have a mental function called identity. And even

that mental function is caught up in the social context,
because it fails to identify a person as separate from the
social group. The way our identity works is through this
blind spot in which we can't see ourselves. But we can
perceive the social group. We can see what they
believe, and how they act.
And then to fit inside the social group, we conform to it.
Our identity becomes locked up in what it means to
belong to the social group. And when the identity
functions that way only, then we miss the crucial
component. Which is being able to identify ourselves.
Knowing that we exist. Knowing that I am. The way the
mind is setup, without an educational process, that will
be the outcome. In which we will miss ourselves. In
which we will fail to identify ourselves - that we exist
behind the eyes.

And where the current educational system will succeed

is that you will become identified with a particular
group. And you will see the group as your particular
identity.

And it will answer the question for you of: "Who am I? I

am whatever group I belong to. My values are the
values of the group."

And the fundamental problem with group identity - is

that the group itself formulated its own identity out of a
lack of self-knowledge, intrinsic knowledge. When the
group formed its value system, its behaviors', it did so
missing a very crucial fact. All social groups form the
basis for their knowledge on a half truth. That is, the
social group is the whole. The social group is everything.
And the individual member is just a member of the
group, a part of the group. And why that is so damaging
- is that the group also believes that the members of
the group are extrinsic, nonessential. They can be
replaced.

A perfect example of that is in the military. Where a

person is so badly de-valued, that they can be sacrificed
for the good of the whole. And a few missing people
won't matter, because they can be replaced. That's the
most extreme example of the logic of the social group,
when the people within the social group miss the
knowledge that they exist. That they are important.
That they are irreplaceable. That they are unique. And
that they matter to the rest of the universe. Every social
group functions along the same line. And that line is
ignorance of self, ignorance of self-nature, and its value,
and its importance.

And Emotional Literacy Education is education in the

value of the individual, but not in isolation. It's an
adjunct to the social knowledge. It's not an erasure of
the social knowledge. One of our strongest, inherent
and intrinsic qualities is that we are social beings. We
are born social. Therefore, it's not a denial of our social
aspect. But rather it's an expanded education, which
includes an awareness of the individual and the society.
Therefore, Emotional Literacy Education is also
education of our social nature combined with education
of our individual nature.

Abraham Maslow said, "...intrinsic learning; that is,

learning to be a human being in general...."

It means what are we as a human being in general?

What aspects do we all share? As Abraham Maslow
called that 'our specieshood.'

And he goes on to say, "...and second, learning to be

this particular human being...."

That each one of us is unique. Maslow likes to use the

word 'idiosyncratic' to describe our uniqueness. Being
unique is an inherent quality that we're born with. And
it's a reflection of nature.

For example, when you look at a tree, and compare it to

another tree, even of the same species, you will see the
trees have different shapes, different growth patterns.
This is especially easy to see during winter, when all of
the leaves have fallen off the trees. And you can just
see their branches. And you can see that every tree
that was ever created is unique, is different. And this is
the same quality that exists within each one of us.

So Emotional Literacy Education is where the student

learns what particular kind of human being they are,
and in which ways they're different from others.
Because we have both. We have things that we share in
common with others - that are our nature. And then we
have our very nature itself, which we all share that
creates within us a uniqueness, a specialty. That makes
each one of us one-of-a-kind. And it's only through this
awareness and understanding, do you begin to
appreciate yourself. That you're the only one in the
universe like you. I know that sounds a little bit like Mr.
Rogers, but Mr. Rogers was a very insightful man.

005 The Old Education of Associative Learning 6:43

Abraham Maslow continues, "Certainly one thing I can

tell you, our conventional education looks mighty sick."

Maslow, throughout his work, defines sickness as a

deficiency. Here he's referring to a deficiency in the
conventional educational system. The deficiency that
he's referring to, and which conventional education is
missing, is intrinsic education - and along with it
intrinsic learning.

One of our innate qualities is the ability to learn.

Therefore, each one of us has within us an innate
quality and ability to learn. Emotional Literacy
Education is also the education of the student in how to
learn. What natural abilities they're born with. How to
strengthen those abilities, and how to utilize those for
learning.

Learning itself is intrinsic. Is natural. Is what we're born

with as a skill. If education is unrewarding, unpleasant,
doesn't produce growth, then the student will learn that
learning is unpleasant, difficult and doesn't produce
growth.

What we learn in the conventional education system is

to hate learning, because what we learn has no
meaning to our lives. It's imposed on us from the
outside. And we are taught to perform tasks and skills
which we will never use in life. So by the time we come
to the end of our educational process, provided by the
society, most people are turned off by education. And
as adults the process of learning ends for them.

It's our nature to avoid what's boring, what's

unpleasant, what's fruitless, what's nonproductive -
what doesn't help us to grow. The caveat is that the
only way to grow, to learn new skills, to lift us up out of
our current condition is through learning. That makes it
a Catch-22.

Emotional Literacy Education for adults is different than

Emotional Literacy Education for children. That is, adults
have to relearn the pleasure of learning. They have to
find excitement in learning. There has to be a reward,
an intrinsic reward. Something that they feel inside of
them that is rewarding to them. Because if this process
does not take place, then true learning will not be
reactivated. If the student falls into the pattern of the
habits that they learned through the traditional
education system, then they will repeat the same
boredom, and lack of reward which will cause them to
abandon education in general, as adults, and
specifically Emotional Literacy Education.

So I want to emphasize that Emotional Literacy

Education is not the old education of associative
learning. It's not information that you must memorize,
so that you can pass a test. In fact, it's not about
providing you with information at all. It's about
informing you about skills that you can acquire; mental
skills, learning skills, need-fulfillment skills, relationship
skills - but not facts, not information which would be
useless in this kind of a process.

Abraham Maslow continues, "Once you start thinking in

this framework, that is, in terms of becoming a good
human being, and if then you ask the question about
the courses that you took in high school, 'How did my
trigonometry course help me to become a better human
being?' an echo answers, 'By gosh, it didn't!' In a certain
sense, trigonometry was for me a waste of time."

Emotional Literacy Education is the process of learning

how to be a good human being. It's growing through
learning how to be a good human being. It's learning
what goodness is. Not externally or extrinsically, but
what is good about being a human being? What
qualities are we born with? What skills can we develop
that move us toward our own personal good, and also
toward the goodness of the society as a whole?

What is good is what gets us what we need. What is

efficient in providing our needs, that is what is good.

Goodness is when we are successful, and the skills that

we used to be successful. So Emotional Literacy
Education is about acquiring the skills that make us
successful in fulfilling our needs.

006 Mark Zimmerman's Experience with Education 8:35

What makes me qualified to talk about education? First,

I spent many years in the educational system, and had
its experiences. Second, as a child, I was a particularly
good self-learner. So I lived in parallel worlds. The
education that I was giving myself away from school
paralleled the education that I was getting through the
system. And by the time I was a junior in high school, I
discovered that the twain shall never meet. That what
they were teaching me in school was not helping me to
become a better human being. It was helping me to be
the kind of person that other people wanted me to
become. And in the process it was destroying my own
innate learning capabilities. And the collision of the two,
I, as a student became more and more depressed.
Spending my days in high school with courses that I
knew were designed just to keep me there.

After a certain age, when you learn how to read and

write and do arithmetic, you have learned the basic and
most important skills that the educational system can
teach you. Then education splits off into two paths.
Those who are bound for college, and those who are
not.

Most of education in high school is related to college

prep courses. And the other path is vocational. Learning
to be a carpenter. Learning to be a plumber. Learning to
be an auto mechanic. Which are good skills, but they
are extrinsic skills. Meaning that if you do not become
an auto mechanic, or a carpenter, or plumber, or an
electrician, somebody else will. And they will replace
you. In a sense you're not needed, when you acquire
those skills, because you can be replaced. They are just
training you, enough of you to fill the roles, that are
already there.

The college-bound students get even less meaningful

courses, like algebra, trigonometry, and they seem to
just be designed to hold you over, and separate those
that can do more complex mental tasks from those that
can't. Thus, grading you, so that other people can
assess you in your abilities for college related careers.

By the time that I got to high school, I found a

tremendous degradation in the quality of education.
Insofar as it began to teach me skills that I didn't need.
And the older I got, and the further into the educational
system that I got, the less that I needed the skills that
they were trying to teach me in school. To the point
where they became meaningless as it related to me. I
became so frustrated with the educational system in
contrast to my own innate learning skills, which I was
desperately trying to hold on to, because they were
being destroyed by the conventional education system.
Because they were not teaching me intrinsic learning.

They were teaching me extrinsic learning. They were

teaching me the skills that I needed to learn what they
wanted me to know. And that was destroying my innate
learning abilities - the ones that I was born with.
Because I was not able to exercise them. And the
frustration level in me became so great, that I left high-
school at the end of my junior year. Not because I didn't
want to learn.

And now as an adult, and decades later, I can look back

and see how learning is a lifelong adventure. And the
adventure is growth through experience. It's only when
we fail to keep learning, that our lives, where we are,
become mundane. Because we keep repeating the
same experiences. We can only have new experiences
through learning, new perceptions, new ways of looking
at the same old problems. Through learning and growth
our perception of reality changes. Even if we don't
travel. Even if we don't go anywhere. Therefore, it's like
traveling, because it helps to make every day new.

The educational system failed to teach them how to

learn, and how to keep learning. Because education has
very selfish motives. It's designed by politicians, who
are influenced by corporations. Who then lobby
lawmakers to pass laws that force the educational
system to benefit the social group that we call
corporations.
So learning becomes this very narrow use of our
abilities. And when that is repeated over and over, year
after year, that little narrow part of the mind, which is
called associative learning, primarily memorization,
becomes strengthened. And all of our other abilities are
weakened through a lack of exercise. And the mere
learning through memory of repetition and memorizing
is so dulling to the mind, so boring, so fruitless in what it
produces, that we develop a natural aversion to
learning. And this natural aversion, which we acquired
in childhood, is carried with us throughout our entire
lives.

And our greatest, innate, intrinsic quality, the quality to

learn, the thing that makes us what we are, our learning
abilities, is destroyed in childhood by the educational
system. So what Emotional Literacy Education for adults
has to overcome is this lack of passion for learning.

Emotional Literacy Education is going to awaken your

passion once again for learning. It's not about an
abstract subject which doesn't relate to you, and which
doesn't matter in the end. Emotional Literacy Education
will be interesting to you, because it's about you, and
it's only about you. And all of the other techniques and
tools that are used in the educational process, such as
studying and learning about others, is just a tool to
learn about yourself.

Emotional Literacy Education will be interesting to you,

because it is about the most important subject you will
ever encounter, and that is yourself.

Abraham Maslow said, " 'How did my trigonometry

course help me to become a better human being?' An
echo answers from inside him, 'By gosh, it didn't!' In a
certain sense, trigonometry was for me a waste of
time."
007 Home Work: Dictionary Look Up 0:50

The American Heritage Dictionary of the English

Language, Third Edition, synonyms that might be
helpful for you to look up in the dictionary to get their
definition for the word intrinsic are: "inward, internal,
true, reality, essential, genuine, inherent, innate,
natural, nature and real."

A synonym that might be helpful in defining the word

extrinsic is "exterior."

Lesson 3: What Is Goodness?

The following lecture is a demonstration of the use of

the Emotional Literacy Language. The views expressed
are examples designed to inspire the student to
develop their own unique ideas, language and
Emotional Literacy Skills, and are not intended to
promote anyone's philosophy.

001 What Is Goodness? 10:39

In a 1997 interview from Mediadome.com®, Jewel

Kilcher was asked, "What do you observe in the people
you meet?"

Jewel replied, "I notice everybody wants love, everybody

wants to be known as basically good."

"I just live my life, and I want to be a good person. I

want to be happy. I want to have peace. I want to feel
close to divinity, and those are things we all want."

The singer-songwriter, Jewel, is very observant of

human nature.

She says, "I notice everybody wants love."

And according to Maslow, love is one of our basic needs.

She says, "Everybody wants to be known as basically

good."

That's because another one of our basic needs,

according to Maslow, is self-esteem. We derive our self-
esteem from others, when we're recognized as being
good. What our educational system fails to teach us is
how to be good. Or, at best, it teaches us a distorted
version of what goodness is.

Like all definitions that come from society, goodness is

defined based upon the social good. What's good for the
society. Where that fails is where it ultimately
contradicts itself. One group within the society defines
goodness one way, as it relates to their group. And then
another group within the society defines goodness - as
it relates to how it benefits them. And in that process
we develop contradictory definitions of goodness,
because what benefits one group may actually take
away from another group.

Therefore, what society tries to teach us is the good

that benefits the group. And as it relates to the
educational system, it benefits the particular group
that's in political power at the time. So our definitions of
being good fail us. Because while we think we're being
good, as defined by one group; another group is tearing
down our self-esteem, by telling us what we're doing is
wrong, is bad, is detrimental. And it probably is
insomuch as it relates to their group. It simply adds to
the confusion of what goodness is.

Everybody wants to be known basically as good. But

what is good? What is good for the individual is good for
all individuals. As if individuality were defined as a
group. And we all belong to that group, because we are
all by nature individuals - separate human beings. From
that perspective defining what is good has a
commonality to it. What's good for the individual is that
which satisfies their needs. Skills that one develops
towards need-fulfillment, and the subsequent success of
satisfying a need - is what is basically good for the
individual. Because an individual whose needs are not
satisfied is a threat to all of us. It's in our thwarted
needs that psychopathology, that neurosis develops.
And these are detriments to everyone.

A person who can satisfy their own needs is a good

person. Insomuch as they are not threatening to others.
Therefore, the basic satisfaction of needs for the
individual creates and fosters the goodness of the
society as a whole. It develops health for the society by
reducing neurosis and psychopathology within the
group.

Our scariest encounters in the society come from a

group, which shares some neurosis. And the root of all
neurosis is the individual who can't satisfy a need. And
when this becomes manifested as a group neurosis, it
becomes strengthened by the fact it is shared amongst
many people. Which can endanger other groups and
individuals.

The best examples that I can give of group neurosis,

that became a detriment to the society, to the
individual, to groups within the society, and the world as
a whole, was the evolution of the Nazi Party in Germany
and Communism under Stalin in Russia.

When the individual is not taught how to be good, is

unable to fulfil a basic human need in themselves, the
frustration of the individual can become a cancerous
hatred, as we saw in Adolf Hitler. Or, an out of control
paranoia that we saw in Joseph Stalin.
When enough people in the society share the same
neurosis, they can mass together in groups, and vent
their frustration out on their own people - within their
own society. They can be strong enough to challenge
other nations to draw them into war. Such that we're all
made to suffer.

What happened in Germany, and what happened in

Russia, happened again in Cambodia in the killing fields
of the Khmer Rouge. It happened in the last decade in
Rwanda, where 750,000 people were hacked to death.

So this condition didn't end with the Nazis. It didn't end

with the death of Stalin. It didn't cease because
communism failed as an economic system. Because the
condition of man remains exactly the same.

There is no education to teach people how to be good.

And Jewel Kilcher says, "Everybody wants to be known

as basically good."

Society always comes from the past. The rules for a

social group always come from the past. And up until
this time in history, we haven't dealt with an
educational system which teaches the student how to
be good. We're left with a legacy of being compelled to
join social groups and organizations that are
fundamentally self-invested, of self-interest, selfish self-
interest. Which is designed only to benefit the group to
which you belong. That kind of social technology just
sets up competition between social groups. In which the
game is fighting and war. Whoever wins, wins all.

This is the learning pattern that we are molded into.

Which is self-contradictory regarding the individual
becoming good. When you're forced to participate in a
social group, which is essentially not concerned with
your needs; and helping you to fulfill your needs, or
helping you to develop skills so that you can fulfill your
own needs; when the social group is concerned only
with fulfilling its own group needs, the needs of the
individual are ignored.

Through that process of not caring about the needs of

the individual, the individual's needs go unfulfilled. They
become frustrated. That frustration grows into hatred.
And it's almost as if at that point you're now ready to be
a part of the group.

002 The Thwarted Needs of the Individual 7:10

I've always wondered, if Adolf Hitler, as a youth, if he

had been accepted into the school of art in Vienna in
which he applied, if the whole Nazi thing would have
never happened? He applied at an art school, and he
was not accepted. His basic fundamental need was
thwarted. He saw himself as an artist. He wanted to
develop his artistic skills. And if he had been able to
follow his passion, if he had spent his days in front of a
canvas, painting, rather than developing his political
acumen, we may never have seen World War II.

What Hitler experienced is what we all experience. The

frustration of having our needs thwarted, unsatisfied.
The pain builds up inside of us. We become bitter,
angry, frustrated. And in some people it can evolve into
such a level as to become destructive.

And in the case of Adolf Hitler, there was such a group

frustration in Germany, that he became the
embodiment of German poverty, German frustration,
German anger. Which was partially the result of the
armistice, that was imposed after World War I. I have
often wondered, if that one moment in history, would
have been changed, if Adolf Hitler had simply been
accepted into art school.
But we have a society that hates the individual,
disregards the needs of the individual. And in its place
supplants the needs of the social group - whatever
social group. And the need of the social group of the
Nazi Party became the destruction of the Jewish race.
And this is what I'm defining as group neurosis. Which
evolved out of the frustration of the Germans, and
became a group neurosis. And was manifested in the
destruction of the Jews of Europe, and the war with
France and Russia and Poland and Great Britain and the
United States.

So when the society turns a blind eye to the individual,

they fail to recognize the damage that they're doing to
themselves. The wrath that is going to come upon
them, through the thwarting of the needs. And it
happens over and over and over. And some of those
people, who are particularly susceptible to neurosis, yet
at the same time have a particular skill, as Adolf Hitler
did, he was a good speaker. They can use such a skill to
create havoc for all of us. What he did was he took his
skill, and he combined it with his hatred, and his
frustration, and expressed for the German people what
they were all feeling, and brought them together as a
group into a group neurosis.

And through that he caused devastation and

destruction to much of humanity. And we have a very
similar, yet for which I don't know the exact details of
Stalin's neurosis, his paranoia. It still led to the death of
20 million Russians through starvation, labor camps and
imprisonment. And in which he continuously threatened
the rest of the world with his military and nuclear
weapons.

That the only way to prevent this kind of social neurosis,

which is far more dangerous than the neurosis of the
pathology of the individual, the only way to prevent it is
we have to care about the needs of the individual. And
provide them with an educational system, that shows
them how to satisfy their needs.

By preventing the build up of frustration in the

individual, ultimately, we're preventing the buildup of
the frustration within the social group. Who is the most
dangerous, because they can generate the most
destructive power.

So if you want to fix the society, you have to think about

fixing the individual. Ignoring the individual, allowing
neurosis to build up, frustration to build up within the
individual, not giving them a satisfactory life, is a
danger to all of us.

What I find contradictory in the psychology of the social

group, is that they see the individual as the greatest
threat to the society. But from this perspective, it's not
the individual who's a threat to the society. From this
perspective it's the neurotic society which is a threat to
itself, to other groups within the society.

And the first person that they go after is the weakest

person. Because of their neurosis, they go after the
weakest in the society first. Just like the Nazis went
after the Jews, because they were a minority within
their country. The society picking on the weakest first,
in its neurosis, goes out to destroy, goes out to conquer,
goes out to kill.

The biggest threat to society is not the individual. The

biggest threat to society is the neurosis of the social
group, because it is far stronger than the neurosis of
any one single individual. Yet, they're interrelated. If
you don't solve the problems of the individual, and their
frustration, they will use the social instinct to form
groups, which become destructive to the society itself.

003 How We Become Happy 5:28

Jewel Kilcher continues, "I just live my life and I want to
be a good person."

It is a basic fundamental need of all of us. Because

when we are good, we feel good. When we feel good,
we do good. When we do good, we're recognized as
being good. And when we're recognized as being good,
we get self-esteem.

And that's what we teach in Emotional Literacy

Education. Not a specific dogma about what goodness
is, but about a set of skills that teach the student how to
satisfy the desires. How to fulfil their needs. How to
avoid frustration. How to be fulfilled as a human being.
Rather than frustrated and empty, as the result of a
society that makes every attempt to get for itself, and
accumulate for itself.

She continues, "I want to be happy."

It's a simple observation. Everybody wants to be happy.

And how we become happy is by acquiring a set of
skills, that helps us to get what we need. Then, we
experience satisfaction. And through the skills
themselves, there's a certain sense of happiness. A
certain sense of joy that comes with the performance of
a skill that gets you what you need.

So goodness is not a dogma, or a set of beliefs. You are

good if you do this, and you are bad if you do that,
never has brought a single human being to any kind of
happiness. Because that's associative learning. That's
being told by the society. And memorizing what the
society tells us. That if we do such and such a good
thing, we are good. And that if we do such and such a
thing, we are bad. But it fails because the person isn't
acquiring the skills to satisfy their needs.
Jewel continues, "I want to have peace."

Peace is feeling satisfied. For example, when we

become hungry, food is the object. We say that we need
food. Food is the need, but hunger is the drive. Hunger
is the displeasure. Hunger is the annoyance. Hunger is
the irritation. That effects us physically, and it affects us
emotionally.

Have you ever noticed that when you become hungry,

which is a physical feeling, emotionally you change. And
you become grumpy. You become irritable. So emotions
are connected to physiological conditions. And it's skills
that we have to acquire, so that we can manage our
needs.

When we are hungry, we need to eat. And it's a simple,

most basic need. But it's an example of when, after you
eat, the hunger, the discomfort goes away, and you feel
satisfied. And in a sense there is a minutia of peace that
goes along with that. A minutia of satisfaction.

So these are the skills. These are the goals of Emotional

Literacy Education. To teach the skills that help people
to satisfy their own needs.

Jewel continues, "I want to feel close to divinity, and

those are things we all want."

Those are things that we all need. Some things that we

want, we can actually do without. And what Maslow
clearly teaches, what Maslow has discovered, as a
scientist, and as a psychologist, is that we all have
needs. Things that we can't live without. That if we do
live without them, we become neurotic. We become
frustrated. We burn inside - seethe, ache.

And it builds up in the human psyche. And it seeks an

outward expression. And that outward expression
maybe alcoholism. It may be suicide. It may be the
compulsion to form a neurotic group, who vents its
frustration on other people who are weaker than them,
like the Nazi Party. It's all connected. So these are
things that we all need.

004 Human Education 6:36

In his book, The Farther Reaches of Human Nature,

Abraham Maslow wrote, "If one took a course or picked
up a book on the psychology of learning, most of it, in
my opinion, would be beside the point - that is, beside
the 'humanistic' point. Most of it would present learning
as the acquisition of associations, of skills and
capacities that are external and not intrinsic to the
human character, to the human personality, to the
person himself." From The Farther Reaches of Human
Nature, by Abraham Maslow, page 162, 1st paragraph.

The main point that Maslow is trying to make, in the

first sentence, is that the current education system is
being implemented and taught from a very particular,
and in my opinion, a very narrow point of view. And that
point of view comes from the society, and how it looks
upon the student.

And the educational values, for the educational system,

comes from a very basic human instinct of selfishness.
Because what the society is asking is, "What can the
student do for me? What can I make the student
become, so that it will benefit me, the society."

And Maslow is pointing out, that there are other points

of view. Different questions a person can ask from
which they will get a different type of educational
system. The point of view from which Maslow is
approaching the question about education is the
humanistic point of view.
The root word of humanistic is human - human
education. What is it that the human needs to know to
survive? Since Maslow concerns himself with survival as
the fulfillment of human needs. And since he defines
human needs in a hierarchical fashion, where he states
that when one need presents itself, then the organism
seeks to satisfy that need. And when that need is
satisfied, another need emerges.

And from this perspective, we have a hierarchical

succession of needs. That are also related to our own
personal growth and happiness. First, we've satisfied
the simpler needs. And then the more complex needs.
Which produce greater happiness and satisfaction.
Which require greater skill to satisfy or to accomplish.
Then, we have a system of needs which is perpetually
challenging our growth. And that's what it means to be
human.

Abraham Maslow wrote, "If one took a course or picked

up a book on the psychology of learning, most of it, in
my opinion, would be beside the point - that is, beside
the 'humanistic' point."

From The American Heritage Dictionary of the English

Language, Third Edition, a dictionary definition for the
word 'humanism' is "A system of thought that centers
on human beings and their values, capacities and
worth."

"Humanism," the dictionary says, "concerns with the

interests, needs and welfare of human beings."

There are two fundamental ways to define what a

human is. One way is to define a human in their social
context. What group they belong to. What culture they
belong to. What religion they belong to. The other way,
to define a human being, is simply to ask the question,
"What is a human being?" And when we ask that
question, we find out that the socialization of the human
is just one aspect of the human being.

The way education is currently setup, it teaches that

the human is a part of the society, rather than the other
way around. In which being a social creature is only a
part of being human. So all education is directed
towards socialization - to make the person conform to
the society.

Humanism is a system of thought that centers on the

human being, as an individual; and what capacities,
what abilities, what values are innate inside them.

There was a time in history when people believed that

the sun revolved around the Earth. And it was a fallacy
based upon a lack of knowledge. Education is a system
that's based upon the false idea that the individual
revolves around the society. That the individual doesn't
matter. What's important is the society. What's
insignificant, what is replaceable by birth, and through
education, is the individual.

005 Associative Learning Is Extrinsic Education 7:48

Maslow states, "...most of it...would present learning as

the acquisition of associations, of skills and capacities
that are external and not intrinsic to the human
character, to the human personality, to the person
himself."

Most of it, the educational system, presents learning as

the acquisition of associations. Which is not a way of
acquiring knowledge. Knowledge is based upon
experience. Most of current education today is based
upon the memorization of facts, and those facts are
remembered by a process of association.
For the most part, the acquisition of information by
association provides us with facts. That we memorize
and soon forget. Spending time memorizing these
things, that we don't use and that we forget; because
it's just a memory that's not used. And when memories
aren't used, they're lost.

What you have is wasted time, wasted energy. Time

that could have been spent growing. Learning is
wasted, because then we later forget those facts.
Because those facts were useless, and didn't provide us
with any benefit.

He continues, "Most of it would present learning as the

acquisition of associations, of skills and capacities that
are external and not intrinsic to the human
character...."

The skills that we are taught in school are taught to us

to benefit the society. That's their primary function. As a
secondary result, it benefits the individual. How that is
seen clearly - is that if you pursue a vocation, and
acquire a skill, that society sees as valueless to it, then
they will make sure, that skill that you have, has no
benefit to you. So they're not concerned about your
happiness, your health, or your mental well-being.

The society is largely driven by fear. It tries to teach the

individual the things that will benefit it. And that will
keep it alive, even if those things that are keeping the
society alive are detrimental to the health, to the safety
and the well-being of the individual.

For example, the mining, the manufacturing, the

distribution, the creation of asbestos products, this
benefited the group. This benefited the corporations
who made a profit from asbestos. Even though they
knew it was detrimental to the worker, and to the end
user of that product. Yet, the profit motive is always the
justification that it is benefiting the group, if it makes a
profit. And that is enough of a value to the society, to
the group, to the corporation, to justify the loss of a few
workers. Or, the ill health of a few workers, or a lot of
workers, or, all of the workers.

Profit supersedes individual safety, individual health

and well-being. In that sense one could say exactly how
the profit motive is used. And the way in which the
profit motive is used - is the justification and the
validation of the health of the group, that we call the
corporation. If it fits, and if it matches that criteria, then
all other criteria are disregarded.

And this is the power group within the society, that sets
the educational goals. So they will teach you skills, that
are designed to benefit their particular group, the
health of the group, the safety of the group. But when it
comes down to the individual's safety, the individual's
health, it's disregarded as long as their criteria of profit
is met.

So not only are the skills that we're taught external to

us, that they don't represent our nature. They represent
the nature of the external society or group and its
safety, and its welfare. So what they teach us is non-
essential, not intrinsic, not of our nature. It's certainly
not intrinsic to human nature, or human character, or
human personality, or to the person himself, Maslow
says.

Humanism, the dictionary says, "Concerns with the

interests, needs and welfare of human beings."

Emotional Literacy Education is looking at education

from a different perspective. And that perspective is the
health and the welfare of the human being. From the
point of view of asking a very simple question, and that
is, "What does this particular human being need to
survive? What do they need to be satisfied? What do
they need to have happiness?"

And from that perspective, needs become an important

part of education. The skills that people need to
acquire, to fulfil their own needs, becomes a major
focus of Emotional Literacy Education. All physiological
needs, safety needs, relationship needs, self-esteem
needs, self-actualization needs - are all required for the
welfare of the human being.

006 An Outline of Mankind's Problems 7:49

In his book, The Farther Reaches of Human Nature,

Abraham Maslow wrote, "Such a goal involves very
serious shifts in what we would teach in a course in the
psychology of learning. It is not going to be a matter of
associative learning. Associative learning in general is
certainly useful, extremely useful for learning things
that are of no real consequence, or for learning means -
techniques which are after all interchangeable....It is
important and useful, especially in a technological
society. But in terms of becoming a better person, in
terms of self-development and self-fulfillment, or in
terms of 'becoming fully human,' the greatest learning
experiences are very different." From The Farther
Reaches of Human Nature, by Abraham Maslow, page
163, 2nd paragraph.

It is obvious from an analysis of society, and its

unsolvable problems, its unsolved problems, that
society itself needs a very serious shift. As human
population expands, we multiply the unsolved problems.
Which range from poverty to nuclear weapons.

Most of the world, and its people, live in poverty. And

now even the most impoverished nations are acquiring
nuclear weapons. The society has tried to solve its
problems through the old methods of politics, through
corporate structures, through education, and through
psychology - among others.

What we've learned is that our problems are growing -

not diminishing. We're not solving our problems through
these methods. We seem to be increasing them. There
is a lack of restraint on the part of politicians,
corporations, the military establishment, and its pursuit
of the most destructive weapons that science and
imagination can provide.

In the last century we only upped the ante on our

problems. Before the last century, we didn't have to
face nuclear weapons. We didn't have to face the
myriad of drug addictions. And now we have new
addictions including entertainment through television. It
has become a mass addiction. Because it distracts us
from ourselves. It keeps us occupied. It keeps us from
growing. It keeps us from learning, when we use it as a
substitute for growth - for learning.

And corporations are very clever in creating designer

foods. Which Western culture has become addicted to.
And its led to diabetes and the health problems caused
by obesity. The majority of Americans now are
overweight. These are problems that didn't exist in the
century before. And they are problems which are more
profound, and more difficult to solve, than the ones we
had in the previous century.

And I would like to add, as one of the major problems,

mankind's great reproductive capacity. And how its
straining resources, overpopulating the earth. And when
you combine this overpopulation with Western culture;
and the consumption of natural resources, and the
burning of fossil fuels - to produce those products, you
have a depletion of the natural resources, and a
destruction of the environment through over fishing,
through mass cultivation, through logging.
American rivers are all polluted. The greatest fresh
water resource in the world, the Great Lakes, they're all
polluted. The air is polluted. The ground is polluted. The
very foundation of our survival is threatened by our own
uncontrolled emotions. Which are a drive for happiness,
but have gotten diverted into uncontrolled and
unrestricted and undisciplined human behavior. Which
seems to be bent on a self-destruct mode.

These things are accelerating. As nations like India and

China begin to adopt the ways of Western culture.
Which science already knows, that if China and/or India,
consumes as much fossil fuel, and drives as many cars -
as a ratio of the American population does, it will be
more than this planet can handle.

From an environmental perspective we know all these

things. It's convenient for some politicians, who
represent the corporations; who are doing the polluting,
who are acting irresponsibly, who don't have any self-
discipline, whose only concern is profit - to deny
problems exist. It's convenient for them to say there's
no global warming. It's convenient for them to deny the
destruction of the planet as a whole, because they're
the ones responsible for doing it. And they take no
responsibility. And the easiest way is to deny.

The ultimate irony here is that it's not what we do - that

is becoming such a threat to humanity, but rather it's
how we do it. It's the undisciplined way in which we do
it. It's a lack in our ability to control our own emotions,
our own selfishness, our own greed. It's not what we do.
It's how we do it in an unrestrained, uncaring,
unknowing way.

007 Social Neurosis and Associative Learning 16:00

Abraham Maslow wrote, "Such a goal involves very
serious shifts in what we would teach in a course in the
psychology of learning."

Maslow believed in education. He came to understand

that psychology was treating the sick, who were made
sick by the society. And when people become neurotic,
psychology can ease their neurosis. But it's very difficult
to erase the habits learned in childhood and
adolescence and young adulthood. Because these are
the formative years. And once those neurological
networks are setup, it's extremely difficult to change
them. They become patterns of behavior, patterns of
emotion, patterns of thought, that have a physical
counterpart in the brain. A physical structure that has to
be changed - a rewiring of the neurological networks of
the brain. This is extremely difficult to change in adults.
Because it's somewhat painful to change patterns,
which have arisen as the result of our thwarted needs.
Of which the society itself is responsible.

So the cause of neurosis is the society, because it

makes no effort to fulfill the needs of children. It makes
a half-hearted attempt at filling the needs of children.
On the radar screen of society, children are the smallest
blip. And the society of adults is the largest blip. And
these adults take care of their own needs at the
expense of the weakest in the society, at the expense of
children. And by doing so, setup a condition in which
these children, into adolescence and into adulthood, are
unable to satisfy their needs. And therefore, they
become neurotic. Dependent upon alcohol, drugs,
television and cigarettes in an effort to find happiness.
To experience a little pleasure which society thwarts. It
becomes a vicious circle of the adults ignoring children,
and satisfying themselves.

And what you have is a population of children who don't

know how to satisfy their needs. Because they are not
educated in need-fulfillment. And when this group of
children, who do not know how to satisfy their needs
become adults, out of their neurosis in an unskilled
attempt to satisfy their needs, they repeat what their
parents did. Which is to ignore the needs of children - in
a desperate effort to fulfill their own needs. So you
create a vicious cycle.

Maslow uses the word very serious shifts in what we

would teach in a course in the psychology of learning.

Maslow continues, "It is not going to be a matter of

associative learning."

It has to be something totally different in the field of

education, than we have known in the past. And he's
making a declarative statement. Associative learning,
the normal educational process, that we go through,
doesn't fulfill the needs of man, except for food, clothing
and shelter.

But that's only successful in Western culture. It doesn't

solve the mass poverty in which the rest of the world is
not even able to satisfy their most basic needs, their
physiological needs.

The system that corporations have developed is not

very successful in either lifting up the Third World in
their need-fulfillment of food, clothing and shelter. Nor
is it fulfilling the needs of the whole human in the
Western culture.

No matter how many billions of dollars we spend on the

military, and on the police, our safety needs are still not
met. We fear crime. We fear terrorism. We fear the
Russians' own lack of control over their nuclear arsenal.
We fear a burgeoning China. We fear rouge states, like
North Korea in their acquisition of nuclear weapons.
So Western culture, though for a small percentage of
the world's population, satisfies the basic physiological
needs. Which is the lowest level of our human nature.
The second level, our safety needs, it doesn't even solve
that problem. Money does not solve our safety needs.

The only thing that's going to solve our safety needs, if

we create human beings which don't threaten each
other. So Maslow says it's not going to be a matter of
associative learning.

He continues, "Associative learning in general is

certainly useful extremely useful for learning things that
are of no real consequence."

Why does he say, "of no real consequence?" It's

because if our goal is to be safe, what we're learning in
school, and what ultimately becomes the social
structure, does not fulfil that need. We are still
frightened. And politicians who panic, who are afraid
themselves, instill fear in the rest of the population.

So I can state that associative learning sets up a culture

in which we have skills, that help us to satisfy the needs
for food, clothing and shelter. But it does nothing to
pacify our fear. Because we are threatened by each
other.

11,000 Americans, every year, are murdered by

handguns. It's the highest rate of murder by handguns
in the entire world. Our hostility toward one another, our
mistrust of each other, our fear of each other cannot be
solved by putting more policemen on the street, or
spending more money on the military.

Those do not address the basic, fundamental cause of

our fear. Which is a condition. Which we setup for
ourselves. We're not threatened by lions or wild
animals. We're threatened by each other. If we simply
learned how not to be threatening to each other, there
would be no need for fear. We cause fear in each other.
So associative learning is of no real consequence
beyond the satisfaction of food, clothing and shelter - as
needs of the human condition.

The second need in the hierarchy of needs, invented by

Maslow, is the safety needs. And associative learning
does not create a culture which feels safe with itself.
Rather it builds large social groups, which act like
bullies. And whose primary function is intimidation. We
can never be safe, as an emotion, as a feeling of safety,
through associative learning, because it simply does not
address the problems.

Maslow says that, "Associative learning is extremely

useful for learning means, techniques which are after all
interchangeable."

As I've stated, the society functions like a machine, and

the human being is treated like a cog in the machine.
And the child, the student, is formed through
associative learning. Molded and shaped into a type of
cog, into a type of gear that fits someplace into the
machine. And the society treats that person like a thing,
like an object, like a tool, like a device. And all tools, all
devices, all gears can be replaced.

We treat other human beings as replaceable, as not

unique, as not individual. We setup the society so that
people are replaceable. We setup the society, so that a
person has no real value beyond how they fit into the
machine. And when you no longer fit, or when they
change the machine, they simply discard you. Just the
very notion that you're treated as a part in a machine,
that when you wear out, you can be replaced by an
identical part.
That's how associative learning molds people into what
to become. Just a part in a bin somewhere, that can be
pulled out from a collection of similar parts, and placed
into the machine, easily replaced. They just order a new
part. So we learn techniques which are after all
interchangeable.

Maslow says. "It is important and useful especially in a

technological society."

It is a society which is only concerned with the machine,

with the mechanism, producing parts out of human
beings to fit into the technological machine. Computers
are just machines. Every part of our technological
society is just a machine. From the abacus to the
geared clock to the steam engine to the first computers
- are just all machines. The computer on your desktop
may not look like a machine, but it is. It's just the new
machine, the more consolidated machine. Where the
parts are smaller. And the human beings are taught
skills which fit us into the technology of how to use
these machines. And they have improved our lives, but
on such a low level that we then end up existing at.

Our belies are full. We get enough water, and we have a

roof over our heads. But deep down we feel the
emptiness of our other needs not being met; our safety
needs, our relationship and love needs, our self-esteem
needs and our self-actualization needs.

Maslow says, "It is important and useful especially in a

technological society."

And the problem with the technological society is that it

has no self-discipline. It has no control over its own
technology. The United States was unable to control the
nuclear weapon that it created. Russia had it within five
years. Amoral science is learning how to clone human
beings. Where is the self-discipline here. And knowing
when to stop. And knowing the consequences of our
own actions.

It reminds me that science has recently discovered,

psychology, that adolescent teenagers behave the way
they do, because the part of the brain that processes
the consequences of actions is yet not developed.
That's why it's easy to send a teenager to war, because
they don't see the consequences of war. And it seems
this lack of development in understanding
consequences has also become part of our culture. In
which we fail to assess the consequences of our own
actions. And we create more problems for ourselves.

And that's what I mean when I referred to an

undisciplined society. It either doesn't care about the
consequences when it knows them, i.e. the tobacco
industry. Or, it simply doesn't process the future
consequences of a particular action, as a failure of the
development of the human mind. And we all pay the
price of that. Because we all suffer the consequences of
our own actions.

008 Self-Development and Self-Fulfillment 5:30

Maslow continues, "But in terms of becoming a better

person, in terms of self-development, and self-
fulfillment, or in terms of becoming fully human, the
greatest learning experiences are very different."

Emotional Literacy Education is an educational system

that helps a person to become a better person, through
self-development. There's only one way to become a
better human being, and that's through personal growth
and self-fulfillment.

We are fulfilled, as human beings, when our needs are

satisfied. The body, the emotions of the mind, provide a
natural state of discomfort. Which drives us to fulfill our
needs, like hunger and thirst, feeling cold or too hot.

The very word self-fulfillment implies satisfaction. And

as long as we're in a state of hunger, thirst, fear, low
self-esteem, we're simply not fulfilled, not satisfied, not
happy.

Emotional Literacy Education teaches self-fulfillment

through the education in skills on how to satisfy needs.
Because when our needs are satisfied, we feel
fulfillment. We feel satisfaction. We feel comfort. We
feel peace of mind.

Human need is tremendously complex. Emotional

Literacy Education is a system of educating the student
about their needs, and how to fulfil them. And nature
provides this, as our growth mechanism. The higher the
happiness, the more complex the need-fulfillment.

For example, we are already satisfying in Western

culture basic food, clothing and shelter; basic
physiological needs of hunger, thirst, maintaining
homeostasis in bodily temperature, in nutrition. But as a
matter of becoming fully human, there is much to learn
through an education system that specifically addresses
self-development and self fulfillment.

Becoming fully human is not a static place that a person

reaches. The operative word here is 'becoming.' We are
forever becoming more fully human. And the path is
need-fulfillment, because needs are arranged in a
hierarchy of complexity - with the simplest needs of the
body manifesting themselves first through hunger,
through thirst, through sexual arousal. All are very
much animalistic in nature. In that we share these same
feelings of being cold, being thirsty, being hungry with
other animals.
And beyond that there is a host of needs. In Maslow's
discovery a hierarchy of needs, which represent our
complex nature. Which gives us the ability that other
animals don't have. Which is development and growth
into a more complex form with greater intelligence, with
understanding and wisdom, with compassion and with
an ability to fulfill those needs; when they are presented
to our bodies, our minds, our emotions, our thoughts.

We are forever becoming fully human. And as we

become more fully human, we become less like animals
and more like ourselves, like our true nature.

Maslow continues, "The greatest learning experiences

are very different."

And what he means by that is that they are different

from associative learning. They are different from the
normal educational process which we've all suffered
through.

Lesson 4: The Human Soul

The following lecture is a demonstration of the use of

the Emotional Literacy Language. The views expressed
are examples designed to inspire the student to
develop their own unique ideas, language and
Emotional Literacy Skills, and are not intended to
promote anyone's philosophy.

001 The Human Soul 16:43

In his book, The Farther Reaches of Human Nature,

Abraham Maslow wrote, "We might almost say that
these extensive books on the psychology of learning are
of no consequence, at least to the human center, to the
human soul, to the human essence." From The Farther
Reaches of Human Nature, by Abraham Maslow, page
162, 1st paragraph.
Psychology, education and science fail to recognize that
we have a human center, a human nature that makes
us what we are. By failing to recognize the most
fundamental foundation of our existence, systems of
thought, whether it's science or education or
psychology, fail to provide the most fundamental
building blocks of learning.

If we exclude what we are from education, if we exclude

our nature from psychology, if we fail to discover
through science our human center, we begin the
educational process, the scientific process, the
psychological process - in a kind of human ignorance.
Which misses the fundamental point. Which fails to
educate our most basic reasons for existing.

Maslow said, "We might almost say that these extensive

books on the psychology of learning are of no
consequence, at least to the human center, to the
human soul, to the human essence."

It's like teaching the biology of the human through a

description of just their arms and legs. How is it possible
to explain the human body if we miss its trunk, its heart,
its liver, its lungs? What you end up with, in that kind of
medical knowledge, is a complete failure of medical
knowledge in its description of what the problems are;
and what the solutions are. Because the problems of
the body are not found in the limbs.

Human beings have a center. That center can be

described in many different ways. One way to describe
the center is the declaration of its nature. What are the
qualities of the human center? How are those qualities
interacting with its environment? Without a basic
description of that interaction, it becomes impossible to
draw a complete enough picture of both human mental
illness and mental health.
This human center is so important that without it the
body simply doesn't function. Therefore, all bodily
functions interact with it; our emotions, how fast our
hearts beat, our thoughts.

To deny the human center is like explaining to someone

an automobile and its motion without a description or
knowledge of its engine. It sets up systems of
knowledge which fail in their most basic function. Which
is to educate about what is.

It seems to me that the denial of the human soul, as a

social phenomenon, not the fact that we pay homage to
the human soul in religion. Because somehow that
doesn't translate into politics or education or science.

It seems to me that this denial within the society serves

the corporate purpose. Because if a human being was
significant, because they had a soul, they would have to
be treated differently. In exactly the same way that
African-Americans were labeled inhuman, and therefore
we could treat them like animals. So it seems that this
corporate denial of the human soul serves the purpose
of the corporate value system. Denying the humanity of
the individual, denying their significance, denying their
nature allows corporations to treat human beings as
animals - as things. That are nothing but replaceable
bodies.

How the concept of a human soul effects education is

very profound. It becomes the focus of education. It
steals the glory of the society that believes itself the
essential, the center, the most important thing in the
universe.

The human soul is so significant in its nature, it

surpasses the corporate value system, all social and
group value systems, because its reality is more
important and more significant than any social beliefs
system or structure. It is a thing of nature, and has been
around longer than our social values; longer than our
corporate structures.

Yet, we have known since the beginning of man, that

the human being has a soul. When it's not convenient to
recognize the human soul by the society, it's simply
forgotten. Forgotten in the educational system.
Forgotten in science. Forgotten in politics. It's simply
convenient. Because the beatitude, the glory, the
magnificence of the human soul far outshines any social
group. So social groups choose not to recognize it.
Choose not to give it significance.

Emotional Literacy Education explains that we have a

human soul and its significance. And it is of primary
importance to fulfilling one of mankind's most basic
needs, self-esteem. Without recognizing your soul, you
gladly turnover control of your life to the society.
Because it has hypnotized man into believing that the
significance belongs to the group and its belief systems,
rather than that the most significant thing that we can
conceive is our own human soul.

And it's from the value that we give to the soul that we
derive our self-esteem. It's through the soul that we
have a relationship with the rest of the universe. It's
through the recognition of the soul that we recognize
that the universe has a soul. And that our soul has a
relationship to the universe and its soul.

Society wants you to only remember society. It wants

you to forget about the bigger picture - about man's
relationship to himself. And therefore, mankind's
relationship to the soul of the universe. That's where we
derive our self-esteem. Knowing its relationship to the
whole. That relationship is bigger than any society. More
powerful than any group. Longer-lasting than any social
organization.

If mankind has an eternity, it's not going to come from

the social group. It's not going to come from its belief
systems. It's not going to come from a paycheck. It's not
going to come from the corporate value system.

If the human soul has eternity, it's only possible source

is the soul. Such a great power to have eternal qualities
solves our safety needs, because then there's nothing
to fear.

The soul's relationship to life being of an eternal nature

is the only knowledge that can erase our fear. Because
ultimately all fear is related to death.

On Maslow's scale of his hierarchy of needs, safety is

number two; first, physiological needs, then safety
needs.

Without discovering the eternal quality of your soul, you

cannot satisfy your safety needs. And the only way that
you're going to recognize this is through growth. And
the only way to achieve growth is through intuitive
learning, not associative learning. Not indoctrination
into a culture, into a society that makes you forget you
have a soul. But into an educational system, which
teaches you not only that you have a soul, but helps
you to discover its essence. Not give you facts or
information about your soul, which is absolutely
worthless, because you can't fool your fear. It's not
going to succumb to substitute information that only
resides in your memory. Which is a small part of your
brain. Which will never satisfy your doubt.

But through growth and experience and the energy that

your soul accumulates, it will make itself manifest to
you. And through your experience, you can gain
knowledge of the eternal qualities of your soul, the
eternal qualities of the universe.

The second need that knowledge of the soul brings with

it is a clarification of Maslow's love needs, relationship
needs. If society is constantly confusing you about
relationships, what are your fundamental relationships,
you can never find satisfaction.

The social relationship is a forever changing landscape.

Like a desert of sand, it keeps shifting. Because it
doesn't have any foundation in the most significant
points of our human existence.

Politics, for example, where have they settled on any

issue? It just keeps changing, because it has no center.
It has no soul, because the politicians have no
knowledge of their soul - of their essence, of the soul's
relationship to the whole.

Maslow's third need in his hierarchy, which is the love

needs, the relationship needs, also needs the
requirement, the knowledge, the recognition that you
have a soul. Once you have a soul, what is your primary
relationship?

In a transitory world, in a world of birth and death, your

primary relationship has to be with the whole. No
matter what name you give that, by its very nature, all
human relationships are transitory. Because we all die.

There has to be something in us that doesn't die.

Something that relates to the eternal nature of the
universe. And that reveals a kind of love that comes
from the whole. That strengthens, that supports and
that satisfies this need for a relationship, which gives us
the highest reward. Which is an eternal nature.
It is not possible to create an intrinsic educational
system without its foundation, without the
fundamentals. There are some things which simply
cannot be explained about our emotions, about our
minds, and how they work, without a good working
theory of what role the soul plays in the mind. It's too
much like explaining the circulatory system without
mentioning the heart.

I've decided to include the most essential part of our

human nature in Emotional Literacy Education. And the
psychology of Maslow supports that.

002 The Self-Actualization of the Person 16:09

In his book, The Farther Reaches of Human Nature,

Abraham Maslow wrote, "Generated by this new
humanistic philosophy is also a new conception of
learning, of teaching, and of education. Stated simply,
such a concept holds that the function of education, the
goal of education - the human goal, the humanistic
goal, the goal so far as human beings are concerned - is
ultimately the 'self-actualization' of a person, the
becoming fully human, the development of the fullest
height that the human species can stand up to or that
the particular individual can come to. In a less technical
way, it is helping the person to become the best that he
is able to become." From The Farther Reaches of
Human Nature, by Abraham Maslow, pages 162 through
163, 2nd paragraph.

Emotional Literacy Education is the education of the

student as it relates to themselves. That we are human.
And that there is a particular knowledge that relates to
being human, which we all lack.

Science diverts our attention away from knowledge of

our own humanness. By studying stars, plants, cells,
atoms, everything but what it means to be simply
human. And if we were to discover what it means to be
human, as the center of all knowledge, of all education,
in it we would find knowledge about atoms and
molecules and cells and biology; about the
environment, about the biosphere, about the sun, about
the solar system. With that knowledge we can see our
relationship to those things. And the relationship that
those things have to us. Which is significant because
then it shows the whole, rather than these unrelated
scattered parts.

Like the hub of a wheel with spokes, it gives us a

beginning point of which we can see ourselves in the
picture - of the larger picture. As Carl Sagan said our
biology is made from the ashes of the death of stars.

There's a relationship between us and the rest of the

universe. And seeing, understanding that relationship
gives us the complete picture. Where studying a cell in
biology, just for the sake of studying the cell, doesn't
relate to our humanity. Or, studying the stars, just as
they relate to the planets or matter or galaxies, doesn't
clue us in on our purpose. Or, how exactly we fit into the
scheme of nature.

The study of human nature is essential to removing

human confusion, human ignorance.

Maslow states, "...such a concept holds that the function

of education, the goal of education - the human goal,
the humanistic goal, the goal so far as human beings
are concerned - is ultimately the 'self-actualization' of
the person..."

On Maslow's hierarchy of needs, the first need that

needs to be satisfied is the physiological needs; second,
the safety needs; third, the love and relationship needs;
fourth, the self-esteem needs; and fifth, the self-
actualization needs.
He is describing an educational system that is
complete. That strives to complete the human being, so
that the human being experiences the fullness of what
it means to be a human being.

We are a potentiality, rather than an actuality. And to

reach our full potential, we have to make an effort to
actualize it - to make it real.

We have to make an effort to grow. And the way we

grow is through learning. And learning has two
branches, dysfunctional learning and functional
learning. Dysfunctional learning, by definition, is a
learning process that we go through in which we never
reach our potential. Functional learning is a type of
education, and a learning process of the student that
helps them to reach their full potential. Anything less
than that will leave a person unsatisfied, unfulfilled.

By our nature the potential is there. And we sense it. It

communicates to us. It makes its presence known in our
dissatisfactions - in our miseries, in our depressions. In
one sense it's a burden, but in another sense it's a
blessing, because it's not given to most of the other
animal species.

Their potentiality is fixed at birth. A lion cub has only

one path, one course, one thing to fulfil. And that is to
become a lion. Its fullness will only ever reach becoming
a lion. Where a human being has this tremendous
growth potential through its massive brain. That when
structured properly can produce tremendous
intellectual, emotional and spiritual heights. That we
have all heard rumors about. Down through history
great men and women who have achieved a process of
the transformation of potential into actuality, reality.
So Maslow leaves the last need in his hierarchy open
ended. He gives a few clues about what it means to
fulfil the self-actualization needs. And yet, leaves open
even greater possibilities of what a human being can
become.

And the truth is we don't know the limit of what a

human being can become. It seems as if we can always
become more. And this infinite potential, when it's
denied, causes the mind, the soul to whither. To remain
unfulfilled, incomplete. And as a result, mankind tends
to act more like the animals, than like himself.

Maslow says, "...this new learning, teaching and

education - is ultimately the 'self-actualization' of a
person, the becoming fully human, the development of
the fullest height that the human species can stand up
to or that the particular individual can come to...."

Emotional Literacy Education is not about a particular

person reaching a particular height. It's about taking
each individual person and allowing them to become
the height that they can become.

Human beings are by nature different and unique from

one another. And we all have different strengths and
weaknesses. Growth itself is a branching of becoming
what we're strongest in. And allowing someone else in
the society to help us in the areas that we are weak.

That's the benefit of a social structure. That we don't

have to be everything. We cannot be every strength
that humanity can become. And there is human
enjoyment in listening, and there is human satisfaction
in sharing our strengths with others. And there is
human satisfaction in allowing others to fulfill part of our
needs.
Mankind is not really a group of separate people. The
way mankind is structured biologically and socially - is
that together mankind is a whole.

Any one person unto himself or herself is not complete.

We are complete as we join together. And that's been
both our greatest weakness and our greatest strength.

Maslow continues, "In a less technical way, it is helping

the person to become the best that he is able to
become."

Emotional Literacy Education is intuitive. Associative

learning, the normal educational processes, the
colleges, the universities, the society is contra-intuitive.
It fails to recognize what we do to each other by our
emotions. How they structure the society into a
hierarchy.

And this very emotional social structure hinders people

from becoming the best possible person that they can
become. Because when someone becomes better at
what they do, they are a threat in a competitive society,
like job advancement.

So those in power, those in control, those in established

positions make the contra-intuitive effort to suppress
human growth, human potential. And they actually
prevent people from becoming the best that they can
possibly become.

That becomes the goal of the good society. What more

can you do for your children? What more can you do for
your fellow human than to help them to become the
best that they can become? What other purpose is
there?

By taking the other route, society sets up a situation in

which it becomes the bad society, the bullying society,
the domineering society, the controlling society, the
repressive society. The society that talks about
freedom, but its behavior is to limit, as much as
possible, human freedom, human development. And it's
contra-intuitive.

Society hurts itself. Then no member of the society can

become the best that they can become.

The people who are repressed from becoming their full

potential, get into positions of power; corporate,
political, social. Then, they behave in exactly the same
way. And they work to limit the young. Those
developing, because they see them as the greatest
threat to their jobs, to their social and political positions.

So it's contra-intuitive, because the good society makes

an effort to make everybody their best. Then everybody
has an opportunity to be their best.

In the current society no one has an opportunity to

become their best. And in that sense alone, it's a group
neurosis. We have emotions, like jealousy, that act
against someone who might threaten, who might
become better, who might develop. Take our job, our
wife or husband, replace us. But this constant
battlement is self-defeating. Because in exactly the
same way that we work to prevent people from
becoming the best that they can become, the whole
society could work, so that everybody can become the
best that they can become. That's intuitive. That's
common-sense.

003 The Neurotic Education System 8:06

In a 1997 interview from Mediadome.com®, Jewel

Kilcher said, "We have media telling us how poorly
we're always doing. How raping and pillaging and evil
we all are. And on top of that, we have parents who are
quite often damaging. I don't say that as a judgment.
It's only because they've been damaged. And on top of
that, we have teachers who are underpaid and
uninspired and thus uninspiring.

"So what are we given? We're also given, my

generation, the disillusionment of our parents. We're
too young to be disillusioned. It's the people that had
the dream in the '60s that wasn't manifested. They
became disillusioned. And we're raised with their
hopelessness, in some degrees, and their materialism.

"So then, on top of that, we don't have any spiritual

leaders. We don't trust religion. We don't trust
politicians, and we're given drugs and sex and television
to pacify us. So it's very understandable where kids are
at. It's not a big mystery that we're not taught about
our spirits or how to behave.

"I was never taught about my emotions. How to

understand what I was feeling? How to understand the
affect of other people on me emotionally, and what that
made me create in my relationships? We're not taught
that kind of thing at all and we should be, because
that's human life, that's raising children, that's the
foundation, the fabric of what we are. And it's also what
the greatest thinkers understood well."

I'm including this quote from singer-songwriter Jewel

Kilcher, because it came when she was still very young.
When she gave this interview, she was only 23 years
old, and still very close to the educational process, the
educational system.

She's reflecting on that system, and she's remembering

what it lacked. What she felt was missing in the
educational system for her personally.
She begins, "We have media telling us how poorly we're
always doing. how raping and pillaging and evil we all
are."

Not only is the media, which is a reflection of our

behaviors', and the events in our lives, telling us how
bad, how evil we are, so does every part of the social
system. Media is just a reflection of a system that's
degrading of the human condition - both physically,
spiritually and emotionally. And our religions are
negative. And they paint a picture of a negative image
of what it means to be a human being; thus, from birth
eroding our self-esteem.

The educational system is based primarily on

punishment. On separating out the good student from
the bad student. Categorizing them, labeling them -
informing their emotions how lousy of a person they are
through the grading system. Through this obsession
with testing. Which has now become the peak of the
neurosis of the educational system. Because not only do
we have our normal tests; spelling and reading - after a
particular lesson, now we have these imposed state
standardized tests; proposed national standardized
tests.

Which are of no benefit to the child. They degrade the

child. They actually inform the politicians who should be
retained and punished for poor performance. In a
system that never works on self-esteem. It only works
on pushing people down. It doesn't work to lift people
up.

It says, "Oh, good you got A's! You got B's! You're
satisfactory." And the people who got F's, C's and D's
are considered lazy, or stupid or anti-social. So the
system is not designed to lift people up. The system is
clearly designed to separate people out by pushing
them down. By making them feel inferior. By making
them feel stupid. By making them feel inhuman. By
making them feel like failures.

Jewel continues, "We have parents who are quite often

damaging. I don't say that as a judgment. It's only
because they've been damaged."

And are our parents damaged? Of course they're

damaged. They're damaged from a legacy that's
handed down from one generation to the next
generation. Then our parents pass that emotional
damage on to us, our generation. And then when we
have children, we pass that emotional, intellectual
damage on to our children.

It's a perpetual cycle. So we really can't blame our

parents for the damage that they've inflicted on us.
They were damaged. They did what they knew. At some
point in history we have to recognize how damaging we
are to one another, and especially the most vulnerable
among us, our children. And make a concerted effort to
repair our damage, so that we do not pass it on to our
children.

Jewel goes on to say, "We have teachers who are

underpaid and uninspired."

If you were a part of an educational system that was

demeaning to children, that was underpaid and in which
there is a current effort by the politicians to destroy it,
you would feel uninspired too.

004 The Disillusionment of Another Generation 8:02

She continues, "We're also given, my generation, the

disillusionment of our parents. We're too young to be
disillusioned."
Every generation begins with hope and every
generation ends in disillusionment.

The hope that we're given, The American dream of

freedom, when we become adults, we realize was false.
Because as long as we do not have financial freedom,
and our bodies are controlled by corporations; where
we're going to go; what we're going to do; what we're
going to say; how we're going to think, we are in
bondage - all of us to the structure. And each
generation has hope that it won't fall victim to the
corruption of the society. But every generation finds
that unless you conform to a corrupt system, you will
not have any of your needs met.

At least if you conform, you'll have food, clothing and

shelter. And this destroys hope in each generation. It
grows cynicism, and every generation becomes cynical,
becomes jaded, becomes hopeless.

She continues, "It's the people that had the dream in

the '60s that wasn't manifested, they became
disillusioned. And we are raised with their hopelessness,
in some degrees, and their materialism."

The only hope this society offers is the hope of

materialism. When our dreams are replaced with
reality, there's nothing left but materialism. That's the
structure of the society. That's what it works toward.
That's what it makes you become.

But I would like to say about my generation, those who

lived through the '60s, that they made a difference.
Blacks, African-Americans helped the rest of the nation
seek freedom. They inspired the rest of us. The civil
rights movement was the spark that started the flame
of the women's movement, the environmental
movement, the intellectual movement. Which for the
first time began to question the materialism of this
country. And to loosen its bonds on all of us. By
questioning its true value. Its true meaning.

The generation of the '60s transformed music into a

kind of freedom. That we never had before. It was the
youth who served in Vietnam bravely, that helped all of
us to learn the true nature of war, the horror of war, the
lies of war. It was those who sacrificed that taught us
more than any other generation of warriors. Our
generation, those who lived through the '60s, also
learned of the lying nature of politics. Nixon was a liar, a
pathological liar.

Jewel continues, "So then on top of that, we don't have

any spiritual leaders. We don't trust religion. We don't
trust politicians. And we're given drugs and sex and
television to pacify us."

We don't trust politicians, because they're liars. And at

least that information is being passed down to our
children. Instead of naively believing everything that
they tell us. So it's an improvement.

Without recognition of the problem of the neurosis' of

the society, there's no opportunity to make a healthy
society. So far from being disillusioned by the '60s, it
was an awakening from a deep slumber, a deep fantasy
of the Leave It to Beaver world that our generation was
being taught by their parents.

I'd rather live with an ugly truth than a beautiful lie.

And why don't we trust religion? Jim Bakker comes to

mind. Jimmy Swaggart comes to mind. Fraud comes to
mind. Saying one thing and doing another comes to
mind. And why don't we trust religion? Ask Galileo. And
now religion, which is disguising itself as politics, is
attempting to take control of our country. Certain
persons within this country are using religion to
advance their political ends. So it's not religion at all. It's
politics disguised as religion. It's a power grab by
narrow minded religious fanatics. Who want to impose
their Leave It to Beaver world on the rest of us. And if
this generation is not diligent, and doesn't guard itself
from this neurosis, we will all adopt it. We will become
it. There will be no separation of church and state.

In the town I came from, near the high school, there

was a bridge that crossed a river to a park. And on that
bridge, my graduating class, though I never graduated
high-school, wrote in paint on that bridge their motto,
their hope for their generation.

It said in graffiti, "Love plus Hope, plus Peace of Mind,

equals the class of '79."

And yes many from my generation became lost in the

materialism of the society. But there were many others;
musicians, artists, college professors - just people who
refuse to give up their dreams.

Jewel continues, "So it's very understandable where kids

are at. It's not a big mystery. That we're not taught
about our spirits, or how to behave."

As I said that is intentionally left out - about knowledge

of your spirit. Because you are easily manipulated,
when you cannot find yourself. When you have no
center.

005 I Was Never Taught about My Emotions Part 1 8:35

Jewel continues, "I was never taught about my

emotions."

The thing that I carry with me all the time, my

emotions, are unimportant to the society. And therefore
they're not included in the educational system. And
Jewel is recognizing what happened. How could they
have missed that? For her it was just simple common-
sense. How could they have not taught me about my
emotions? How could they not have recognized that I
had emotions?

She continues, "I was never taught about my emotions.

How to understand what I was feeling? How to
understand the affect of other people on me
emotionally, and what that made me create in my
relationships?"

She's just saying I wish that they would have taught me

about my emotions in school. That's all she's saying.
She says I wish they taught me how to understand my
emotions in school. She's recognizing something
missing in herself, an inability to understand her
emotions. And that's exactly what Emotional Literacy
Education will correct. Because it is the study of human
emotion.

Jewel Kilcher continues, "I was never taught about my

emotions. How to understand what I was feeling? How
to understand the affect of other people on me
emotionally, and what that made me create in my
relationships? We're not taught that kind of thing at all,
and we should be. Because that's human life. That's
raising children. That's the foundation, the fabric of
what we are. And it's also what the greatest thinkers
understood well."

Jewel says, "That's the foundation, the fabric of what we

are." The reason that it's the foundation is because
primarily we are social creatures. Our emotions are
what drives our relationships. To be without knowledge
of emotions is to be blind in relationships.

The correlation is like a fabric. Emotions are the fabric

of our relationships. And our relationships are so vitally
important that without human relationships, the human
being couldn't survive. So relationships are a
fundamental and basic need of survival.

Jewel is recognizing here, as she reflects her own

educational experience, that she was never taught
about her emotions. She understands how closely
related emotions are to relationships. She states that
she's aware of how her emotions create her
relationships. Not knowing our emotions, we are
ignorant and blind in relationships. Which is the
fundamental reason for the high divorce rate, for
dysfunctional family relationships, and for the constant
warfare that goes on between social groups and
nations.

She's making a very profound observation by linking

emotions directly to relationships. Our emotions are the
fabric of our relationships. They are the organizing
principle of relationships. Not having awareness of the
affect of our emotions on other people causes us to
respond in relationships, which are destructive to the
relationship.

When the very goal of a relationship is not merely its

maintenance, but to generate some kind of partnership,
cooperation and benefit. In our darkness instead, we
create pain and misery. When two people come
together instead of cooperative agreement, it turns out
to be friction, like two sticks rubbing together - a
battlement ensues. Primarily based upon our instinct to
dominate each other, and who holds that position in the
relationship.

And we do this unconsciously without knowledge. It

requires education to learn about relationships and
emotions. They're really not separate. Our emotions are
our relationships.
We are not even aware of what emotions we have, or
how they are programming our relationships. She's
simply stating something for all of us. That we would
like to have been taught by somebody about how to
effectively generate beneficial, cooperative, team-like
partnerships in relationships.

What emotions must we learn for this partnership and

cooperation to occur. The emotions that we're born
with, and the ones that are handed down to us from
generation to generation are the competitive,
combative emotions and strategies of domination.
Which we have no control over. We're not even aware
that this is how we're behaving.

It's just the emotions that our parents had. It's the
emotions that their parents had. And going back
through evolution, you could see that that's the
emotions baboons have and chimpanzees have. It's
well-documented in the scientific literature that most
animals act in this way. The origin of our emotions can
be traced to the animal instincts within us. Man is finally
emerging into consciousness, and now is able to reflect
on how we have been behaving for millions of years -
unexamined and therefore without any other choice.

006 I Was Never Taught About My Emotions Part 2 9:49

Jewel says, "I was never taught about my emotions."

Recognizing a deficit, wishing she had been taught,

wishing she could find an educational system that would
inform her about her emotions, because she's realizing
how they affect relationships.

She continues to explain what is it that she feels she

needs in relationship to emotions. And she states, "How
to understand what I was feeling?"
She wants to know not only the name of her feelings.
She also goes on to state that she would like, "...to know
how to understand the affect of other people on me
emotionally."

She not only wants to know how her emotions are

affecting others, or how they're affecting herself. She
also wants to know how other peoples' emotions are
affecting her.

She's absolutely correct in this observation. Being the

social creatures we are. We are, through our senses,
susceptible to the emotions of others - to the point
where we model them, copy them. We make them a
part of our own psyche, unconsciously. And we begin to
behave through our emotions in a sympathetic union -
with the way other people are behaving through their
emotions.

If it's negative, unhappy, painful, depressing, self-

defeating, non-constructive, in the sense where the
relationship is not something that builds upon itself and
gets better. Over 50 percent of marriages de-construct,
unravel and come apart.

Relationships are either growing, adding on or they're

unraveling. I suppose an even greater tragedy than that
is a static relationship. At least if you unravel a
relationship, and there's a divorce, you have an
opportunity to try again. But a static relationship that
neither grows nor disintegrates, may be the worst kind
of relationship; fear of going forward, fear of starting
over.

So she wants to know the affect, the change that is

occurring inside of her, as a result of other peoples'
interactions with her.
Why we need to know how others influence us,
especially if they influence us in a way that is harmful to
our own psychic construction of how we behave in
relationships. Somebody hurts us. We hurt them back. It
doesn't solve any of the basic fundamental issues
regarding the building of a relationship. But rather it
becomes a tearing down.

Jewel is also mentioning her awareness that what other

relationships that she's had, like parental, she wants to
know how that makes her behave in her relationships as
an adult. She must be sensing some frustration in her
relationships, some failures, some repeated pattern in
her adult relationships, that she experienced in her
parental relationships.

She's just speaking in a very general way, a vague

awareness of a problem, a knowledge deficit in
emotions, in her self-knowledge. She's simply longing
for some answers, that can help her to break from
repeating the relationships that her parents had with
her. She doesn't want to repeat the same mistakes in
her adult relationships, but she doesn't know how.

Jewel continues, "We're not taught that kind of thing at

all, and we should be. Because that's human life. That's
raising children. That's the foundation, the fabric of
what we are."

It's a statement of fact. It's also a very good definition of

what intrinsic education should be, and what Emotional
Literacy Education is.

She's referring to the need for a type of education that

deals directly with human life, human experience.
Which is the fundamental foundation of Emotional
Literacy Education.
Maslow mentioned how his greatest learning
experiences didn't come from his degree in education.
He spoke about his marriage as being far more
profound of an educational experience, than anything
he learned in school.

Another event that he learned a great deal from was

the birth of his child. That's human life, raising children,
the parent child relationships.

Emotional Literacy Education is about human

experience. It's about learning how to understand our
everyday experiences. Our encounters which are the
most profound teachers. That's the foundation of
knowledge. The fabric of knowledge is knowing who we
are. What we are, and why we do the things that we do
in our relationships.

And she adds another important point that, "This is

what the great thinkers understood well."

That what we learn in school cannot compare to our

everyday experiences. To the experiences that are
organized by our nature. Whether or not we attend
school, we're going to have human interactions. We're
going to have emotions no matter what vocation we do
in our lives.

That's not a foundation. You may find yourself changing

jobs, changing the types of work that you do throughout
your entire life. But you will never change the fact that
you have emotions. Or that you must interact with other
people.

What we learn in school is accidental, peripheral,

superficial. It can come and go. We are not forever a
carpenter, or a lawyer, or an educator. We learn these
skills. Eventually, we may change jobs. When we retire,
we usually stop doing them all together. That's what the
current education system teaches children. It's what as
adults we all have become through the educational
system - just our jobs. That's not the fabric of our lives.

The fabric is what we're born with. The fabric is what we

have as a continuum throughout our day. The fabric is
the parent child relationship, the husband and wife
relationship, the family relationships; and our
relationship with our friends and our enemies. That's
the fabric of our lives. And emotion is a continuum
within that fabric. Which is something that the greatest
thinkers understood well.

Lesson 5: Learning to Grow

The following lecture is a demonstration of the use of

the Emotional Literacy Language. The views expressed
are examples designed to inspire the student to
develop their own unique ideas, language and
Emotional Literacy Skills, and are not intended to
promote anyone's philosophy.

001 Emotional Literacy Education Is Learning to Grow

16:36

In his book, The Farther Reaches of Human Nature,

Abraham Maslow wrote, "Education is learning to grow,
learning what to grow toward, learning what is good and
bad, learning what is desirable and undesirable,
learning what to choose and what not to choose." From
The Farther Reaches of Human Nature, by Abraham
Maslow, page 172, 3rd paragraph.

Emotional Literacy Education is learning to grow - how

to grow. Growth, like relationships, is one of the
foundations of our lives. It's easily observed in children.
What is not observed in adults is growth. That is, we can
see children growing physically. We can observe them
growing emotionally and mentally, but after physical
growth stops, there is the potentiality in adults for
continued lifelong growth.

In fact it's the only answer to the problems that we

encounter in our lives, in our relationships. The only way
that we're going to find a solution to a problem is
through growth. The simplest way to grow, the only way
to grow, is through learning. The words learning and
growth are synonymous. When we learn, intrinsically,
we grow.

What do we grow towards? What are the goals of

growth and learning? We grow toward skills that help us
to better satisfy our needs. It's a simple formula, yet
with the complexity of the skills that we need to acquire
to satisfy our needs.

What is good and bad? What's bad is when we don't get

what we need. What's good is when we get what we
need. Our needs are physical, emotional, intellectual.
Getting what we want is not always good. Getting what
we like can be bad, but getting what we need is always
good.

Emotional Literacy Education teaches the difference

between what we need, and what we want and like.
What we like can just be a bad habit. Getting too much
of something that we want can be bad.

Emotional Literacy Education teaches the student how

to distinguish between what we need, and merely what
is a whim - the things that we want and the things that
we like.

The things that we want and like, we tend to like too

much. And they become excesses. Getting what we
need satisfies our nature, and contributes to our growth.
As Maslow clearly demonstrates in his hierarchy of
needs. When one need is fulfilled, it goes away, and is
replaced by another need. Which also represents our
growth. It is as if nature has preprogrammed our growth
and our capacity for growth through our needs.

Where, what we merely want or like can actually be

destructive to our growth. By ignoring what we need,
and substituting it with what we want, what we like, we
can actually inhibit our growth through habitual
behavior, that can be bad for us. Bad in terms where it
may be destructive to relationships, to our bodies, as
bad habits.

We have to learn what's good. Not merely pleasurable,

but what fosters, nurtures spiritual and psychological
growth. As well as what promotes the healthy body. Our
body has very specific requirements and needs. Of
which there's an optimum level of nutritional values.

Which can also be a perfect example of excess in

getting what we like that is bad for us. Like the habit of
eating too much food. Or, the habit of eating food that is
not nutritious. In which our bodies can still manage to
function, but not at an optimum level.

We have to learn good nutrition, learn what we can do

for our bodies. To not only meet its basic needs, but
understanding that the body can function at an
optimum level.

Your car can run on motor oil, even if you don't change
it, but your car is going to wear out faster. It's not going
to function at its optimum level, if you don't change the
oil regularly. And knowing when to change the oil is
knowledge that benefits you and the car, because your
car will last longer.
This is just an example of how the human body also has
an optimum level at which it can function. This is also
the case emotionally. There's an optimum level at which
it can function. There's an optimum level at which your
intellect can function. There's an optimum level at
which your relationships can function.

Science has documented what's called physiological

homeostasis. And that's a scientific way of saying your
body has an optimum range in which it functions. Your
blood has an optimum range for the components of your
blood. For example, too much sugar in your blood is
hypoglycemic, which can lead to diabetes. Your blood
has ranges for all of its constituent values of salt and
oxygen and potassium and certain vitamins.

When it gets out of range, it becomes non-functioning

at its optimum level. And when it drops below a certain
range, you become ill. Other physiological homeostasis
includes the output of your heart, breathing, your
metabolism all have an optimal range.

What I have discovered is emotional homeostasis; and

intellectual homeostasis, and relationship homeostasis.
In which each of these has an optimal level of function.
This optimal level of function is need related. In the
same way that physiological homeostasis is also need
related.

When your blood sugar drops too low, you become

hungry. The need is food, but the physiological
manifestation is hunger. And that becomes our
motivation in our behavior to search for food. It's such a
basic drive that it's what gets us up in the morning to
go to our jobs. Physiological homeostasis motivates us
to maintain the quieting of our hungers, of our thirsts.

When you become tired, that's a part of physiological

homeostasis. When your body becomes tired, the
physical act is sleep that satisfies. What drives us to
sleep, to lay down, to quiet ourselves, to close our eyes,
is the feeling of tiredness. The feeling of tiredness is
also a signal of a need. That physiological need is
satisfied through the act of sleeping. What is good is
when we get the right amount of sleep. If we don't get
enough sleep, it can effect our concentration, our
immune system. We start getting symptoms, like
headaches, sore throat, an inability to think.

Our physiological needs are related to our emotional

needs, to our intellectual needs, and to our relationship
needs. What I've discovered is the four set homeostasis.
In which they all have the same characteristic of an
optimum level. And getting too much is bad. Not getting
enough is bad. And homeostasis is the balancing act
between too much and too little.

The four types of homeostasis are physiological

homeostasis, emotional homeostasis, intellectual
homeostasis and relationship homeostasis. Emotional
Literacy Education is the education in human need - as
it relates to homeostasis. In which one learns how to
balance these four types of homeostasis.

I've given the example of physiological homeostasis,

because the other types of homeostasis work in much
the same way. That is they are needs, which we can
feel. That drive us to some behavior to satisfy the need.

Maslow continues, "Learning what is desirable and

undesirable, learning what to choose and what not to
choose."

Choice comes from our intellectual powers. And when

our intellectual powers are not in equilibrium, are not at
their optimum level, we make poor choices, bad
decisions about relationships, about emotions, and
about our physical health. Because it's our intellectual
powers that provide us with pictures of our homeostasis
levels. That's why truth is such an important aspect of
the intellect. When we have the truth, we are at
equilibrium. We are at optimum homeostasis for the
intellect. We are in agreement, making clear pictures of
what's real inside of us emotionally, physically and in
our relationships.

When the intellect is not balanced, not in the state of

equilibrium, not dwelling in truth, it's not functioning at
its optimum level. The result is we make bad decisions.
Decisions which are ultimately undesirable. The right
decisions are based upon the good they bring us, the
benefit they bring us, the level of desirability.

The word desire is very close in function to the word

need. Though we desire things that we don't need, it's
out of desire that we satisfy needs.

Intellectual homeostasis, truth in the intellect, as an

accurate picture of what we need, helps us to choose
the right desires, and helps us to eliminate desires
which are harmful or fruitless. And they are undesirable
in the sense that we carry them, yet unknowingly they
give us problems. And they are undesirable, because
we want to get rid of them in us. And we can only do
that through understanding our needs.

Once our needs are met, we need not repeat and

overindulge or under indulge. We have to learn how to
choose, and also what not to choose.

002 What's Your Idea of a Perfect Day? 12:31

In a 1997 interview from Mediadome.com®, Jewel

Kilcher was asked, "What's your idea of a perfect day?"

Jewel Kilcher replied, "I love learning; as long as I'm

growing, no matter how hard it is, I love it. I love being
alive, and I think we should live bravely, love bravely,
not be afraid of a little bit of pain. I try not to shy away
from that, but at the same time to surround myself with
what's beneficial, what is going to grow with me, what is
growing with me, what helps me to grow."

Maslow and Jewel reached the same conclusion about

learning and growth. Simply because it's their
experience. That learning and growing are synonymous.
Learning is growth. If it's real learning, not associative
learning, not memorization and recital, and
memorization and recital. A tape recorder can do that,
and there's no growth.

Through intrinsic learning, growth is spontaneous. It

produces love. It sets the tone of our relationship with
everything. It opens the mind, the heart, and the soul to
everything. It increases interest in the object that you're
trying to learn about.

My experience has been that love and learning are also

synonymous. Not love for learning, not as separate
phenomenon. But that learning itself is love.

We reject what we hate. We deny what we hate. We

close down learning of what we hate. We want to know
what we love. We are attracted to what we love. The
more we learn about what we're attracted to, the more
we love it, the more we're attracted to it, the stronger,
the more intense the attraction becomes.

It's self-love, self-producing love. Because as long as we

go on learning, we go on loving the experience of
learning. Which produces self-esteem, confidence,
strength that is a kind of self-love. When we're
successful at learning, we love ourselves. When we're a
failure at learning, we hate ourselves. Everything flows
through that part of the brain, which is structured in its
function toward learning.
When we come upon something familiar, the learning
part of the brain is bypassed. When we come upon
something new, the learning part of the brain, in a
normal healthy person, is activated with the desire to
know the new thing. And that desire to know is our
attraction towards it. And our attraction towards it is
love.

So, one of Maslow's needs, self-esteem, is directly

related to the process of learning, and its success and
failure. If things are unfamiliar, and we can't learn them,
we reject them. It sets up a condition of hate for the
object that you can't understand. Which is simply self-
hate. Because the person carrying the feeling, carries
the hate. They're the ones that suffer from their failure
of not learning, and not growing, and therefore not
strengthening their self-esteem.

Self-esteem is directly related to your problem-solving

abilities. And if you can't solve problems, you're going to
have a low self-esteem. The only way to solve a
problem, because no one is going to solve your
problems for you - is to learn your way out of that
problem. Success creates high self-esteem. And failure
and a lack of ability to solve a problem creates low self-
esteem.

The traditional education system kills love for learning,

because it never asks the student what it is that they
want to know. What is it they're attracted too? What is
bothering them about something that they don't know?

Instead, we place in front of children what we want

them to know. Of which they have no interest in
learning, nor is it one of their problems. They're not
attracted to solving it.
The real learning mechanisms of the brain never fully
come on. When you repeat this over and over, and
when children become adults, they learn to hate
learning. And by doing so, they learn to hate
themselves. It's not that learning has to be pleasurable,
because it's not always pleasurable. It's a struggle. It's
an effort.

But the key ingredient of a successful learning process

is the interest of the student. That's where Emotional
Literacy Education will be totally different from
associative learning. The student will be able to choose
their own subjects, and unravel their own problems,
select their own topics of study. That's the only way that
real learning will take place.

I want to know what my problems are. And I want to

know what the solution for my problem is. I can't fix
somebody else's problem, and I don't expect somebody
else to fix mine. And from that perspective, I have to
decide what my problem is. What subject it relates to,
and then study what relates to me.

And that's what Emotional Literacy Education

encourages. More than that, it's how the Emotional
Literacy Education system is set up. There will be a list
of subjects to choose from. And the student will choose
their subject of interest that relates to their particular
emotional, intellectual, or relationship need.

Jewel says, "I love learning, as long as I'm growing. No

matter how hard it is, I love it."

Our needs are our challenge. Growth requires challenge

in solving new problems. How hard it is - is of no
consequence as long as there's progress in growth,
because one senses their own success.
When one reaches a level of growth, a level of need
fulfillment, that is its own reward. And how hard it was
to get there is forgotten, because one is living in the
moment, in the satisfaction, in the pleasure of knowing
what you didn't know before. The joy and success of
solving a problem, rather than it being a negative
experience, that is intrinsic education. It produces
positive emotional states by overcoming, by problem
solving, by reaching the next level of need fulfillment,
the joy of success, satisfaction and pleasure.

A problem with adult education, in Emotional Literacy,

that the student has to recognize and overcome, if
they're going to pursue intrinsic learning - is the
revulsion to learning that came out of years and years
of training in associative learning. Which was tiring,
produced no pleasure, no self-esteem, no feeling of
success. Which sets up the adults to shut down that
huge part of them, that is their learning, processing
center in their brain.

Because we're not going to do that. We're not going to

repeat associative learning as a method. We're going to
study what you want to study within the framework of
your humanity. And what you don't know about it.

And it's a big subject. But there is something particular

about it that you want to know. And therefore, the
student will search through the materials that are given
to them. And they will choose the topic that invites
them to solve their problem.

It's when we're able to choose what we want to learn,

that creates the kind of attitude that Maslow and Jewel
are familiar with. It creates an excitement, when you
wake up in the morning. That not only are you going to
find out something new, but you're going to find out
something that you need to know.
003 I Love Being Alive 8:32

Jewel continues, "I love being alive."

It's her mentality, her relationship to herself, her

relationship to her own learning process. She has found
through self-education, self-learning, a joy, an
excitement, a satisfaction. Which makes her proclaim, "I
love being alive."

Why this is true - is because the learning neurological

network is such a large part of our brains, that when it is
not used, it lies dormant, and reduces the overall
function and activity of the brain. And that makes us
feel dead inside, and makes us feel tired and sleepy.
And it's because part of our brains have fallen asleep.

We learn to hate learning. And it is such an important

part of a dynamic mind. Which is synonymous with our
levels of awakefulness, our levels of mental alertness.

If a large percentage of your brain is asleep, while

you're awake, not active while you're awake, it's going
to drag the other parts of your brain down with it.

Overcoming this hatred of learning is important in

overcoming self-loathing and depression. And there's no
denying that learning is not easy.

Jewel continues, "I think we should live bravely, love

bravely, not be afraid of a little bit of pain."

Jewel also associates bravery with learning. It's natural

for us to be afraid of what we don't know. It is a natural
hurdle. It is a natural challenge from our very own
nature.

The unknown is frightening. And we can live in fear,

doubt and suppress our pain. Or, we can accept life's
challenges. Which after all are only there to help us
grow, and use the opportunity to solve our problems.
Which to me is the same as fulfilling our needs.

Not to learn we are denying our own need fulfillment.

Nature provides the motivation to learn. Fear of the
unknown, it's like hunger, in that it motivates us to
action in the healthy individual.

It stops action in the neurotic individual, because it's

become learned - to avoid learning, to escape the
unknown. But it's what we don't know, that will kill us
spiritually, mentally and physically.

It's ignorance that leads us into the dark corners. It's a

lack of knowledge that prevents us from seeing the
dangers. So it's neurotic, because it's self-defeating, not
to confront your fears, not to confront the unknown.

Jewel says don't be afraid. Live bravely. Love bravely.

And don't never mind a little bit of struggle in the
process, a little bit of effort, a little bit of difficulty.
Because that's a part of the process of growth and of
learning.

After a time one becomes accustom to a new problem

arising. And we must deal with it when it happens, try to
understand - try to learn the answer.

Learning is difficult. Entertainment is easy. If you want

to be entertained, you won't grow. Through
entertainment you won't be challenged. You won't
discover new things. It's work. It's effort, but it pays off.
And the currency that it pays is your growth, your need
fulfillment, your reaching the highest possibilities of
what it means to be you.
Jewel continues, "I try not to shy away from that, but at
the same time to surround myself with what's
beneficial."

We have to learn what's beneficial and what's

detrimental. And what's detrimental can become a
habit.

If we learn what's beneficial, and surround ourselves

with what helps us to learn, then growth and the benefit
one derives from learning becomes a habit, but a good
habit, a beneficial habit.

All of life is an effort to surround ourselves with what's

beneficial, the books we read, the art and music we
surround ourselves with, the relationships that we
choose, or don't choose.

At the center is you. And the most beneficial thing is not

something you can surround yourself with, externally.
The most beneficial thing that you can wrap your soul
in, because it provides energy and power for the soul,
food for the soul - is your own capacity, intrinsic
capacity, internal capacity - to learn.

If you can muster, reactivate your own capacities for

learning, the next step is to choose what is going to be
most beneficial for you to know at this particular
moment in your life.

We don't have a lot of time on this planet. Every

moment is precious or wasted. Therefore, what you
choose to learn is of the utmost importance. We don't
have forever this opportunity that we're given as a gift.

What you choose to learn is something you have to

search inside yourself for. Only you know what's best for
you. Only you know what you need to learn right now.
How does Jewel define what to surround herself with
that she considers beneficial.

She says, "What is going to grow with me, what is

growing with me, what helps me to grow."

004 The Ideal College 17:10

In his book, The Farther Reaches of Human Nature,

Abraham Maslow wrote, "The ideal college would be a
kind of educational retreat in which you could try to find
yourself; find out what you like and want; what you are
and are not good at. People would take various
subjects, attend various seminars, not quite sure of
where they are going, but moving toward the discovery
of vocation, and once they found it, they could then
make good use of technological education. The chief
goals of the ideal college, in other words, would be the
discovery of identity, and with it, the discovery of
vocation." From The Farther Reaches of Human Nature,
by Abraham Maslow, page 176, 2nd paragraph.

You must understand that, wherever you are, intrinsic

learning is an effort to try to find yourself. In the ideal
culture, in the ideal society, there would be an ideal
college. Until that day comes, your college, your
institute, your learning facility has to be wherever you
are. And ultimately, even if you were to go to a college,
you would still have to create for yourself an
atmosphere of learning about yourself.

No matter where you are, it's still ultimately your

responsibility. It's a responsibility that you choose for
your own health and benefit. You must try to create for
yourself a space, in which you can make an effort to
find yourself.

Abraham Maslow continues, "Find out what you like and

want, what you are and are not good at."
Here, he's stating that we're all different. Therefore, no
one can educate you in what you like, or what you want,
or what you're good at. But rather that's what self-
discovery is. Starting from a place where you don't
know what your needs are. You don't know what you
want. You don't know what you like, and you don't know
what you're good at.

All of us are lopsided when it comes to skills. Everyone

has strengths and weaknesses. We gravitate towards
what we're strong in, when given the chance. When we
make the effort.

Finding yourself is finding what you're good at, and

developing it. It fosters the growth of self-esteem. The
educational system, as we've come to know it, teaches
a particular set of courses. Of which, not all of us are
good at. Some of us are not so good in any of the
courses.

But it's so narrow, it shouldn't be what determines your

choice of vocation. School for me didn't provide
education in the skills that I was good at. Which
ultimately became language and writing. But writing is
not one particular skill. I was interested in the kind of
writing that helped me to find myself. I wasn't
particularly interested in writing essays on Walt
Whitman's poetry. I was interested in using writing to
help me see myself; to help me find myself, to help me
discover what I liked and didn't like about myself. So
that I could change it. And they weren't offering that
course in school.

Yet society puts so much emphasis on the courses at

school, and so much de-emphasis on everything else.
That we learned to disregard all of life's other skills, as
we were channeled through this very narrow set of
academic courses.
Most of us didn't like most of the courses. It created
discouragement in all of us. And we thanked the day
that we finally graduated. We never wanted to go back
again, because of what they did to us. And what they
did to us was that they stole our joy in learning. They
robbed us of the opportunity to find what we loved
doing, and what we're good at.

Abraham Maslow said, "The ideal college would be a

kind of educational retreat in which you could try to find
yourself."

The educational system doesn't provide that

opportunity. Emotional Literacy Education is the
continuous opportunity to try to find yourself.

Maslow, in this particular quotation, is challenging you

to find what it is that you love doing. What you're good
at. He's not referring necessarily to a paying job. The
society doesn't care if you love your work, or if you hate
your work, as long as you show up for work.

And the educational system trains you not to find out

what it is that you love doing. When he uses the word
vocation here, he refers to it as a calling. What is your
calling in life? What's your fate, destiny.

Those are the interchangeable words that he uses for

the word vocation. He doesn't use the word high-paying
job, or rewarding opportunities. He specifically refers to
vocation in this context as a calling.

What he means by that is an inner calling, your inner

voice that tells you, "This is what I must do, because it's
the right thing to do. It's the best thing that I could do,
and it makes me happy."
Not once have I read where Maslow refers to the word
'vocation' in the context of salary. It's more of what
people refer to as a religious calling. Although, he
doesn't use the word religious, just the word calling.

What pulls you. What do you gravitate to. And they will
be directly related to the things that you're good at.
Which will reward you in self-esteem and love for
yourself.

When we take on a job we hate, we hate ourselves. And

we pass that on to our children. Our emotions are never
in isolation. That when we hate what we do, the people
around us feel it.

Vocation in this sense is equal to the discovery of self.

Because when you find out what you're good at, you
gravitate towards it. You want to learn more. You want
to refine the skill that you're good at, and become
better in it. It lifts you up. And your self-esteem will
soar. It will help you fulfill Maslow's need of self-esteem.

Maslow continues, "People would take various subjects,

attend various seminars, not quite sure of where they
are going, but moving toward the discovery of
vocation...."

How do you want to spend the rest of your life? The

discovery of vocation means discovering what it is that
you love doing, and spending your day doing it.

The expectation in Emotional Literacy Education is that

we expect the student not to quite be sure of where
they are going. I'm not sure where I'm going. There's no
other way to set up a journey. There's no other way to
continue the process of self discovery, if you know
where you're going.
Emotional Literacy Education is set up so that various
courses, various subjects and various lessons are
available for you to choose from. So that you're not
forced to take a particular course. Nor are you forced to
learn these subjects in any particular order.

Maslow continues, "Once they found it, they could then

make good use of technological education."

When you discover what it is that you love to do, as the

foundation of your daily activity, then you can bring in
the peripheral tools - that will help you in your chosen
vocation.

For example, my basic vocation is that of a writer. Yet, I

use all the advantages of technology in my writing. It
motivates me to want to learn other skills. My first skill
that I learned in relationship to writing was how to type.
And that skill eventually lead me to learn the computer.
From the computer I learned various software.

Having a core vocation leads to an expansion of skills in

related areas. And gives us the motivation to learn
these complementary skills. Therefore, it actually helps
us to grow, to expand our vocation into technology.
They are not at odds. They are complementary.

He continues, "The chief goals of the ideal college, in

other words, would be the discovery of identity, and
with it the discovery of vocation."

I've always found the word identity to be a very curious

word. Because what does it really mean the discovery of
identity? The mind has a function; the ability to identify,
to label, to name, to associate. And what we're taught
in the normal associative learning process - is to identify
who we are through our association with the society as
a whole. I'm an American. I'm a German. I'm an
Englishman. And to identify oneself, to define oneself
through the groups within the society - that we belong
to. I'm a Christian. I'm a Muslim. I'm a Jew. I'm a
Buddhist. I'm a Republican. I'm a Democrat.

The society consciously or unconsciously knows how to

manipulate the identity function in your brain. And the
educational process intentionally leaves out identifying
your own existence. And it includes education - that
causes you to learn how to use the identity function of
your brain. In a way in which you determined who you
were by what group you belonged to.

It totally fails to educate you. To use the identity

function of your brain to recognize yourself and your
own existence. As far as the social order is concerned,
as far as the traditional educational process is
concerned, you don't exist. Here, the discovery of
identity means to find yourself. It means using that
function in your brain to identify yourself as a whole
separate individual. And to identify your component
parts, your emotions, thoughts and behaviors'.

It means identifying your needs. It means identifying

what it is that you need to learn to satisfy your needs.
Once you discover that you're there, the depth of you is
a continuous journey in self-discovery, because of your
infinite nature.

So there are many things to identify within yourself that

are you, that belong to you. That also are utterly unique
to you, and no one else. And at the same time, there's
the discovery of, as Maslow would say, your species
hood. Which are the things that we find in common.
That we all share emotionally.

The identity function of your brain is a part of your

intellect. And it's a very important part. That requires
development. That requires exercise. That requires
growth. But of which you can acquire the skill.
And with the discovery of identity, when you begin to be
able to identify those things in yourself that you're good
at; when you're able to identify those things that you
enjoy doing, when it becomes a calling, meaning I must
do this, when it becomes your passion, then it is the
same thing that Maslow is referring to as the discovery
of your vocation.

Lesson 6: A Search to Find Your Passion

The following lecture is a demonstration of the use of

the Emotional Literacy Language. The views expressed
are examples designed to inspire the student to
develop their own unique ideas, language and
Emotional Literacy Skills, and are not intended to
promote anyone's philosophy.

001 We Were Those Children 5:24

In a 1997 interview, from Mediadome.com®, Jewel

Kilcher was asked, "What should schools do to better
educate children?"

Jewel replied, "It's a matter of teaching our children

from younger ages. Of asking them what their passions
are. Not how they're going to make a living, but what
makes them happy. What dump things, what absolutely
useless things, what fear-based limiting things we are
taught. As kids we need to be asked and inspired and
told, 'You have a little spirit. You're good by nature.'

"We need to be asked more about our dreams, and be

allowed to daydream more. How is our life created? by
our hands. If we live thoughtlessly, we just respond to
our environment, instead of us controlling our
environment. Nobody's taught that at a young age; I
wish that I was taught that when I was six, because we
can spend from age 6 to 18 figuring that out, and we're
dumped off at age 18 and expected to figure it out. So
we drink a lot and we go to college, and it's kind of un-
useful."

Whoever thought to ask children about what they

should be educated in? It seems certain that children
are the largest part of the educational system. They're
the ones whose lives are affected for a lifetime, yet
they're treated with no respect and no dignity.

We consider their feelings unimportant. They're pawns

in a political game. Their education is based upon how
much profit they can bring to corporations.

They're confined to a tiny space. Thirty children in a

small classroom. Herded to the drinking fountain.
Herded to the lunch counter. Herded out to recess time.
Herded in to the reading circle. We give them no
dignity, no self worth.

We were those children, and we were not asked. And

our feelings were not taken into consideration. We were
never asked what our interests were. We were never
given the opportunity to find out. We were never
allowed to find what we were good at. We were never
allowed to search ourselves for skills that we are born
with.

Once we were those children, longing for a happy life,

longing for freedom to grow, to be ourselves. Now we're
the adults who have paid the price.

And I like this interview with Jewel. She's just coming

out of the educational experience. These feelings are
still fresh in her mind. She's asked the questions at just
the right time.

What should schools do to better educate children? We

never ask any children their opinion. But when asked,
children will provide the truth, and that's why we don't
ask them.

But they are us. We were there in their shoes. And we

were damaged by the process. For that reason alone we
should make an effort to undo the damage. That is a
large process. And that is a large part of the process of
Emotional Literacy Education for adults. Because our
needs were thwarted as children, because we were not
allowed to follow our dreams, we have become neurotic.

002 Defining Neurosis and Psychopathology 13:17

I have previously stated in an article about Emotional

Literacy Education, that the terms neurosis and
psychopathology are not appropriate terms for children.
Because neurosis is learned. We're not born neurotic. Its
source is the neurosis of the society, and before I go any
further, I would like to define for you these two terms:

From The American Heritage Dictionary of the English

Language, Third Edition, the dictionary definition for the
word neurosis is: "Any of various mental or emotional
disorders arising from no apparent organic reason, and
involving symptoms such as insecurity, anxiety,
depression and irrational fears."

The dictionary definition for the word psychopathology

is: "The study of the origin, development and
manifestations of mental or behavioral disorders."

Even the healthiest among us are subject to the

influences of the society. We're all a part of a neurotic
social system. We influence each other through our
neurosis. And anyone who's open, caring, loving is going
to be susceptible to the neurosis that emanates from
the society.
The only way not to feel that is to escape the society.
Even those attempts have proved fruitless. Joining a
monastery, shutting oneself out from the rest of the
world, denying fundamental basic needs only leads to
greater neurosis. Priests who become pedophiles are
the prime example. It's better to accept our neurosis,
than to try to escape from it, because that only
compounds the neurosis. It only makes it worse.

Psychopathology is the study of what we do to ourselves

that makes us neurotic. It's the study of the origin. What
is the origin? The origin is in the society. What is the
development? The development is the relationship of
the society to the children. Children develop the
neurosis of their parents, and of the society that they
live in.

Children are not born neurotic, but adults cannot

escape the fact that they are. That makes the
educational process more difficult. A person has to put
in greater effort, devotion and fortitude to overcome
even the mildest neurosis - that we've accumulated.
Centuries and centuries of our needs not being met by
the culture, has led to such twists in the neurological
pathways of the brain - as to have distorted them.
Which further limits need satisfaction.

We develop neurosis in childhood. And how do we know

we're neurotic. It's because their manifested in our
mental states, and they are expressed through our
behaviors.

There's no point here in drawing a list of Western

culture's neurotic behaviors. If you would like to compile
a list, pickup any newspaper on any day of the week,
and there they are. There's no good news. Only the
news that's a manifestation of our neurosis. The list is
much longer. These are just examples.
All of our emotions have a purpose. Through
development those emotions can take on two qualities,
functional and dysfunctional. Either our emotions work
for us, are our friends and helpers, or they're our worst
nightmare, our worst enemy.

As a society we have not begun to structure our own

emotions at the optimum level.

Our emotions conflict. They often lead us down the

wrong road. For the simple reason that we have not
contemplated them. We have not tried to understand
them. We have not figured out their purpose in our
lives. Yet, it's our emotions which drive our thoughts
and behaviors.

If your emotions are screwed up, your thoughts are

going to be screwed up. And your behaviors are going
to be not what you would have chosen had you been
conscious, and understanding, and purposeful with your
own emotions.

We share group neurosis, social neurosis. Those

neurosis that are common to the majority are seen as
normal. Because so many people have anxiety, doubt,
irrational fear and depression, that we think it's normal.
It's normal only in that we all share it. It's not normal
healthy. It's normal unhealthy.

We ignore our emotions. Yet, they send us to the doctor

- millions and millions of people on anti-depressants,
anti-anxiety medicine, and that's normal unhealthy.
Anxiety is not a healthy state. It may be normal to the
majority, along with depression, but it's not how we
want to live. It's not our destiny. It's not our humanity.

Children become neurotic in the educational system.

They become us. We were them. We have to think
about our own mental disorders, if for no other reason
than to stop ourselves from making our children
neurotic.

It's time we examine ourselves, understand our

problems that we cause ourselves. And do something
about it. That's why I've chosen to work on a program of
Emotional Literacy Education for adults. Adults need to
be made to understand, and make an effort to rectify
their own emotional disorders. If we can see them in
ourselves, it may be possible to change our behavior, so
we do not repeat this neurosis in our children.

If you don't feel this need, then Emotional Literacy

Education is not for you. It won't help you, because
that's the only way we're going to make progress.

Emotional Literacy Education for adults is not the same

as Emotional Literacy Education for children, because
they're not neurotic, yet. But the older they get, the
more neurotic they become. And soon they become us.

A huge part of our brain is devoted to defense

mechanisms. Fear is a defense mechanism. Anger is a
defense mechanism. Denial is a defense mechanism. I
can't penetrate. Nor can Emotional Literacy Education
penetrate your defenses. Only when you recognize
yourself, and your defense mechanisms, can you begin
your own self-healing process.

In a letter to a dear friend of mine, Asuman Martone,

who is a psychologist, I wrote to her, "Regarding
Emotional Literacy Education for adults, yes my theory
will model healthy relationships, and the education
system will teach that model. I have learned a lot from
you, including about peoples' neurosis. Undoing the
neurosis is the problem. I would define neurosis here as
a learned behavior, and neurological pathway that has
become a habit. That is very difficult for someone to
change. Of course, that habit is by definition somehow
detrimental to the person's health and/or happiness,
but they cannot stop."

I'm including this, because it has my best definition of

what I think neurosis is. It's a learned behavior. That's
the good news. Theoretically, you can unlearn the
behavior, and you can learn new behaviors through
growth. The bad news is that in childhood and
adolescence and young adulthood, these learned
behaviors became structures in your brain -
neurological pathways of feeling, of thought, of defense
mechanisms, of behavior.

They've become habitual. They've become reinforced.

They've become self-justified, and that's the bad news,
because they are unconsciously repeated over and
over. And that strengthens the neurological pathways in
your brain, and sets up a condition where only a
rewiring of your brain is going to erase the neurosis.
This is not something that happens from the outside. It's
something that you have to find the erase button on the
recorder inside yourself, and erase the program. And it's
extremely difficult.

People are in therapy for years and years, and they get
nowhere. Not from a lack of effort by good
psychologists. But by the mere fact that it's nature's
way.

003 We Are the Most Successful Animal 7:35

Mammals in particular require, it's their need, to go

through a learning process. A part of our brain is hard
wired at birth - meaning preprogrammed. In computer
terms it's read-only memory. You can read from it, but
you can't write to it, nor can you modify it.

Another part of your brain is the type of memory that is

written to through learning. Which sets up neurological
pathways in your brain, that become your behaviors,
your thoughts, your desires. And these learned
behaviors in the mammal, passed down from parent to
offspring, are not really meant to be modified.

The mammal parents are suppose to provide the

optimal behavior model for its offspring in its pursuit of
survival; hunting skills, gathering skills, nest making
skills. The best places to find these things; the best
place and the safest place to find water - is written into
the brain as the offspring follow the mammal parent
through its daily activity. This is handed down from
generation to generation. And it's refined over time with
slight modifications. One water hole dries up. Another
water hole becomes available.

These neurological pathways, although they're on the

learning network, are suppose to be permanent. Lasting
a lifetime based upon the criteria, that evolution has
provided in the parent the optimal survival behaviors.
So that when they are written to the offspring, they
inherit the optimal survival behaviors.

The human brain has a much larger capacity for

learning. Its evolution has been sudden relatively
speaking, and in comparison to other mammal species.
One or two million years ago the human brain was one-
third the size that it is today. Nature has provided us
with both a blessing and curse. The blessing is our large
brain, and the curse is that we have yet to grow into it.

It has provided for us an infinite range of social

behavior. In that infinity we have evolved nearly an
infinite number of behaviors. As seen in the variety of
cultures that we have on this planet. If a tribe is long
enough in isolation from other tribes, an entirely new
culture, which is a learned set of behaviors, will arise.
Such a great diversity, yet none of them provide the
optimum survival strategies. As if man were still an
experiment of nature, working out the kinks, the
difficulties of having such a large brain. Both the
problems and the opportunities that it provides.

Mankind's latest leap in evolution may not be older than

80,000 years. This new behavior, not seen before, found
in the caves of France, expressive art, a complex
language, new social skills that arose out of complex
communication, has given rise to a culture that is not
more than 50,000 to 80,000 years old. We are still an
immature species, in that we haven't learned how to
fully operate our own brains. It seems as if they operate
us.

As Jewel said, "How is our life created? by our hands. If

we live thoughtlessly, we just respond to our
environment, instead of us controlling our
environment."

And that seems to be the case. So something that was

designed to be permanent, what we learn as children,
which structures our neurological pathways, the shape
of the signals in our brain, is meant to be permanent.

There is the assumption of nature that the parent will

provide the optimal behavior strategies for survival. And
it can be argued that human beings have been
successful as a species. The most successful species
surviving the most adverse and greatest variety of
conditions of any animal on the planet. We swim. We
walk. We fly. We even go to the moon. We walk the
Sahara Desert. We walk the coldest regions of the
world. We climb the highest peaks. And we have spread
ourselves throughout the whole world.

And from the point of view of our physiological needs,

our ability to acquire food, clothing and shelter, and our
ability to propagate and spread into any environment
and find a way to survive, shows we are the most
successful species on the planet. As an animal we are
the most successful animal.

004 We Have Needs that Go beyond Our Animal Nature

10:04

Other animals' behavior is attuned to acquire food,

water and shelter and to propagate. Yet nature, by
giving us such a large brain, and the possibility of
fulfilling something in us that is not animal. That is not
driven merely by physiological needs. Something in us
hungers for more than food, more than shelter, more
than water and more than sex. As if nature is trying to
show us, we are more than an animal. That we have
needs that go beyond our animal nature.

And as Maslow pointed out in his hierarchy of needs. His

theory that needs are prepotent. And what he means by
that is our lower needs, in this case our physiological
needs for food, clothing and shelter, emerge first,
become our first motivations, our first drives. Which
cause us to act towards their fulfillment and
satisfaction.

And our other needs, our safety needs, our love and
relationship needs, our self-esteem needs and our self-
actualization needs are dormant. That they tend to
emerge in a sequence of the most important ones first.
The ones that mean our most immediate survival;
breathing air, drinking water, eating food, staying warm
and having sex for procreation and the continuation of
the species - emerge first. And the others lie dormant.

He states in his theory that when these needs are

fulfilled, a new need arises. We begin to hunger for
something more than food. And at its highest the needs
become purely spiritual in nature. They relate directly to
what the soul needs. And we cannot get there. In that
those needs will not make themselves known to us, until
we fulfill these lower more basic physical needs first.

We're taught by the culture how to satisfy our

physiological needs. And we do, at least in Western
culture, very well in that area. Then what happens is
that we sense an inner emptiness, even though our
stomachs are full, we feel an inner emptiness. Which is
representative of our higher needs going unfulfilled.

The very structures that we create in society to satisfy

our physiological needs, then become the hindrance to
fulfilling our higher needs. They form neurological
pathways, which become a habit.

It can be said that nature allows, in the process of

fulfilling physiological needs, acts of killing, of stealing,
of deception, because the animals do that. They steal
from each other. They show aggression and dominance
behaviors.

And it seems natural that in man's competition with

other animals, that we use these behaviors as a
competitive strategy against other animals, other
predators. We kill to eat. We trick and deceive animals
with traps. We steal their lives from them.

I'm just trying to make the comparison here between

how we satisfy our physiological needs. And how it's
very similar to the way animals, especially predatory
animals, fulfill their needs. They use camouflage as
deception. We use deception as camouflage. And it has
proven successful to us. But man has done something
that no animal has done. Because these behaviors are
meant to point outward as a protection from the
environment. And we have left our old environment.
Where those survival strategies made sense.
We have replaced the woods, the deserts, and the
marshes, and the animals that inhabit them, as our
environment, with society. We have turned these
behavioral strategies on ourselves. Instead of aiming
death at the animal, so that we can eat its meat, and
satisfy our hunger, we become neurotic, in that we've
turned death on to ourselves.

The reason is very simple. We have maintained the

same emotional and behavioral responses to our
environment, but our environment has changed. The
environment that we inhabit now, and the one that we
have replaced is the society. We no longer get our food
from our environment. We now get our food from other
people. We depend on others to provide our water. We
depend on others to build our houses. We depend on
others to provide the energy that keeps us warm.

And these instinctual emotions and learned patterns of

behavior, of competition, of fighting - have been turned
in on us. Mankind has done a lot of killing - of its own.
Mankind has caused a lot of pain to its own. It's not an
issue of blame. It's a problem of evolution and emerging
out of our old environment. Which has been replaced by
a new environment. Which arose because the social
strategy, the social technology has been so successful.
That it has dominated our development. To the point
where the only thing that most people will ever know
are other people.

So we have to negotiate our survival from other people.

And in the process we use our old instincts and the
patterns of behavior, that have been handed down from
generation to generation. At one time these patterns of
behavior were optimal, but when we substituted the
natural environment for the society, we went from
coping with something that was real, to now coping with
something that is artificial. That is manufactured. Which
is our culture.
Our culture is a mix of our animal instincts, and our
physiological needs, and the requirements and the
demands that they place upon us for satisfaction. And
the ways that we use those instincts to try to
manipulate food, clothing and shelter from other
people.

Therefore, our cultures have arisen, not as optimal

behavioral strategies of survival, but rather as a
confused array of false notions of what our new reality
is. Which we haven't yet been able to put our finger on.

005 Make Learning a Lifelong Goal, a Lifelong Journey

6:36

Nature has given us a problem. In that our neurological

pathways were designed to be semi-permanent. Those
behaviors that we learned in childhood, were placed in
a part of the brain which has a semi-permanency.
Unlike other mammal species, that we're aware of, we
can unlearn behavior. These are semi-permanent
neurological structures.

It took tremendous effort on the part of the child to

learn these behaviors. A difficult struggle of growth
which in adulthood we forget. To unlearn our neurosis
requires the same amount of energy. It requires the
same amount of energy to undo our learned behaviors
as it did to learn them. In addition to that, it requires
new energy, and new effort, and a new learning process
- to add new emotional responses, thought processes
and behaviors.

We have a very difficult road ahead of us, as a society,

to undo the habits that we learned in childhood. But I
see no other way. Life is never easy.
Yet, we can utilize our own innate abilities to learn, and
our abilities to grow to change ourselves, even as
adults. Especially, when you make learning a lifelong
goal, a lifelong journey, a lifelong effort. Learning is the
only door out of our problem, our group problem, our
social neurosis.

I'm defining neurosis here as a habit that is detrimental

to a person's health, safety, relationships, self-esteem,
or ability to reach their full potential. In other words, our
neurosis can be defined as any emotion, thought
process or behavior that hinders us from fulfilling our
needs.

A healthy person is able to fulfill these needs. That's the

definition of human health. The definition of neurosis
then is when we have a need, and we're unable to
satisfy that need. We are unable to express and act
upon that need in a way in which that need is satisfied.
The need is still there, and it seeks fulfillment through
other channels of the mind which become neurotic.
Which become detrimental to our health, and to our
happiness.

For example, we need pleasure. And we need it through

being good at something. Something that's beneficial. A
skill that helps us fulfill our needs, and gives us self-
esteem. An activity that fills our day. That both
challenges us, and because of our skill, we are
successful. And that brings us self-esteem. That brings
us pleasure.

If we are blocked, we still need the pleasure. Pleasure

has a calming affect, a satisfying affect on our psyche. It
calms our nervousness. It bathes our anxieties in
endorphins. And if we can't get that through the
development of our skills, and their performance in
satisfying our needs, then we seek pleasure in neurotic
ways. We overindulge in so-called entertainment,
television, 59 channels and nothing is on. We eat too
much food. We take too many drugs and become
addicted. Greed becomes a substitute for a healthy
relationship. Power becomes the substitute for pleasure,
which corrupts us.

In my letter I wrote, "Yes, my theory will model healthy

relationships, and the education system will teach that
model."

Abraham Maslow's primary study and research was in

using healthy people as models. For how humanity
might solve these problems. Freud focused on defining
mankind's neurosis. Where he was not healthy. Maslow
focused on where mankind is healthy. This is a profound
revolution in the field of psychology. Which has broad
implications for society. With a model of health we can
move forward with an educational system that teaches
this model.

006 What Makes You Happy? 3:34

Jewel Kilcher said, "It's a matter of teaching our children

from younger ages. Of asking them what their passions
are. Not how they're going to make a living, but what
makes them happy."

Her reference to passion is about asking children what

their interests are. What they love doing. They know
what they love doing. And this is just as valid a
statement for adults. It's just as important to adults, as
it is to children.

Don't postpone finding what your interests are. What

your passions are. Don't wait. Don't put it off until
tomorrow. Don't think that you will have time when you
retire.
What are your passions? The criteria to use in
discovering your passions is asking yourself, "What
makes you happy?"

That will lead you to your passion. Making a living is not

the criteria. It is a false criteria. Which leads people into
a lifelong occupation. Into a job they thought they were
going to love. But society is deceptive in what it tells us
how our jobs are going to make us feel.

Jewel continues, "What dumb things, what absolutely

useless things, what fear based limiting things we are
taught."

The politicians benefit from our ignorance. Intelligent

people are hard to train. They give us absolutely useless
things, useless lessons, useless education, insofar as
our happiness is concerned. Worst of all the politicians
fill us with a fear based philosophy. To keep us
dependent and clinging to them for safety. They
manipulate us, so that we feel afraid. They teach us to
be afraid, because it benefits them.

One of the main goals of Emotional Literacy Education is

to help you learn about your fear, and how you are
being manipulated through your fear.

Only by understanding your fear, which is a natural

instinct, and their influence over you. And how they use
it to manipulate you. And to make you feel more afraid
of things that are not real, the better you'll be able to
loosen their influence over you.

007 You're Good by Nature 3:11

Jewel continues, "As kids we need to be asked, and

inspired, and told, you have a little spirit. You're good by
nature."
That has to be the foundation of any educational
system. That's based on reality. You have an immense
spirit. And even what appears on the surface to be
man's inhumanity to man - man's atrocities are the
result of nature trying to work out complex problems.
Trying to bring us into a biological condition, where we
begin to feel and recognize our own spiritual nature.

Even what man has done in the past, though it seems

horrific, is just a part of a natural process. It's neither
good nor bad in one sense. In a higher sense it's all
good. Because it has brought us here, now, to the
present. And it offers us so much promise and
possibilities for the future.

If nature is good, we are good. And as far as I can see,

nature is good. It has been miraculous. A planet with a
poisonous atmosphere, and some rocks, and a little bit
of water - to have evolved into this massive ecosystem
of abundant life.

Does it really matter how we got here? Isn't it more

important that nature figured out a way for us to be? No
matter what that path was?

The equation for life on this planet is incalculable. It is

not for us to judge the methods of nature. We can't
understand something that is beyond our
comprehension. There is this feeling that it's good. That
it all has meaning, and fits into the overall plan that
leads to development. That is evolution.

If there was another way for us to have evolved, nature

would have taken that route. This being the only route,
it has to be good. Because it has produced a good
result, in the plants, in the birds, in the sunsets, in the
mountains.

008 Giving Ourselves Permission to Dream 3:52

Jewel continues, "We need to be asked more about our
dreams. Be allowed to daydream more."

We need to give our children permission to daydream;

permission to have dreams. And thereby giving
ourselves permission to dream.

As adults we primarily please others. We need to give

ourselves permission to please ourselves. Not in the
selfish meaning, but in the meaning of where we allow
ourselves to dream - to dream of happiness.

And if we do that for ourselves, we can help our children

to find their dreams, to experiment with their ideas. The
two are closely connected. If we don't give ourselves
permission to dream, we're not going to give our
children permission to dream. We are going to criticize
them, until they stop dreaming - from which all creative
and new ideas come.

We only come to answers through trial and error. And

we get our choices of what we are going to try from our
imagination. What secret lies hidden in our children,
that maybe the answer to this dilemma that mankind
finds itself in?

Imagination is also a crucial component in the learning

process, in the growth process. Imagination is that
random process within our thoughts that takes us in
search. And searching is 50 percent of learning. So a
mind that wanders should be encouraged to wander.

A mind that daydreams should be nurtured, rather than

stymied. We must give ourselves permission to dream.
And we must give our children permission to dream, as
a matter of mental health.
Once again, we have a large part of our brain devoted
to imagination, devoted to dreaming, devoted to
creativity. Which if we turn it off, it numbs us. It shuts
down learning. It crushes growth, because it's one of
the mechanisms of our minds, that we use to go in
search of ourselves. If we point our imaginations toward
self-discovery, the mind is not going to settle on a
particular definition of what the self is. It's going to
wander in search of what the self is. Along the way it's
going to find answers, but only if it's allowed to dream.
The ideas about who you are, are going to come from
your imagination.

009 A Search to Find Your Passion 4:02

Jewel continues, "How is our life created? by our hands.

If we live thoughtlessly, we just respond to our
environment, instead of us controlling our
environment."

We were just taught to respond to commands. We don't

listen to our inner voices. We don't trust them, because
they were never made strong in us. Our environment
goes on controlling us, and sifts us, and places us in
some position within the hierarchy.

Jewel continues, "Nobody's taught that at a young age. I

wish that I was taught that when I was 6. Because we
can spend from age 6 to age 18 figuring that out. And
we're dumped off at age 18, and expected to figure it
out. So we drink a lot, and we go to college. And it's
kind of un-useful."

We are not taught at any age how to discover our

passion. Jewel found hers, but most of us never find it.
She states that I wish I was taught that earlier in life, so
that she didn't have to drift and wander aimlessly. But
she was lucky, as luck goes, because at least by the age
18, she had discovered her passion on her own.
And what she's saying here, is that she wishes every
child was taught their passions through the educational
system at the earliest age. And the reality is most
people don't find their passions during their whole lives.
They never awaken that flame that excites the spirit.

Emotional Literacy Education is a search to find your

passion, your vocation, your calling. Instead of finding
our passion, we drink, and many of us go on to college,
primarily because we haven't found our passion.

And Jewel says, "It's kind of un-useful."

It's totally un-useful not to find your passion. Because

without it, you're not going to have what it takes to
make a difference in this world.

You're going to end up with a mediocre position. Where

the system is influencing you, and you're not influencing
the system.

We're responsible. All of us are responsible to contribute

in our field, what the direction towards a better society
is.

We like to fool ourselves, Americans, that we have the

greatest society the world has ever known. But it is a
society that's based upon all of the old ways of
controlling people. Manipulating is not freedom. It's just
a new form of bondage, corporate bondage, corporate
influence, corporate control. And we go to work to a job
that doesn't inspire us. That maintains the status quo.
And that's kind of un-useful.

Lesson 7: The Last Need: Self-Knowledge

The following lecture is a demonstration of the use of

the Emotional Literacy Language. The views expressed
are examples designed to inspire the student to
develop their own unique ideas, language and
Emotional Literacy Skills, and are not intended to
promote anyone's philosophy.

001 The Last Need: Self-Knowledge Part 1 13:11

In his book, The Farther Reaches of Human Nature,

Abraham Maslow wrote, "Another profound learning
experience, that I value far more highly than any
particular course or any degree, that I have ever had,
was my personal psychoanalysis: discovering my own
identity, my own self." From The Farther Reaches of
Human Nature, by Abraham Maslow, page 163, 5th
paragraph.

Around the age of 40, Sigmund Freud realized that he

was going through a personal crisis. What he decided to
do was to use the techniques that he had been using on
his patients on himself. Instead of analyzing other
people, he thought to analyze himself.

I felt myself going through a profound crisis in my life at

a much younger age. I had dropped out of high school
at the age of 17 - to write The Old Man of the Holy
Mountain. And after a year-and-a-half, I had finished the
book. I sent it off to several publishers, and received
rejection from the society, from the corporate structure,
invalidating my passion, my dream.

I went on to collect about 75 rejection form letters from

various publishers. Even though that wasn't the cause
of my personal crisis, it certainly added to the pressure.
And I felt a need to understand what emotional
difficulties I was going through.

The writing of The Old Man of the Holy Mountain, for

me, was a journey from the world of fiction, of story
telling, of parables - to the discovery of a fundamental
truth, a fundamental need. And that is I hadn't a clue to
what was the cause of all of my emotions. That
discovery is written in The Old Man of the Holy
Mountain.

All of the characters represent a part of me. Some were

expressing confusion, frustration, feeling of being lost.
And the Old Man somehow represented to me a
lifeboat, an answer to the situation that I had found
myself in, from a psychological perspective. From the
perspective of confusion, and of not knowing why things
were happening to me - not understanding the society,
its behavior.

And I was using my writing as a way of putting my

thoughts in front of me. So that I could analyze them. So
that I could see where my thoughts made sense. And
where my thoughts were not making any sense at all.

And I was searching for some basic clue on how to

proceed forward with my life. I knew enough about the
society. Enough truth about the reality of society, such
that it held no attraction for me. I was aware of all the
choices, the occupations, the social positions. I was
aware of how to get to them through college, climbing
the corporate ladder. I was aware of being told by the
society of the American Dream; the house with the
white picket fence, the wife, the children, the job.

And there was one particular part of it that stood out. It

was the mortgage. It all seemed like the perfect trap.
Because once you've signed that 30 year mortgage, you
have to go to that job every day to pay for that
mortgage. And I saw people in their jobs, and I saw
them miserable.

I worked starting at the age of 10 as a janitor for my

grandfather's appliance business. And for someone my
age, because I worked, I had money. More money than
my friends did, because I was working. And because I
believed what society told me. I wanted to be wealthy.

What better way to become wealthy than to study

wealthy people. I read Noah Dietrich's biography of
Howard Hughes. And I discovered what a miserable
man he was. And that he died with hypodermic needles
broken off in his arm. He was a codeine addict. It's like
morphine. It's like heroin. He died absolutely friendless,
without a wife, with no children. He didn't care about
anyone. He made no will, left his money to no one.

He just lived without decent relationship skills. He cut

himself off from everyone. In his isolation he became a
hypochondriac, afraid of germs, afraid to go out.

His only associate, that had stayed with him throughout

his adult life, was Noah Dietrich. Who was an
accountant, that Howard Hughes hired shortly after his
father died - to help him run his business. Noah Dietrich
was practically a 50 percent partner, as far as
organization and management of his businesses.

And Noah only wanted one thing from Howard Hughes.

Howard Hughes promised him 10 percent of the Howard
Hughes empire, because of the devotion of Noah
Dietrich. How he saved Howard Hughes on more than
one occasion by handling his business deals.

They were both getting old. And Noah was thinking of

his retirement. He began to ask Howard for his promise
in writing.

"You promised me 10 percent," he said to Howard

Hughes.

And Howard Hughes said, "I know, Noah. I will give it to

you, but not today."
This went on for years and years.

Noah Dietrich finally said, "Howard, I'm getting old. I

just want you to follow through on what you promised
me. And if you don't, I'm going to resign."

And Howard Hughes padlocked his office, told the

security guards not to allow Noah Dietrich on to the
property. And their long relationship was terminated in
that moment.

And I understood what a fool's game chasing after

money is. That it had no relationship to happiness. And
America has become Howard Hughes.

Clearly, Howard Hughes was not receiving satisfaction

in his relationships. I think it was because he didn't have
those skills. He never learned them. How to find love.
He substituted money for love. He pursued money, as if
it was love, as if it was a relationship.

The trap is it's not. And therefore the pursuit never

satisfies. Without that realization, the pursuit never
ends. If I just made a couple more million, I would be
happy. A person makes a couple more million, and
they're miserable. Because they're not developing the
skill in relationship to the need, that would bring them
true, deep satisfaction.

Money can bring food, clothing and shelter. But it can't

bring us love. It can't be a substitute for a satisfying
relationship.

Like all addictions, that are substitutes for something

that's missing. The emptiness is never filled. The pursuit
is ongoing. The deception is thinking that if I make just
a little bit more money, I will find happiness. And
happiness isn't found. Therefore, the pursuit of money
continues.
In the process the ruthlessness, the cunningness, the
deception, the hurting of other people, the exploitation
of the worker, makes one feel miserable. It's
counterproductive to building a satisfying relationship.
It becomes self-defeating. In that the very thing that we
wanted most, just to love and to be loved, turns out
making us the worst kind of lover, the worst kind of
relationship maker.

I saw all this at a very young age. After reading Noah

Dietrich's book, I lost my ambition, my desire to be rich.
Because I saw it as being a fruitless life. That was the
procession of the whole society. The movement of the
whole society, and the direction of the educational
system, which I abandon. Because that wasn't making
me happy. It was just training me to be Howard Hughes.

So I never felt the need to return to school. It had given

me what I needed to know. Which was an education in
the ways of society. I just wanted what everybody
wants, happiness. Mostly, what I saw was the things
that society were offering to me, and I realized they
were not going to bring me happiness.

That was my crisis. What to do? Where to go? How to

be? If the society can't offer happiness, where am I
going to find it?

002 The Last Need: Self-Knowledge Part 2 11:26

Writing The Old Man of the Holy Mountain helped me

see my thoughts. And I was in a lot of pain. I was
looking for direction.

And I wrote this passage. From The Old Man of the Holy
Mountain, "One way to relieve yourself of unhappiness,
and grow toward your greater happier self - is through
the narrow door of your understanding self."
I also wrote, "Your understanding of yourself and others
will bring comfort to yourself. And all that is you will
become one in rhythm with itself. Thus, pain within you
will diminish."

And that came from some inner voice inside myself. It

was against all I had been taught. Yet, it became my
only hope.

It said, "One way to relieve yourself of unhappiness...."

I was looking for relief. I was miserable, unhappy and

relief sounded good.

I continued, "...and grow toward your greater happier

self."

And there's that word again, growth. It was my door, my

way out of where I was. My only hope was growth. But
how was I going to grow? How was I going to change?
How was I going to find a way to relieve myself of
unhappiness.

I wrote, "...through the narrow door of your

understanding self."

I've come to realize that's the same thing as Maslow's

personal psychoanalysis.

From The American Heritage Dictionary of the English

Language, Third Edition, psycho means, "Mind." The
origin of the word psycho comes from "the Greek" and it
means "soul."

So it means to analyze your mind. It means to

understand your soul. But it goes deeper than that,
because the word analysis is an intellectual meaning. To
analyze something is to use your intellect. It is useful.
But thought is so distorted, that there has to be
something more. And that more, which is necessary for
personal growth, is consciousness. It's our
consciousness that informs the soul, not our thoughts.

Our consciousness carries our thoughts to our soul. But

it also carries our feelings to our soul. And when we
awaken our souls, it's ultimately the soul that rewrites
the mind, the neurological networks of the brain.

The soul is the engine of the brain, the heart. The real
power behind the mind, behind the emotions, is the
soul.

Emotional Literacy Education is more than self-analysis.

The goal of Emotional Literacy Education is to find your
soul. To discover it. To be it. To understand that your
mind is just a tool of the soul. That you're the master
controller, because you are the soul. And that the thing
that you control is not other people, but your own mind.
If you don't control your own mind, the society will.

The society is neurotic, and will show you, and will teach
you, and will guide you in the ways of its neurosis. Until
you become as sick as it is. 29,350 people a year
commit suicide in the United States. That's not a
healthy society. 29,573 people a year are murdered by
handguns. 42,116 people a year die on the highway.
Alcoholism, drug addiction, take its toll.

I continue, "Your understanding of yourself and others

will bring comfort to yourself."

A little voice in me said that. And comfort was what I

wanted more than anything, because pain and
depression were the only things I knew. It sure sounded
good. But that's not where I was when I wrote this. It
was a direction given to me by my soul to my brain. A
tiny little bit of wisdom, a little whisper in the dark,
something to go on - I listened. And I trusted.

And I went from writing The Old Man of the Holy

Mountain, a fictional book, with fictional characters, to
the pursuit of something that was nonfiction - the
discovery of self. And I continued to use my writing skills
to lay out my thoughts. But I abandoned fiction. I
wanted just to know what pain was. I just wanted to
know what anger was. I just wanted to know what fear
was. And I just wanted relief. I just wanted comfort. But I
needed to have a direction. I needed to know where to
go.

I continue, "And all that is you will become one in

rhythm with itself."

I understood I was experiencing discord. I understood

the way I felt wasn't right. I had had moments of peace,
of beatitude. Maslow would describe them as peak
experiences. And I wanted more. I wanted to return to
feeling that way. I slowly began to feel a direction to go.

I continue, "Thus, pain within you will diminish."

Understanding brings comfort, and comfort diminishes

pain by replacing it. I used the word diminish, because
my hope was that it would decrease over time, as my
understanding of my emotions increased. It was more
like a hunch. It was more like intuition. It wasn't my
experience. I hadn't known a state of continuous
comfort.

It was the only hope I had. The confusion was so

intense, and the pain was so great inside me, that I had
no other choice, but to listen to this inner voice inside
me. This guiding principle that came to me in a moment
of inspiration. I had no other choice. This was the only
one that was offered.
I knew what didn't bring comfort. Society was no
comfort. Education was no comfort. Money was no
comfort. Family was no comfort. Friends were no
comfort. Relationships were no comfort.

So I felt alone, but with this insight I began a five-year

exploration of myself, and I became better at
understanding. And I felt progress. It didn't happen
overnight. It didn't happen easily. There was a
tremendous amount of effort, single-minded devotion to
the search. Gradually, I felt my comfort occupy more
and more of my day, and anxiety and depression
diminish.

I also discovered that my thought processes were a

mess. Over time they found more truth. Little by little
the truth seeped in, and vanquished ideas in me that
were false. And the darkness began to give way to
twilight, to dawn. It was my hunger. It was my only
need, and it worked. My confusion disappeared, and my
understanding replaced it. My pain diminished, and my
comfort replaced it.

And I began to see how self-knowledge was a need.

Without it the darkness remains, the confusion remains,
the doubt and the fear remain.

It's need based upon a higher recognition, that comes

out of the experience of misery. Which ultimately is a
hunger for happiness, for satisfaction.

003 The Last Need: Self-Knowledge Part 3 7:06

Abraham Maslow wrote, "Another profound learning

experience, that I value far more highly than any
particular course or any degree, that I have ever had,
was my personal psychoanalysis, discovering my own
identity, discovering my own self."
Maslow does not put in his hierarchy of needs self-
knowledge. I would like to add to Maslow's hierarchy of
needs, self-knowledge. The last need beyond which
there are no more needs.

He says, "Discovering my identity, discovering my own

identity, my own self."

They're not the same thing. Identity is a function of

intellect. Self-knowledge is a function of the soul. Its
goal is wisdom far beyond the intellect. They are not
equal. The identity is a small part of the self.
Discovering your identity is not the same as discovering
your soul.

Because of Freud we get stuck and wallow in our own

dark corners in our minds. Maslow begins a never
ending journey, that takes us higher and higher.

And the time is right that the world should regard

Maslow as one of the greatest men who has ever lived.
Psychology has not been able to understand him. Nor
has it been able to incorporate his work, which is
scientific, into their psychology practices.

Psychology focuses mainly on neurosis and mental

illness, as if it is a disease. It's not a disease. It's simply
a matter of education, of learning, of growth and effort.

The field of psychology has ignored Abraham Maslow for

the past 30 years. He's not a part of our culture. He's
not been accepted into the field of psychology the way
he ought to be accepted. He should be a pillar the way
Einstein is a pillar for physics. Maslow should be a pillar
for psychology. His findings were scientific. His research
was extensive, and spread out over his entire career.
And without his contribution psychology will remain
fixated on neurosis, on psychopathology, on illness, on
sickness.

And in that sense, without understanding that humans

can be healthy, we condemn patients to being
continuously sick. We don't really offer them anything
more than temporary relief, mostly through anxiety and
depression pills.

Abraham Maslow is absolutely needed, not only in the

psychology of today, but he is a pillar in the field of
Emotional Literacy Education. As it is foundational. It
shows us the direction of how people can be when they
are healthy. And how to get there through satisfying our
needs. And how we become neurotic, when those needs
are not fulfilled, when they are thwarted.

In his book, The Farther Reaches of Human Nature,

Abraham Maslow wrote, "What do we mean by the
discovery of identity? We mean finding out what your
real desires and characteristics are, and being able to
live in a way that expresses them. You learn to be
authentic, to be honest in the sense of allowing your
behavior and your speech to be the true and
spontaneous expression of your inner feelings." From
The Farther Reaches of Human Nature, by Abraham
Maslow, page 176, 3rd paragraph.

He came so close to truly understanding the last need

of self-knowledge. In the same way that Socrates came
so close, and Plato, and Aristotle. I've read his work. He
doesn't define what desire is. What characteristic is he
talking about? That's what self-knowledge is. What is
desire? What is emotion? What are our feelings? What is
anger? What is guilt? What is frustration? What is
compassion?

Emotional Literacy Education is the study and

understanding of the whole person, and all of his parts
that can become conscious experiences. He takes us to
the door and he shows it to us. He invites us to go in.
His work was foundational in pointing to the need for
self-knowledge. Why we need it.

Lesson 8: Imagination, Logic, Creativity & Intuition

The following lecture is a demonstration of the use of

the Emotional Literacy Language. The views expressed
are examples designed to inspire the student to
develop their own unique ideas, language and
Emotional Literacy Skills, and are not intended to
promote anyone's philosophy.

001 What Are Imagination and Logic? 17:04

In his book, The Farther Reaches of Human Nature,

Abraham Maslow wrote, "The technique here is just to
wait to see what happens, what comes to mind. This is
what Freud called free association, free-floating
attention rather than task orientation. If you are
successful in this effort and learn how to do it, you can
forget about the outside world and its noises and begin
to hear these small, delicate impulse voices from within,
the hints from your animal nature, not only from your
common species-nature, but also from your
uniqueness." From The Farther Reaches of Human
Nature, by Abraham Maslow, page 179, 3rd paragraph.

The first part of Maslow's quote, in which he refers to

what Freud called free association, is the same thing
Jewel was referring to in her quote.

When she said, "We need to be asked more about our

dreams, be allowed to daydream more."

Both are a reference to the function of imagination.

Which is an important technique in Emotional Literacy
Education. It's learning what artists do. It's learning
what writers do. It's where creativity flows from the
mind. It is a skill. It can be learned.

We float our imaginations all the time. This is more of

an effort to flow your imagination into a particular
direction. Knowing it's there, and using it as a part of
mind building, of thought construction. As an exercise
technique, that will help to strengthen all the areas of
your mind.

Thought is not confined to one particular area of the

brain. Different parts of the brain are involved. What
imagination does is cycle through the different areas of
the brain, thereby, utilizing imagination, free
association and daydreaming.

We can exercise the brain. When we direct it towards a

particular subject, a particular topic, we can narrow the
focus a little bit. So that it's not totally free association,
but rather subject oriented free association. In that
you're utilizing your imagination on a particular subject,
or group of subjects. Which allows for a building process
in the brain, a strengthening of the brain. And an
exercise of the brain which involves thought.

When I say thought is a large phenomenon in the brain,

I mean that it uses visual memory, and auditory
memory, language memory, feeling memory. By
daydreaming, free association, and by using our
imagination, we cycle through these different areas of
the brain.

And we ask what's there. What's in our feeling memory?

What's in our language memory? What's in our hearing
memory? What's in our visual memory?
ask what's there, and we trigger its entrance into our
consciousness. It comes in a random way. This is a
technique of exercising and strengthening the brain.
Which is what Emotional Literacy Education is. What it is
not, is about feeding you full of a bunch of information
that you can't use, or don't understand.

Emotional Literacy Education provides information, but

its primary function is to educate you in learning need-
fulfillment skills. You cannot know what your needs are,
unless you can make a mental picture of them. You
need to be able to make your own description of your
needs. You need to be able to have a personal
language, which relates to your specific needs. Which
are unique to you. We're all arranged differently. No
one's needs come at the same time. The technique here
is calling it a technique. I call it a skill. Either way it's an
exercise.

And the more you exercise your imagination, the more

you are exercising different parts of the brain,
strengthening them. Which is what we're really trying to
accomplish with Emotional Literacy Education.

We want to exercise your brain, to strengthen its

functions, and to bring them into alignment with one
another. So that function is magnified by grouping
function together in combination and/or in sequence.
It's a chain. And if one area of your brain is weak, it will
lessen the effect of the whole. The effort here is to try to
strengthen the whole mind by exercising it.

Imagination is fundamental. And utilizing it, and

exercising it is crucial. It's a part of the skill of learning.
It's the mind going in search of an answer. First, it
checks what you already know in the various parts of
the brain. It signals when you don't know, if you listen.
Then that prompts you to seek information from others,
in books, on the Internet.

The exercise of imagination is the important point. What

you use your imagination for is unique to you. If I were
able to hear your imagination, as it flowed, it would be
unique.

Therefore, I cannot teach you, instruct you to imagine a

particular thing. Except in that it stays within the
framework of self-knowledge. That is the focus of
Emotional Literacy Education; understanding yourself,
and therefore understanding others, or, understanding
others, and therefore understanding yourself. It is such
a large topic. Your problems, your needs are what you
must conjurer up in your imagination.

Maslow wrote, "The technique here is just to wait to see

what happens."

If you allow it, you are just watching with just one
criteria. What is it that you want your imagination to
search for? You point it into a certain direction, and then
you let it flow freely. It's not totally random, though that
is the very nature of imagination. It randomly searches
your mind. And you just watch, and let it do the work.
And see what it comes up with.

The mind has its own energy, its own dynamic. And if
you just let it go, let it flow into a particular direction, it
will hunt your mind for what you know.

The next step, which is not the same. The next step is
where you try to organize your thoughts. And that's
where writing them down allows you to remember, what
you thought in your imagination was important. And
then, it also allows you to go back and make a
sequence out of them. Because meaning comes from
the sequence of an idea, a series of ideas.

Emotional Literacy Education will show you the different

functions of your brain. It will give you strategies and
exercises to strengthen those parts of the brain, like
imagination, like sequencing your ideas. The two work
hand-in-hand.

Your computer has a function called random access

memory. Your hard drive works through random access
memory. That is, when you ask it for a file, what it
doesn't have to do is start at the beginning of the hard
drive, and sequentially go through each tract, until it
finds your file.

Your hard drive, on your computer, looks like an old

vinyl record or a CD. A sequential process would be like
an old phonograph album. Where the needle of the
record player is put at the beginning of the album, and
then it plays the track sequentially, as the platter
rotates.

That's a sequential memory, because the album is just

a memory. That is a sequential memory access. And it
makes sense, the music makes sense. We hear things
sequentially, and it makes sense to us when it's
sequential.

Your hard drive on your computer would take forever, if

it always had to start at the beginning of the hard drive
disk to find your file. There is a way in computing to go
directly to the location on the hard drive platter, where
your file is at.

In the operating system, each file name also has

written, in a little mini database, the location of the file
on your hard drive platter. Therefore, when you request
it, it skips the sequential process, and goes directly to
your file, using the data of where its location is at.

The hard drive is also like a phonographic record in that

it is set up with a track. Instead of it being a groove, like
on an old vinyl record, it's a magnetic track, like
videotape or cassette tape. The track has written on it
numbers that represent location. Even though it's a
sequential track, it can be randomly accessed.

Even your file is not in one particular part of that track.

It can be spread out in lots of different non-sequential
places on your hard drive, especially with large files.
Because the files are written in small blocks, and if your
file is large, it will find various blocks, non-sequential.

Not only does it find things in a non-sequential way. It

also writes to your hard disk in a non-sequential way.
But when it pulls that file up so that you can see it,
when you've requested it, it has to write it back to
memory sequentially. By doing so it makes sense to
you. If it wrote it back, say a text file, if it wrote it back
to you in a non-sequential way, your words would be all
mixed up, and they wouldn't make any sense to you.

How that relates to the brain - is the brain has both

those functions. The computer copies brain functions.
The idea of the computer came out of understanding
how the brain worked. We copy nature. And in this case,
we've copied how the brain functions, as a design for
the computer. This analogy is helpful.

And I'm bringing this to your attention, because these

are two primary functions of your intellect, your
thoughts. Imagination, out of which creativity occurs, it
gives you the opportunity to create something new out
of something old. By randomly giving you this
information. Which may lead to a new idea.

002 What Is Creativity? 14:26

Creativity is a law of nature that exists in everyone. It

does not belong to the exclusive domain of artists or
scientists like Albert Einstein. Creativity is innate to your
soul. That is important because you have the innate
power to create your own mind, your own thoughts,
your own emotional responses to your environment.
Without that creative law, that you're born with, you
would be stuck with the mind that you have. As if you
were preprogrammed to only function in a specific way.
And in which you were unable to do anything about it.
That is just not the case.

Knowledge of your own creative abilities and capacities

is vital to your self-esteem, because it's a power. It's a
strength that you're born with. That society
absentmindedly forgot to tell you about, forgot to tell
you about you.

Without knowledge of your own creativity, you don't

know to exercise it. With knowledge of your creativity,
you can exercise it. Whether we do it or not, we know
the importance of exercising our bodies. We can see the
muscles. We know their functions. We know that to
exercise is important to health, physical health. It's
important to your metabolism. It's important to
cardiovascular strength. And we know it's important to
exercise our muscles.

It's interesting to note that in the evolution of species,

the first truly complex animal was the sponge. And after
the sponge evolved a new kind of animal, which I don't
remember the name (Cnidarians, examples: jellyfish,
coral, hydra & sea anemones), the scientific species,
but it did something that the sponge cannot do. It could
move, because it had muscle tissue, and the sponge
has no muscle tissue.

How the muscle in this species was able to move is it

had nerve cells. In the evolution of animal species, in
the evolution of bodily form, muscle cells and nerve
cells evolved together. Demonstrating that they are not
far a part. Muscles, muscle tissue, muscle cells are
either a variant of the nerve cell, or the nerve cell is a
variant of the muscle.
They're in our bodies. They're connected, and that gives
you voluntary movement. At the end of a long chain of
nerve fibers, it terminates in a muscle. Showing that
one requires the other. One is very similar to the other.
The muscle is responsive to the nerve, and the nerve is
responsive to the muscle. They are almost the same.

Your brain is a bundle of nerves. They are like muscles,

in that through exercise, your brain functions can be
strengthened. In exactly the same way that when a
muscle is not used, it will atrophy. It will wither. And it
eventually will become non responsive to nerve
impulses. Your brain, when it is not exercised, atrophies.
Your brain, when it is exercised, strengthens.

The main focus of Emotional Literacy Education is not to

fill you full of a bunch of information that you can't use.
The main function of Emotional Literacy Education is to
isolate brain functions, and give you the exercises to
strengthen them. When you utilize them, you will
automatically organize them into skills, that you can use
to fulfill your needs.

The law of nature, of creativity, that exists within your

soul - is manifested primarily through two brain
functions. Those two functions are imagination, which is
the same as daydreaming, which is the same as free
association. That's half of creativity. That is your mind
functioning to compile, in a random way, your
experiences, your knowledge.

The second key to creativity is the part of your brain

that works to sequence those random thoughts. And
that too is a function of the brain. And that too can be
exercised, by writing your thoughts down in a journal, in
poetry, any form that you like.
How a good writer functions is first through his
imagination. Just writing down what comes to your mind
first. And not being concerned about the order. Just free
flow thought.

Then, you can use a different function of the brain. In

which you take those thoughts, that you've written
down, and you try to rearrange them. So that they
make more sense to you, when you read it.

And you can either do that paragraph by paragraph,

sentence by sentence, and ultimately word by word. So
that as you're reading through it, each time after, you
see a new order. And make that change while reading
through it. It will make more sense to you. And in
writing we call that drafts. First draft, second draft, third
draft, until you get your thoughts into the best
sequence that you can.

Maslow uses the word free association. This process

implies that you begin with some subject. You are trying
to apply this process to a subject.

The word association means: you're picking a subject to

associate all of your experiences, and all of your
thoughts, and all of your memory. And all of your
knowledge to the one particular subject that you've
chosen to free associate. Otherwise, it would fall just
under the category of just daydreaming. In which you
are using your imagination, but it has no direction.

I am talking about a discipline here. For example,

writing is a skill. Which requires discipline to strengthen.
I'm not suggesting your vocation become that of a
writer. What I am suggesting is that you can use writing
as an exercise to strengthen these two parts of the
brain. Which is also a part of language.
Language is what you need to understand your
emotions. We're trying to strengthen your mind. To a
place where your language abilities reach a level of
skill, where you can make thought pictures of your
emotions, your behaviors, and your needs. And then
you can use that information to make choices.

I like to call these two functions of the brain the non-

sequential and the sequential mental processing. We're
familiar with the sequential part. Every time we read
something, every time we hear someone speak, it's
given to us in a sequential way.

Maslow wrote, "The technique here is just to wait-and-

see what happens, what comes to mind."

Emotional Literacy Education will give you techniques

that will be exercises to strengthen your skills. Which
relate to specific functions of the mind.

Maslow continues, "This is what Freud called free

association, free-floating attention, rather than task
orientation."

First, the words free-floating attention, another part of

your brain that's involved in this process, and which also
needs to be strengthened, is your abilities in attention,
your ability to focus your mind. Utilizing the subject as
the center of your attention. From which you allow a
free floating imagination. It means not merely
daydreaming. It means using your imagination with
focus, with attention, and with concentration on the
subject that you're trying to understand. That you're
trying to sequence within your mind - to give you a
better understanding of that subject.

And he compares it to task orientation. All tasks are

sequential. You couldn't do a random task. He's
comparing it to the old educational system. Where the
student is given a sequential task to perform. In our jobs
we're given known things to do. And we're instructed to
do them in a sequential way. The education is
sequential. You will do this thing step by step.

It's already been worked out for you. All task orientation
is given to you in a sequential way, and its performance
by you is sequential. We can live our entire lives
through task orientation. And never tap into that,
imagination, and never use it to your advantage. And
never become strong in that ability.

From my experience, imagination is your mind and non-

sequential processing. Sequential processing, which is
logic; and when you combine them both together, you
get creativity. The imagination creates a new order to
your thoughts. Your abilities in logic allow you to
sequence your imagination in a way that makes sense.
When you combine the two together, you can create
something new. That's why it's called creativity. It
requires both skills.

003 What Is Intuition? 14:32

I don't see this as the same thing as Maslow's reference

to being able to hear these small delicate impulse
voices from within. That is a difference skill. Imagination
is chaotic. It is random. And it is an unclear picture.
Listening to your imagination, as if it were a guiding
voice, would only give you a chaotic voice, a random
voice. Which doesn't make any sense.

Maslow continues, "And if you are successful in this

effort, and learn how to do it, you can forget about the
outside world, and its noises, and begin to hear these
small delicate impulse voices from within."

Hearing a voice, an impulse voice inside you that makes

sense, requires you to go a little deeper than
imagination and logic. Which are aspects of your
intellect.

For this next part we're going to open up the subject of

a different part of the brain. It's more on an emotional
level than an intellectual level.

Thoughts, imagination, creativity and logic are a good

chalkboard. A good way to write out the activities of
your mind. To help you in problem solving.

Here, when we refer to impulse voices from within,

we're closer to intuition, than we are to logic. It's closer
to your needs, than it is to a tool of language.
Imagination and logic can become voices that are so
loud inside you, that it drowns out these delicate
impulse voices from within.

First, you have the problem of the society. And that's

what Maslow is talking about when he says, "You can
forget about the outside world and its noises...."

People in the society are constantly giving commands.

Of which we are expected to respond too. We listen for
those commands. They not only drowned out our
delicate impulse voices, but they also drowned out our
own imagination and logic.

Society has a ready-made structure for you to fit into

the very day that you are born. The only thing that you
hear from the time that you are born is how you're
going to fit into that structure.

All associative learning, traditional education, is task

orientation - to fit you into that structure. Which drowns
out your own imagination, and circumvents exercising
your skills as logic - to sequence your own thoughts. So
that they make sense to you.
The society insists that it has the answers. That it
already makes sense. Thus, it cripples even the idea
that we should exercise our own minds to make them
strong.

The first voice that drowns out knowing yourself - is the

voice that comes from outside. The second voice, that
can drowned out your intuition, is this imagination and
thought processes that go on in your own mind.

There is a way to distinguish the difference between

your imagination and your reason. Which is the same as
logic and your intuition. The way you differentiate them
is by seeing their functions. Thought, imagination and
reason never have a destination. They never have an
arrival point. Rather they are just tools to utilize to help
you find solutions.

In contrast, your delicate impulse voices are your

destination. They are an arrival point. Because they flow
from your needs. Therefore, when you hear them, they
will speak the voice of what you need.

I like the word impulse. The neurological networks

within the brain function by impulse, electrical
discharges. Signals are impulses. And the brain
functions through signals. They are not a speaking
voice. That's just a metaphor. These are felt rather than
heard. Or for those of you who use visualization as
thought, they are felt rather than seen.

It's impulse that drives our behavior. It's even impulse

that drives our thoughts. In that sense you could say
the underlying structure of your imagination, of your
creativity, of your reason, are these impulses. They
exist at a deeper layer in the unconscious, at best
subconscious.
We can use our thoughts to try to give names to our
impulses, help us to discern, and to discriminate
individual impulses within us.

This is a fundamental principle of Emotional Literacy

Education. That we learn to sense these impulse voices,
because they are so fundamental to our motivation and
our behavior. All of the activities of the brain, that by
succeeding in feeling them, we begin to discover our
own makeup.

Maslow goes on to say, "The hints from your animal

nature, not only from your common species nature, but
also from your own uniqueness."

The underlying structure of the brain is impulse. These

are impulses to action. Normally we say action is
physical. It's what we do with our bodies. It's what we
can see ourselves do. What we can't see is the action of
our minds.

Our brains are constantly sending signals in impulses.

Which is an action of the mind. The electrical activity
causes the dynamic of the mind. Therefore, we have an
internal behavior, internal actions. Which cannot be
seen in our behavior. Which include our thought
processes.

Maslow is correct when he says, that these delicate

impulse voices are hints of our animal nature. We're
born with instincts. Structures in the brain that are hard
wired at birth. Which are basic to the actions, behaviors
and dynamics of the mind. We all have, in varying
degrees, aggressive impulses, passive impulses, fear
impulses. Which are determinants of the mind's
behavior.

They effect our impulse voices. They commandeer

them. They also can drown them out. Fear can
takeover, so that the only thing that we hear is terror
and doubt. Our aggressive tendencies can take over, so
that the only thing that we hear is our anger and our
bitterness and our hatred.

These small delicate impulse voices are sandwiched

between our animal nature, our imagination, and the
social influence. Making it very difficult to hear these
delicate impulse voices.

It can be said then, that this is a skill that has to be

learned. We are drowned by all these other voices. That
are much louder than intuition.

Only by getting control over these other mental

activities, finding the volume control on them, and
turning them down, can you begin to hear these
delicate impulse voices that are from your nature. They
are from your soul.

And in that sense, the soul is drowned out. Its voice is

not heard by you. Being able to hear your intuition is a
skill. It takes training. It takes discipline. The ability that
you must acquire, to hear your own intuition, is the
ability to quiet the mind.

When the mind becomes quiet, intuition becomes the

sole voice, speaking directly from your soul. And it flows
out into your mind, and becomes its sole voice. It's the
soul speaking through the mind. It's beyond
understanding. It's wisdom.

Maslow continues, "The hints are from your animal

nature, not only from your species nature..."

Which is the things that we all share in common.

"...but also from your own uniqueness."

This intuition, this wisdom is the voice of a different kind
of uniqueness. Everyone of us has a brain that shares
commonalities. And everyone of us has a brain that is
unique. This is a reference to the uniqueness of your
soul.

Every soul is different. Though like the brain we share

commonalities in our souls. Each soul is also utterly
unique. And it's for that reason alone that another
person, from the outside, cannot be that voice, cannot
hear that voice for you. Another person, therefore,
cannot give you intuition, cannot give you wisdom.

It goes to the very core of your being. And for you to

know what to do with your life, you have to be able to
hear that unique voice coming from your soul. Everyone
has a unique soul. And everyone is in a unique position
in the universe. And because that is true, only you can
make choices for you. That relate to both your
environment and the particular characteristics of the
uniqueness of your soul.

Lesson 9: What It Means to Be Psychologically Healthy

The following lecture is a demonstration of the use of

the Emotional Literacy Language. The views expressed
are examples designed to inspire the student to
develop their own unique ideas, language and
Emotional Literacy Skills, and are not intended to
promote anyone's philosophy.

001 The Limitations of Science 5:18

Science is based on knowledge, which is primarily

derived from observation. Science calls it empirical
knowledge. It is information primarily gathered from the
sense of sight. From what we can observe with our
eyes, and figure out with our thoughts. Laying a
foundation for facts that can be verified by others.
Making observation and verification repeatable. It is a
powerful tool, when you are trying to understand
objects, observable phenomenon.

Where it totally fails - is the world of the invisible. Which

scientists now believe make up 90 to 95 percent of the
whole universe. Astronomers estimate that the visible
light that comes from luminescent bodies, like stars and
galaxies, or light that can be detected through other
instruments, like X-rays and radio waves; from what
they can observe, they have come to the conclusion
that this dark matter does exist. It is a testimony, by
science itself, that through its current methods alone,
they can only give us at most five to 10 percent of the
total picture of the universe.

Through this observation, and calculations about

gravity, and the amount of mass that must exist, they
have come to the realization of a new kind of matter. It
is called dark matter.

It demonstrates the limitations of the methods and

techniques of science, to bring us knowledge of the
whole universe. This dark matter is inferred. They
cannot see it directly. They cannot observe it directly.

If you had to make a decision in your life, based upon

only having five to ten percent of the facts; and the
other 90 percent is inferred, and you have to guess,
from that perspective, it becomes an unreliable criteria
to base your decisions.

This is just an analogy. That science cannot work

effectively in all areas of existence. In one area, in
which they have been unable to discover the facts, is
our own subjectivity. Science has a problem observing
emotions, thoughts, desires.
Yet, individuals have found that they can observe,
through their consciousness, with the aid of their
thoughts, the activities of their own minds. Which are
invisible to science, hidden from science.

Science itself, the methods of science, are set up to look

outward at the universe. They have no scientific
technique to look inward at a living emotion or thought.
They can hook you up to machines, but they cannot
read your thoughts or your emotions.

002 What It Means to Be Psychologically Healthy 7:18

In his book, The Farther Reaches of Human Nature,

Abraham Maslow wrote, "People whom we describe as
healthy, strong and definite seem to be able to hear
their inner-feeling-voices more clearly than most
people. They know what they want, and they know
equally clearly what they don't want." From The Farther
Reaches of Human Nature, by Abraham Maslow, page
176, 5th paragraph.

Abraham Maslow devoted his psychology and scientific

career to defining what a psychologically healthy person
is. It makes sense to try to understand what it means to
be psychologically healthy.

In medicine the body is assumed to be healthy, as long

as there is no manifestation of disease. That philosophy
does not hold true for psychology for two reasons. The
first reason is that neurosis is handed down from
generation to generation. What we consider common
neurosis, neurosis which appears in the general
population, we consider that normal. We do not identify
that normalcy as neurosis. The second reason is that
health, mental-health, is achieved through
psychological growth.
Psychological health represents a higher condition of
man. Which is beyond normal, supranormal. Psychology
does not go in search of the supranormal. What I mean
by supranormal is mental health that goes beyond the
normal shared neurosis.

The function of psychology is to bring a person back to

the accepted norms of society. The accepted norms of
society are exploitation, social hierarchy, social
privilege. Where people are born into families that have
more money, and therefore can offer their children
more resources than the middle-class.

Instead of accepting that one is just lucky, for them it's

a declaration of the right of birth, the ruling class. Who
then impose their neurosis through a hierarchical
structure. That the further down the hierarchy you go,
the less need fulfillment is achieved. To the point where
we call people poor. Their poor in their ability to fulfill
their own needs, but it's not necessarily their fault. But
rather it's the neurotic society that refuses to accept
them as a part of them.

There's an even lower level. We call the lowest level the

homeless. They're even without one of our most basic
needs. Which is shelter. And it's not necessarily their
fault. It's the result of this apathetic society. That pools
resources towards the top through a social structure,
which drains resources from the bottom. There's cruelty
in that. It's not brother and sisterhood. It's
compartmentalization and exclusion based upon
neurotic hatred.

Psychology doesn't question normal neurosis as being

unhealthy. Rather, they function like chiropractors. In
that they try to realign your psyche, through a
psychological adjustment, so that you fit back into the
system. Which is a selfish system.
Maslow is a revolution in human thought that
transcends psychology, and spills over into education
and science. He's the only person I've heard speak of
human health, as being beyond the psychological norm.
And it's beyond the psychological norm, because the
way you get there is through growth.

When Maslow says, "People whom we describe as

healthy, strong and definite...."

I know he's referring to a body of scientific research. Of

which he conducted and produced results. I know what
he's referring to. In his work he gives clear definitions of
what the healthy person is. This here is just a small part
of his research results.

He describes them as strong and definite. Meaning they

show clear characteristics in their personalities. They
come out strongly and with a definite nature or
characteristic.

Emotional Literacy Education is not the study of

neurosis. It's the study of our feelings from a holistic
perspective. It is inclusive in that it names our lowest
emotions. Which we all share. And our highest
possibilities for emotion. Which only the healthiest
among us share.

003 Inner-Feeling-Voices: Interpreting Our Inner Signals

12:14

He says, "They seem able to hear their inner-feeling-

voices more clearly than most people."

He is drawing distinctions. Which are useful in giving us

a definition of what a healthy person is. Which also
gives us a definition of what we are growing toward.
Here he modifies the inner voice. It's the voice you're
more likely to hear than the intuitive voice. Wisdom is a
possibility. It is arrived at through growth and
recognized as intuition.

The inner-feeling-voices are always there. They can be

unconscious, semiconscious or conscious. They are the
combined total of our impulse voices. If we were to
become conscious of an impulse, and we were able to
feel it, it would be what I would call an individual desire.
Impulse voices, our desires, are small and delicate, and
hard to hear.

One of the goals of Emotional Literacy Education is to

help you learn how to hear your impulse voices. They
can be distinguished from your inner-feeling-voices in
that they are object oriented. They're specific impulses
to a specific action, usually requiring a specific object.

For example, if you like ice cream, before you get up

from your chair in the living room to go get the ice
cream, there is an impulse to action. There is an urge
for the ice cream.

Why this is important - is by being able to identify these

desire-impulses, as they arise in the mind, you can stop
yourself. And use your intellect to ask yourself a
question. "Do I really need this? Or, do I just want this?
Do I really need this? Or, is it a whim, something that
just brings me pleasure, something that I just like?"

The reason for asking the question is to determine

whether or not this particular impulse-desire is for your
benefit, for your health, for your well being. Or, is it one
too many calories for the day. I'm just giving an
example. We are made up of millions of impulse
desires.
Emotional Literacy Education is about learning how to
read those impulse-desires. Learning not to act on them
automatically. Learning to categorize them into
categories of good and bad, good for me, bad for me.

Our normal way of operating is after we've eaten the ice

cream, or smoked the cigarette, we look back on the
act, after the impulse, after the cigarette is finished, or
the ice cream has been eaten. And we might conclude
that we wished we hadn't indulged. Then it's too late.
Then it's just regret. Which doesn't help at all. It doesn't
stop you next time from a habitual behavior.

I'm not saying you shouldn't eat ice cream. And it's up
to you whether or not you smoke cigarettes. It's just
symbolic of desires, and demonstrative of how to
harness them.

And why you need to hear them? Of course, you don't

actually hear them, you sense them. Emotional Literacy
Education is learning to sense these impulse desires.
They are not strong like feelings. They are subtle like
impulses. If you can catch an impulse as it's arising, it
can become a choice. You can choose to act on it. Or,
you can choose to not act on it.

It's the only way, as far as I know, to step in between

your desire and your action - to minimize the negative
effect of bad habits. That are by definition detrimental
to either your physical health or your mental health. All
of us are stuck with habits that we've acquired.

Being able to sense an urge, that's what I would call

them, urges. Being able to sense an urge is very helpful.
But they are very subtle. And we're not use to looking
for them before the act. What you're more likely to
encounter is an inner-feeling-voice. Which basically
amounts to impulse voices in groups. It's a complex set
of impulses.
And they carry with them information that is useful.
Understanding, hearing, identifying, discriminating our
feelings is how we interpret our emotional states. Which
we use as a reality test. Examples of our feeling-voices
are frustration, guilt, fear, depression and anxiety.

Frustration carries with it the information that a group

of desires is hindered. An entire plan is blocked. One
simple action, being blocked, is strong enough to set off
frustration. It's an event that tells you that your dreams
are threatened.

The goals are not being met, and the entire plan is in
jeopardy. Therefore, it represents a set of desires. When
they feel blocked, it signals frustration, and that is a
positive thing, if it's used correctly. And it's a negative
thing, if it's used incorrectly.

What I mean by that is, frustration with knowledge of

what frustration is, tells you what's going on. Frustration
which is dysfunctional will find another outlet, other
than knowledge. Its most likely outlet is anger, is blame.
Somebody else is the problem, why the dream is not
being fulfilled.

Emotional Literacy Education is the study of the entire

spectrum of emotions. What information they're trying
to tell you, and how to interpret that information. So
that you can use it to benefit you.

What we have now is a condition of a lack of knowledge

of our emotions. Such that when they occur, we don't
know what they're trying to tell us. Therefore, we don't
know how to act on the information. It leaves us
confused and unable to choose, and make decisions
about how to cope with our obstacles. To get around
them, so that we can still meet our needs.
Emotions can be either functional or dysfunctional.
Emotions are always dysfunctional, when we don't know
their purpose. Emotions are always functional, when we
know why they're happening to us. Because it gives us
information about what to do.

Nature is trying to inform you through your emotions. If

you listen to your inner-feeling-voices, you will find
them carrying information that you need. They are
there for a purpose.

Maslow even go so far as to say, "People whom we

describe as healthy, strong and definite, seem to be
able to hear their inner-feeling-voices more clearly than
most people."

He defines a healthy person, as one who can hear their

inner-feeling-voices. They make better decisions. They
have more choices. They are better able to manage
those feelings, and use them to their advantage.

The alternative is that these feelings get in the way.

They become a liability and a disadvantage. They
confuse us. They remove choice, and make us unable to
make the right decision.

004 Healthy People Know What They Need and Don't

Need 2:48

Maslow continues, "They know what they want, and

they know equally clearly what they don't want."

They have learned how to distinguish, what they want,

and what they don't want. Based upon a clear
recognition of what satisfies their desires. Of what
fulfills their needs. And the criteria, for which they base
this distinction, is whether or not what they want brings
them health, and makes them feel better.
When we want something, and we get it; and we're
unconscious of our feelings, we have no way of
determining, whether or not it's good for us. Because
our feelings let us know.

Maslow is describing healthy people, as people who

know what they want. And they know equally clearly
what they don't want. What they don't want is what
makes them unhappy.

Emotions of unhappiness are there as our friends, in

equal proportion to our feelings of satisfaction and
happiness. We need contrasting feelings. So that we
can associate what we want, with what we don't want.
Our unhappy feelings serve that purpose. Without
feelings of unhappiness, we would want everything.

Life is filled with danger. Our psychological health and

our physical health are fragile. They are our
protectorate. They are there for a clear purpose. This
comes sharply into view with consciousness, with
experience, with discrimination. Which are acquired
skills, learned skills. Skills which we are not informed
about. Skills which if we had them, we would live better
lives.

Emotional Literacy Education is to help you have a

better life, by teaching you how to strengthen your own
skills. So that you can better use them to interpret your
own reality.

005 People Are out of Touch with Their Inner Signals

9:47

In his book, The Farther Reaches of Human Nature,

Abraham Maslow wrote, "Other people, in contrast,
seem to be empty, out of touch with their inner signals.
They eat, defecate, and go to sleep by the clock's cues,
rather than by the cues of their own bodies. They use
external criteria for everything from choosing their food
('it's good for you') and clothing ('it's in style') to
questions of values and ethics ('my daddy told me to')."
From The Farther Reaches of Human Nature, by
Abraham Maslow, page 176, 5th paragraph.

He's trying to contrast a healthy functional attitude with

an unhealthy dysfunctional attitude. Being devoid of
hearing your delicate impulse desires and inner-feeling-
voices, and being without intuition and wisdom; a
person is left without a compass, without inner signals
that direct. Which leaves a person empty. This has been
the condition of man for thousands of years.

By not informing you, by not helping you to discover

your feelings and desires, society is setting up a
condition in which you become dependent on it for
direction. Society provides an endless list of rules, of
regulations for you to follow.

Its failure is that those rules contradict themselves.

Further diminishing our own capacities to make
decisions. The end result, when we're given
contradictory values and contradictory signals - of how
to live our lives, it is confusion. It is a crippled decision
making system. In which the society, which destroyed
your decision making ability, then comes to your rescue
with the answers.

Maslow continues, "They eat, defecate, and go to sleep

by the clock's cues, rather than by the cues of their own
bodies. They use external criteria for everything from
choosing food and clothing to questions of values and
ethics."

When we're crippled on the inside, we turn outward for

the answers.
John Lennon, one of my favorite artists, wrote in a song
titled, Crippled Inside from his Imagine CD:

"You can shine your shoes and wear a suit.

"You can comb your hair and look quite cute.

"You can hide your face behind a smile.

"One thing you can't hide is when you're crippled

inside."

It doesn't matter what particular occupation a person

has in life. We arrive at the same conclusions. Maslow is
saying the same thing from the perspective of a
psychologist and a scientist. And John Lennon is
reaching the same conclusion as a musician and as an
artist - in his observations about humanity.

We all wear masks to hide not being able to make our

own decisions; not being able to come to our own
conclusions, not being able to rationalize and
understand for ourselves what's happening to us.
Because we don't want others to know how weak we are
inside. To show weakness allows others to take
advantage of us, so there's a reason why we hide. The
fact that we hide it from ourselves, though, is not
helpful. We need to know the deficits, the weaknesses,
so that we can strengthen them.

John Lennon continues:

"You can wear a mask and paint your face.

"You can call yourself the human race.

"You can wear a collar and a tie.

"One thing you can't hide is when you're crippled
inside."

Well, we can hide it from others, and we do. It doesn't

change how we feel about ourselves. You can fake
something, so that other people don't recognize you.
But you can't fool nature. You can't artificially boost
your self-esteem by hiding. Rather, it compounds the
problem, because it's an additional weakness.

Self-esteem equals our strength, our power, and our

effectiveness as human beings to satisfy our own needs.
And you can't fake that, not to yourself. It's still there.
The weakness is still there. It affects everything you
feel. It affects the way you think. It affects how you
think.

We can fake. We can fool the world, and through self-

deception we can fool ourselves. But you can't fool
reality. Reality doesn't bend to your self-deceit. Your
weakness remains just under the surface, under the
facade, under the cover of a smile. Your tears would be
more authentic; would make you more human, would
bring you closer to yourself, than pretending that we're
strong.

John Lennon was a harsh critic. And I believe he failed to

hold the mirror up to himself. What he says in this song
is certainly true about himself.

He continues:

"Well now you know that your cat has nine lives,

"Nine lives to itself.

"But you only got one.

"And a dog's life ain't fun.

"Take a look inside."

It is easy to say. It is difficult to do. John Lennon didn't

look inside, ran from his own weaknesses, tried to cover
them. But his statement is valid. The conclusion is
correct. Take a look inside.

Emotional Literacy Education is a support system to

help you look inside. Knowing how difficult it is. How
scary it is. How much effort is involved. And I believe we
need a support system to be able to move through this
process. We need to support each other in this process.
It's the most difficult to go it alone. And though it's not
easier, it is more comforting to share with others.

I would like Emotional Literacy Education to be a

classroom. Where we can share with one another, and
learn from one another our experiences. That will lend
support to each other.

006 The Window of Consciousness 7:06

In his book, The Farther Reaches of Human Nature,

Abraham Maslow wrote, "There are signals from inside,
there are voices that yell out, 'By gosh this is good,
don't ever doubt it!' This is a path, one of the ways that
we try to teach self-actualization and the discovery of
self. The discovery of identity comes via the impulse
voices, via the ability to listen to your own guts, and to
their reactions and to what is going on inside of you."
From The Farther Reaches of Human Nature, by
Abraham Maslow, page 171, 2nd paragraph.

The signals are there, unconscious. They exist without

our knowledge. They compel us to act in certain ways.
And to think in certain ways without our permission,
without a conscious decision making process. Thus, we
are easily prone to make mistakes. And to do things,
habitual things, that are harmful to us. Which actually
sets up conditions of our own unhappiness. In cycles
which we repeat, making our unhappiness a continuum.

Nature provides us with a key. The way light dispels

darkness, consciousness dispels unconsciousness. It's
not like turning on a light switch. It's more like turning
on a light dimmer switch. The way that we increase the
volume of light, incrementally, is through our thought
processes.

Most of the mind functions unconsciously. One aspect of

the mind closest to consciousness is language. We have
to choose our words. It opens up a little window. We can
use thought to pry open the window of consciousness.
Though they are not the same mechanism. It's just that
thought and language are more closely connected to
consciousness, more on the surface, than our inner-
impulse-signals.

Emotions, when they reach a certain level of intensity,

become conscious. We can use both to help open a
window into the darker recesses of our minds. To the
place where we can begin to hear these inner signals.
They are shouting, but without a mechanism to hear the
shout, their voices go unheard. Their impulses go unfelt.

That's why an educational process is required. To unlock

these windows, to amplify our feelings. And to become
skilled enough in language, to help us be able to
identify these impulses, these desires.

Maslow says, "This is a path. One of the ways that we

try to teach self-actualization and the discovery of self."

Emotional Literacy Education will help you to become

an explorer of yourself. It provides maps to help you
navigate your feelings and thoughts. By providing a
language that you can learn. That will help you to
identify what is already inside you. That has no name.

The language of Emotional Literacy will help you to

define your feelings, and to discover their meaning. It is
a path, like any educational system. But it is non-
sequential by nature. In that it is important for you to
choose, out of the language, what it is that you need to
know about yourself, now.

The discovery of self is not an A-B-C process, because

the mind has a random nature. Therefore, to follow it,
you have to have a random process - a process of
choice, an exercise of choice by gravity, by attraction.
By what pulls you. By what you need to know about
yourself right now. Which isn't what somebody else
needs to know about their self right now.

Maslow continues, "The discovery of identity comes via

the impulse voices."

The Emotional Literacy Language will help you to

identify your impulse-voices, by giving you a language.
Which will help you to name them, based upon your
experience of them. Further, it expands upon identifying
feelings, thoughts and desires, by providing you with
definitions. More importantly, it will help you to exercise
your own ability to define for yourself how you feel.

007 Each of Us Possesses a Unique Inner Personal

Language 7:54

There is no single way to define a particular feeling.

What I have discovered is that each of us possesses a
unique inner language. I call it a personal language.

Emotional Literacy Language is a universal language.

Which is a tool that you use to write your own personal
language. It's a starting point. It's a beginning. It's
primary function is to help you exercise your own skills,
to create your own definitions; to help you understand
your own feelings and thoughts. It's to help you exercise
your mind in such a way, that you're able to create your
own language.

That's the only way, that you will be able to understand

your own feelings. It's a skill. It's a language skill.
Language that is developed, being so closely related to
consciousness, will also help you to grow your
consciousness.

And when it is of sufficient strength, you will become

aware of your inner signals. Then, they will yell out!

As Maslow said, "By gosh this is good! Don't ever doubt

it!"

They also scream, this is bad. Leave it by the roadside.

Forget it. You don't need it. You don't want it. You don't
like it: is just as important to discovering how to be
happy, how to feel satisfaction.

Emotional Literacy Education, along with the Emotional

Literacy Language, will help you acquire the ability. By
exercising your own mind in such a way, that over time
you will gain the ability to listen to your own guts; your
own inner most feelings, your most subtle impulse-
desires. They will help you. They carry with them
information. That is their function.

In his book, The Farther Reaches of Human Nature,

Abraham Maslow wrote, "The discovery of identity
comes via the impulse voices, via the ability to listen to
your own guts, and to their reactions and to what is
going on inside of you." Page 171, 2nd paragraph.

He continues, "An important part of self-knowledge is

being able to hear clearly these signals from inside."
From The Farther Reaches of Human Nature, by
Abraham Maslow, page 176, 6th paragraph.

He clearly associates his work with self-knowledge.

Making it synonymous with being able to hear clearly
these signals from inside. That there is no distinction
between Maslow's work and self-knowledge. Self-
knowledge has been around since before the time of
Socrates.

Yet, it has failed to find a place in society. There's a

fundamental reason for that. My self-knowledge is a
personal language, that only I understand. Which
cannot help you, directly.

When I speak about my self-knowledge, it jumps from

all of these experiences that I have had. It is condensed
into language. And then it's expressed through words.
And by the time it reaches your ears, it's just
information. And that information cannot carry the
structure of my mind, or the experiences that I've had.

This is a new discovery. The new discovery is my self-

knowledge is a personal language. Which I cannot
transfer to you. I cannot transfer growth.

A simple analogy is: a composer writes music, hears the

song, uses imagination to hear it, and reason and logic
to make it into a set of sequential notes.

And his skill, the composer's skill, took years to develop;

practice, practice, discipline, concentration. Those
things cannot be transferred.

The composer sets his music on paper. And when he

hands it to you, assuming that you're not a musician,
those notes will be utterly meaningless to you; will have
no value to you. It's just information.
Now, if you were to take music lessons; and acquire
musical skills, and strengthen your abilities in that area,
then when I give you the sheet music, you may be able
to understand it.

To help you, I have devised Emotional Literacy

Education, and the Emotional Literacy Language and
Vocabulary. To help you exercise the functions in your
brain - to strengthen them. So that you will acquire all
of these abilities.

The goal is for you to create your own personal self-

knowledge. Which is related to yourself. In which you
will develop your own language. Which you will then be
able to use as a tool to help you solve your problems,
satisfy your desires, and fulfill your needs.

Lesson 10: The Emotional Literacy Language: A

Technology of Happiness

The following lecture is a demonstration of the use of

the Emotional Literacy Language. The views expressed
are examples designed to inspire the student to
develop their own unique ideas, language and
Emotional Literacy Skills, and are not intended to
promote anyone's philosophy.

001 Maslow's Peak Experiences Are Conscious

Experiences 17:02

Emotional Literacy Education emphasizes using your

own senses, and mental capacities to explore your own
interior. Many people have been able to create
knowledge within themselves about the activities of
their own minds. Self-knowledge has been around for
thousands of years. It has been affirmed and reaffirmed
by the poets, by the mystics, and by what Maslow calls
peak experiencers.
Maslow's research has found that nearly all of us at one
time or another has had a peak experience. His
research focused on the healthy person, and he found a
correlation between their peak experiences, and the
frequency of those peak experiences, and their level of
health.

He discovered that these peak experiences changed

people for the better. Peak experiences are dynamics
within the mind, that reach a level of activity such that
they become conscious. Maslow also discovered, in his
research, a correlation between peak experiences,
which we all have had, and the experience of the
mystics and the poets.

It's when we have a peak experience, that something

within us becomes conscious enough, that we can begin
to recognize it. A glimpse of our own mental dynamics
can be seen in peak experiences. Whether or not
they're a positive or negative experience.

When fear rises to a certain level of intensity, it's a peak

experience. When joy rises to a certain level, it's a peak
experience. It's identified as a peak experience by the
very fact, that we become aware of it. When something
reaches our awareness, in the same way as when our
visual field reaches our awareness, then we can use
language, to identify and begin to make a picture of
what it is.

In his book, The Farther Reaches of Human Nature,

Abraham Maslow wrote, "Colin Wilson (159), in his book,
Introduction to the New Existentialism, pointed out that
life has to have meaning, has to be filled with moments
of high intensity that validate life and make it
worthwhile. Otherwise the desire to die makes sense,
for who would want to endure endless pain or endless
boredom?" From The Farther Reaches of Human Nature,
by Abraham Maslow, page 180, 2nd paragraph.
Maslow speaks in his work about peak experiences. And
how they add meaning to our lives. A simple
explanation is that unconscious existence, dynamics
within our mind that remain unconscious, cannot
provide us with any information, any knowledge, any
meaning. Nor can they be intellectualized, brought into
language and expressed.

Even though those dynamics happen on a continuum,

without levels of consciousness, they still drive our
behaviors. But automatically without intellectual
recourse; without choice, without going through a
decision making process, without analysis, without
comparison. Reactive emotions to perceived threats is
how we behave.

From The American Heritage Dictionary of the English

Language, Third Edition, a dictionary definition of the
word existential is: of, or relating to, or dealing with
existence. Having existence. Based on experience. Of,
or, as conceived by existentialism or existentialists: as
an existential moment."

I love the word existence. From which the word

existential is derived. It has two connotations. That
which exists, of which we are aware, and that which
exists, of which we are unaware. In other words, a thing
can still have existence without us knowing it.

The word existence is synonymous with the word

reality. We have existence in reality, but largely our
existence remains unconscious.

The value of the peak experience is that it transforms

something, that exists within us, from unconsciousness
to consciousness. That is the basic fundamental change,
that takes place in the human being. Where we go from
a knowledge deficit of ourselves to self-knowledge. The
peak experience is the way to get there. But without a
language to identify those experiences, they are not
registered as strongly in our memory and our thoughts,
as is required to make a benefit from them.

Existentialism means having an experience of your own

existence. Another word which I love is the word
experience. For me it means to exist in consciousness.
An existential moment is a conscious moment,
especially one of the highest intensity of the dynamics
of one's own mind.

Experience is the total combined functioning of the

body, mind and soul. Such that they work together to
produce an experience. We can have existence without
conscious experiences. And we can have existence with
conscious experiences.

Our conscious experiences are what Maslow refers to as

our peak experiences. Maslow tends to define the peak
experiences, as our highest moments of joy and
happiness. That's a partial truth. Because our highest,
most intense experiences, also include our moments of
deep unhappiness.

Either his research improperly asked the question. Or,

those who were questioned, about peak experiences,
tended to forget their unhappy moments. Which
became conscious moments.

As far as experience goes, there is no differentiation

between moments of unhappiness, satisfaction and
happiness. All three are equally valid emotions. Insofar
as, each one delivers a different message. Of which, we
need to know the things that make us unhappy. We
need to know the things that satisfy us. And we need to
know when we're successful through feeling happiness.
Our negative emotions are just as useful as our positive
emotions. Both are friends. Both need to be treated with
acceptance into our consciousness. Where we can
understand and bring language and expression to them.
Then they function as helpers. Unhappiness is not
something to avoid. It's something to inform.

We are healthier as human beings, when we can

arrange our lives, to be more successful in satisfying our
needs, and accomplishing our goals. Thereby,
diminishing the experiences of unhappiness. But not
eliminating them as sensory perceptions. Which give us
information about our environment and our reality.

Human experience is a large phenomenon. We tend to

fight consciousness of our more intense, negative
emotions, of fear and hostility. We repress them. We
repress memories of them.

With an intense negative experience, we are taught to

avoid them. We habituate this. When we sense a
negative emotion arising, we learn how to block it
before it reaches consciousness. There is a reason for
that. We're not taught how to handle negative
emotions, when they do arise.

Another way of looking at it is - that we are taught that,

when negative emotions do arise, how to repress them.
How to fear them. How to make them return back into
unconsciousness. And how to block thinking about
them.

It's not a surprise. That Maslow's research into peak

experiences tends to report more heavily, highest
moments of happiness. The problem with that is -
highest moments of happiness happen by design;
happen through intent, happen through goal setting,
plan creation and subsequent follow-up in successive
steps. Following the plan, being successful at that, until
one accomplishes their final goal. Which requires your
consciousness. It requires planning abilities, goal
setting. All of that is wiped out along with our fear and
repression of our negative experiences.

Consciousness will not function by picking and choosing

what to be conscious of, and what not to be conscious
of. It is more like a light switch. If you turn it off for the
negative emotions, the positive emotions are turned off
too.

The very term used by Maslow to describe the highest

moments of happiness, peak experiences, imply
experiences of a periodic nature. He used the word
episodic. It's an episode. It's transitory.

The state of happiness, as taught in Emotional Literacy

Education, is not a transitory state. It's a state of
wisdom. It's a state of awakefulness, of discrimination
and consciousness, turned on in a continuum. It is also a
state that encompasses, or embodies, unhappiness and
satisfaction as states. It's not the elimination of
unhappiness. But rather allowing our emotions to
function properly. To provide us with information - to be
functional.

His study cases, who reported periodic, episodic peak

experiences, were largely accidental. And the person
didn't know how they had the moment of happiness, or
how to get it back.

002 Missing The Peak Experience 8:56

I wrote in The Old Man of the Holy Mountain, "A young

man questioned the old man. And he said, "Happiness
seems to have escaped me. Is it true happiness exists in
others?"
The old man answered him saying, "Happiness comes
from within. And if you cannot find happiness within
yourself, it will hinder you from finding happiness within
others."

A young woman spoke sincerely with an open mind and

an honest heart. And she said, "How may I come upon
happiness within myself?"

The old man answered, "I know you have been within
the bounds of happiness, yet you know it not. And you
have seen her blessed ocean shores, and smelled her
sweet orchid fragrance. Though unhappiness veils
pleasure from your hearts. I believe if you were to
understand yourself and others, you would find
happiness within you."

I wrote this when I was 17 or 18. I was referring to

myself. Asking myself about happiness. Knowing in my
own memory, I had experienced happiness.

The question itself is being asked, from the point of view

of where did it go? How do I get it back? Knowing I had
been within the bounds of happiness. Yet, while I was
happy, I knew it not. That I had seen her blessed ocean
shores. And smelled her sweet orchid fragrance. But
this one thing I knew. That unhappiness was veiling
pleasure from my heart. I was conscious, that I was
unhappy. And I remembered being happy. I felt the
contrast of the two, consciously, and began to long for
my happiness.

And it continues, "I believe if you were to understand

yourself and others, you would find happiness within
you."

In that sense, it can be said, that through understanding

we learn how to orchestrate our own happiness.
Happiness doesn't come naturally. Mankind, and its
social order, demands a particular set of interactive
emotions. Emotions that play a role in social function
and social success. We are unconscious of those,
because they're negative. We use fear to intimidate, to
get what we want in the social sense; religious fears,
political fears, threats of hunger, threats of
homelessness, threats of imprisonment, threats of
humiliation - is how we keep people in line. We might
respond with anger to such a system and hatred and
bitterness and revenge.

The point here is that to participate in the society, is to

participate in a particular limited set of emotions. Which
are acceptable. Yet, when we examine them, they are
unhappy. That is the set of emotions, which we use in
survival, and which are handed down from generation
to generation. Meaning we're automatically taught
them from birth; these negative attitudes and
dispositions of hatred and fear and deception.

Therefore, happiness, which is comprised of a different

set of emotions and mental responses, is outside that
experience. That makes happiness only possible by
conscious design. It has to be learned outside the
normal neurotic emotional structure of society.

If it had happiness, I know it would gladly hand it down

from generation to generation. It just is not a survival
skill that we've learned yet.

Abraham Maslow wrote, "Colin Wilson (159), in his book,

Introduction to the New Existentialism, pointed out that
life has to have meaning, has to be filled with moments
of high intensity that validate life and make it
worthwhile. Otherwise the desire to die makes sense,
for who would want to endure endless pain or endless
boredom?"
Because our current survival strategies, and their
accompanying emotions, are painful, we flatten out our
experiences. We enter into a kind of self induced
hypnotic depression. In which we become bored with
our lives.

Colin Wilson is pointing out the need to unflatten our

emotions, to have peak experiences, highs and lows.
They add meaning. They validate life, and they make it
worth living.

People commit suicide in the United States every year.

It's symptomatic of feeling empty and bored. Of having
no hope, and suffering endless pain. To where one
begins to wonder why I am here just to suffer? We
unconsciously flatten out our own experiences, our own
emotions, as a defense mechanism to feeling extreme
unhappiness.

In his book, The Farther Reaches of Human Nature,

Abraham Maslow wrote, "One of the goals of education
should be to teach that life is precious. If there were no
joy in life, it would not be worth living." From The
Farther Reaches of Human Nature, by Abraham Maslow,
page 180, 2nd paragraph.

For the sake of our own survival, we have to work out a

design for our own happiness. In which joy is not a
random, accidental peak experience, but rather a
common experience.

003 The Emotional Literacy Language: A Technology of

Happiness 16:55

In his book, The Farther Reaches of Human Nature,

Abraham Maslow wrote, "We must make a new
vocabulary for all these untilled, these unworked
problems. This 'cognition of being' means really the
cognition that Plato and Socrates were talking about;
almost, you could say, a technology of happiness, of
pure excellence, pure truth, pure goodness, and so on.
Well, why not a technology of joy, of happiness?" From
The Farther Reaches of Human Nature, by Abraham
Maslow, page 169, last paragraph.

To solve a problem, even the simplest problem, requires

a description of the problem. We can't solve a problem,
no matter how much it effects our lives, unless we know
about it.

Our social technology has solved for us many of our

survival problems. It has helped us to become more
efficient in satisfying our physiological needs. In our
attempt to solve those problems, we've created new
ones. Particularly the problems that arise from social
behavior; that arise in our relationships.

We have unnamed problems that go on inhibiting our

happiness, primarily because of the way that we socially
interact. And as new problems effect us, they require a
way to describe them.

That is why Maslow says, "We must make a new

vocabulary for all these untilled, these unworked
problems."

Our problems are compounding themselves. As we

become more complex socially, we are adding new
problems on top of old problems. We are not solving
problems as they emerge. They are accumulating.

Maslow is stating the need for a new vocabulary. That

represents a description of our problems, but also a
plan to resolve them.

The core of Emotional Literacy Education is the

Emotional Literacy Language. It is the principal tool
used in the educational process. The Emotional Literacy
Language is new. Its subject is self-knowledge. It is
designed to fill in the missing knowledge in the society
and in education itself. This need for a new language
has been around longer than Plato and Socrates.
Humanity has been struggling with knowledge of itself.

In Learning Emotional Literacy, A New Language of the

Emotions, Psychologist Claude Steiner wrote, "Learning
Emotional Literacy is like learning a new language. With
the emotionally literate language a different tone of
voice is used. Words are combined into strange
sounding sentences, and a number of 'neologisms' are
used in order to communicate the desired emotional
content."

Claude Steiner continues, "With emotionally literate

expressions, they often make no sense to the listener.
Who might conclude that what is being said is
nonsense."

Claude Steiner continues, "The language of the

emotions is required for the development of the higher
levels of Emotional Literacy. The language elaborately
deals with the exchange of strokes, with the
identification of our and other peoples' emotions, and
the clarification of their causes. This language is foreign
to the average person. Who will have to learn it in order
to develop Emotional Literacy in their lives."

When I came across the phrase 'Emotional Literacy,' I

realized that it implied learning a new skill. As I studied
Emotional Literacy, I realized that the new skill centered
around learning a new language. I went back to my
previous work in Knowledge of the Self in Nine Volumes,
and I realized I had created a new language out of an
old language.

I also understood, that it could be adapted to an

educational program. In which one could acquire the
skill of Emotional Literacy. That is literally being able to
read your own emotions, to identify your own emotions,
to interpret their content. Then to be able to use that
information to help the student make better decisions.

When Claude Steiner says, "Learning Emotional Literacy

is like learning a new language."

There is, in that statement, the hope for a new

language. It's not a declaration that one exists.

For me one does exist. It was something, that I needed

to create for myself. So that I could make a picture, a
word picture, of what was going on inside me,
emotionally. And what was going on around me in
others.

Learning Emotional Literacy is acquiring the skill to

understand this new language. Also, how to use it, and
apply it in your everyday life.

I have created the Emotional Literacy Language. And

I've broken it down into individual words, that are
categorized by subject. To the point where I have
created the Emotional Literacy Vocabulary.

The reason for breaking it down into a vocabulary - is so

that it can be fit into an education system. By breaking
it down to its smallest parts, they can be taught through
concept building. Where simple concepts are taught,
which evolve into more complex usage, and more
complex concepts.

Without an Emotional Literacy Language and

Vocabulary, the skill of Emotional Literacy cannot be
taught. The need for a language is there. It's the
language of our emotions.
Which as Maslow said, "We must make a new
vocabulary for all of these untilled, these unworked
problems."

Claude Steiner continues, "With the emotionally literate

language, a different tone of voice is used. Words are
combined into strange sounding sentences, and a
number of neologisms are used in order to
communicate the desired emotional content."

From The American Heritage Dictionary of the English

Language, Third Edition, a dictionary definition of
'neologism' means: "A new word, expression or usage."

If I substitute his word 'neologism,' it reads like this,

"With the emotionally literate language, a different tone
of voice is used. Words are combined into strange
sounding sentences, and a number of new words, new
phrases, new expressions, word combinations, and new
usage for common words are used in order to
communicate the desired emotional content."

The Emotional Literacy Language uses common words,

like fear and joy in combinations, that form new
phrases. That have new meaning that wasn't there in
the language; that isn't in the dictionary. That's why it's
called a new language.

As with any new language, that the student is not

familiar with, to become familiar with it, the student has
to go through an educational process. That's why I have
added to the phrase, 'Emotional Literacy.' Which is a
new combination of common words, like 'computer
literacy' is new. I have added to the phrase, 'Emotional
Literacy,' the word 'Education' - to form the phrase
'Emotional Literacy Education.' Because literacy in
emotions is a skill, and it requires an educational
process to acquire the skill of understanding the
language.
The purpose of the Language is to help us describe to
ourselves, and to understand all of the different aspects
of the mind including emotions. It's a language which is
referential to our subjective experiences.

Claude Steiner continues, "With emotionally literate

expressions, they often make no sense to the listener.
Who might conclude that what is being said is
nonsense."

For example, the phrase 'Emotional Literacy' makes no

sense, because emotions cannot become literate.
Emotions can't read. That's why new meanings are
created for old words. New word combinations or
phrases are used to express meaning of things that are
beyond our current knowledge.

Every profession, whether it's the teaching profession,

or the legal profession, or the various engineering
professions, they all have their own language. They use
words, that if you're outside the field, you're not familiar
with. That's why lawyers and engineers and doctors and
psychologists and educators and carpenters and
plumbers go to school to learn the language of their
trade. This is a very common thing that we do, when we
develop a new skill. It requires a new language to
describe the skill.

Claude Steiner continues, "The language of the

emotions is required for the development of the higher
levels of Emotional Literacy. The language elaborately
deals with the exchange of strokes, with the
identification of our and other peoples' emotions, and
the clarification of their causes. This language is foreign
to the average person who will have to learn it in order
to develop Emotional Literacy in their lives."
Learning any new language comes down to a matter of
need. We learn new languages for vocational purposes.
The need to learn the Emotional Literacy Language is
directly related to the need to improve our
relationships, and the need to better cope with our
emotions.

It also has a direct relationship to personal development

and growth toward satisfaction and happiness. It
provides the language of our needs. It describes what
emotions we're employing in our relationships, that are
hurtful and helpful to getting what we need.

It provides the Language that relates to our emotional

problems, and gives us the skill to describe those
problems to ourselves. And also it gives us the
Language how our own emotions, when developed, can
provide the solutions to those emotional problems.

004 The Emotional Literacy Language: A Language of

Being 6:03

Abraham Maslow continues, "This 'cognition of being'

means really the cognition that Plato and Socrates were
talking about; almost, you could say, a technology of
happiness, of pure excellence, pure truth, pure
goodness, and so on. Well, why not a technology of joy,
of happiness?"

Maslow often referred to, in his work, 'cognition of

being.' One of his most important contributions to
psychology is his book The Psychology of Being. In it he
defines two types of cognition. One is 'being cognition'
and the other is 'deficiency cognition.' Which he
referred to as 'd cognition' for 'deficiency cognition,' and
'b cognition' for 'being cognition.'

To put it simply, his being cognition is a form of

cognition, in which we become aware of what is. And
deficiency cognition is its opposite. It's not being aware
of what is, as it relates to our own existence, the
internal makeup of our own minds.

The word cognition means to know. It means to know, in

this sense what we are. It's not enough just to have an
experience. We have to have a Language for our
experiences, and a way to describe them to ourselves.
And a way, using language, to express our experiences
to others.

The Emotional Literacy Language is the Language that

we use to describe to ourselves, and to express to
others our experiences. It's a tool. It's a new technology.
It's a description of happiness. And the method and
means of how to become happy.

In this statement, Maslow is talking about something

that had not yet been created. The same is the situation
with Claude Steiner's statement. When he speaks of an
emotionally literate language, he's referring to a
Language that did not exist, in a complete form, to his
knowledge.

Here, Maslow is wishful thinking, that psychology and

education need a new Language, a new Vocabulary that
would amount to a new technology. That would be a
tool to help human beings achieve happiness and joy.

I recognized this need in education and in psychology

itself. That's why I have created the Emotional Literacy
Language, and have evolved it into a Vocabulary; that is
a description of our experiences.

Emotional Literacy Education is a technology of

happiness. Which utilizes the tools of the Emotional
Literacy Language and the Emotional Literacy
Vocabulary. How it works is by combining this Language
and Vocabulary with the technology of education, and
the advancements that we have made in the field of
education.

It incorporates the best that education has to offer - by

way of educating students. It is the first technology of
happiness; the first that has a complete form. The first
that utilizes a language which is comprehensive of
human experience, and encompasses all human
experiences. And provides them with a language.
Which, when the student learns it, they will be able to
express to themselves their own experiences, and will
be able to express and communicate them in their
relationships.

005 The Emotional Literacy Language: A New Beginning

6:46

Singer-songwriter, Tracy Chapman, wrote in her song

New Beginning - from the New Beginning CD:

"The whole world's broke and it ain't worth fixing.

"It's time to start all over, make a new beginning.

"There's too much fighting - too little understanding.

"It's time to stop and start all over. Make a new

beginning.

"...We need to make new symbols. Make new signs.

"Make a new language. With these we'll redefine the

world."

Here, I'm giving the example of two psychologists,

Claude Steiner and Abraham Maslow. And Tracy
Chapman, who's an artist and a poet and a musician;
coming from different fields, yet arriving at the same
conclusion. Their conclusion is that we need to make
new symbols. Symbols that represent our real problems.
Symbols that represent real solutions to those
problems.

Tracy Chapman says, "...We need to make new

symbols. Make new signs.

"Make a new language. With these we'll redefine the

world."

There is a need for a new language. A language which

symbolizes all that we don't know about ourselves. A
language which informs us about ourselves. A language
which covers all the unknown parts of ourselves.

Tracy Chapman wrote, "The whole world's broke and it

ain't worth fixing."

From the perspective of carrying on the way that we

currently do, and the way that we approach problem
solving - is not going to fix our problems. Our problems
keep piling up and increasing. We keep trying to solve
those problems, using the same methods that haven't
produced any result. That's the part that she's referring
too.

If we continue to try to solve our problems, using the

same old methods, we're going to continue to get the
same old results. We need a new approach to problem-
solving. Rather than trying to fix the old approach, we
need a brand new perspective. That can only come from
a new language.

She continues, "It's time to start all over. Make a new

beginning."

It is time to make a new beginning in the fields of

education and psychology. Neither of the current
approaches of psychology or education are solving
mankind's problems. That's why we do need to make a
new beginning in the fields of education and
psychology.

She goes on to say, "There's too much fighting - too

little understanding."

Psychology is not preventing violence. Education is not

preventing children from growing up to becoming
violent. We need a new technology, that employs
understanding. The way to understand - is the
application of a new language, that describes the
problem and the solution.

She continues, "It's time to stop and start all over. Make
a new beginning.

"...We need to make new symbols. Make new signs.

"Make a new language. With these we'll redefine the

world."

A technology that helps people to grow, to become

stronger, to find happiness - by its very nature will
redefine the world. Its unhappy people who fight
amongst themselves. Happy people have no need to
fight each other.

It will redefine the world from the perspective that

humanity will clearly have, in front of them, a new set of
emotional responses - to utilize in their relationships.
Which will make their relationships more satisfying.
Which will bring their relationships more joy, more
success.

We do recognize the problem. Abraham Maslow, Tracy

Chapman and Claude Steiner point to the solution; a
new vocabulary, a new language, and a new
educational system. That is a technology for educating
students in human relationships, and how to make
those relationships better.

006 Life Is Education and Everybody Is a Teacher and a

Pupil 13:11

In his book, Motivation and Personality, Abraham

Maslow wrote, "All of life is education and everybody is
a teacher and everybody is forever a pupil." From
Motivation and Personality, by Abraham Maslow, page
253, 7th paragraph.

As far as human happiness is concerned, there is no

college that you can go to - to get a degree in how to be
happy. Happiness comes out of life as education. The
most important point that I think Maslow is trying to
make - is that life itself provides all of our experiences
from cradle to the grave. That life is our teacher. The
experiences that life provides to us is our teacher.
Therefore, every experience that you have is an
opportunity for self education.

To learn from experience, a language is required. When

we have an experience, and we cannot name it, or
describe it to ourselves, the information that would
have been useful and beneficial to us, from that
experience, is lost. Experience, to be useful, has to be
put into a language, that you can understand, and apply
to your everyday life.

Emotional Literacy Education is the process of acquiring

the language of your experiences. So that when you
have an experience, you're able to apply the language.
And from that experience create meaning out of it.

Maslow said, "All of life is education."

That's because we are given a continuous flow of

experiences from life. When you can master this
technique of understanding your own experiences, you
become a teacher. You become the teacher of yourself.

Maslow states, "All of life is education and everybody is

a teacher and everybody is forever a pupil."

Through experiences we teach ourselves. And in that

sense we become our own students.

I wrote in my book, The Old Man of the Holy Mountain,

"And the humble man questioned the Old Man saying, 'I
have heard many things concerning your teaching. Yet
they say that you proclaim yourself not to be a teacher.
What is the meaning of this saying?'

"The Old Man stood near, yet he seemed distant. And

he said, 'I do not teach others, because I cannot teach
others. I may only teach myself.

" 'And everyone teaches their own self all that they
learn.

" 'We choose that which we desire to know.

" 'And if you desire to know yourself, you must become

your own teacher, and be your own disciple, and learn
about yourself.' " From The Old Man of the Holy
Mountain, by Mark Zimmerman, Chapter 17, I Cannot
Teach Others.

A person who is called a teacher is more like a facilitator

of learning, rather than an educator. What I mean by
that is, ultimately we educate ourselves. That's clear to
see when a student refuses to learn. If I could teach, the
student's cooperation would not be required. I would go
to the student and educate, and they would
automatically learn.
The teacher can point a person to the material. Can
give direction on what material they might study at a
particular time. But ultimately, the student participates
by turning on the learning center in their brain. Which
becomes the actual educator of the student.

Learning is not something that comes from the outside.

Learning is an innate skill, that we're born with.
Therefore, if you really want to know something, you will
have to teach it to yourself. That is, you will have to
point your mind into the direction of the subject, that
you want to learn about. And then, turn on your learning
center in your brain, and allow it to do the work.

I wrote, "I do not teach others, because I cannot teach

others. I may only teach myself."

The clue to this statement is where I say, "I may only

teach myself."

That is a realization, a personal realization of mine. That

I know what I need to know. No one can teach me. If I
need to know it, I will have to become my own teacher
and educate myself.

It's a statement of knowing that no one is able to teach

me. When I want to learn something, I have to apply
myself. That I have to turn on my learning center. That I
have to direct my mind toward the subject, because no
one else can do all of those things for me.

I wrote, "And everyone teaches their own self all that

they learn."

We are not taught this. Students don't realize it. They're

actually teaching themselves everything that they
learn. The greatest teacher is our experiences, our life
experiences. We can either choose to learn from them,
or we can choose to ignore them.
Ultimately, the responsibility for learning lies with the
student. Who chooses to become their own teacher.
Who recognizes learning is an innate skill inside them.
Which only they can turn on, and of which they have the
power to turn off.

I continue, "We choose that which we desire to know."

Unconsciously or consciously, we pick and choose what

we want to know. And we choose what we don't want to
know. That is how the world gets so lopsided. That's
how people justify themselves. By learning what they
want to know, that helps them in their justification. And
by ignoring what they don't want to know. Which might
be hurtful to their justification.

With experience choice is not optional. All experiences

are valuable. Picking and choosing the experiences,
that we want to learn from, causes us to
compartmentalize our brains. Causes us to pick and
choose based upon what benefits us.

I wrote, "We choose that which we desire to know.

"And if you desire to know yourself, you must become

your own teacher, and be your own disciple, and learn
about yourself."

Knowing yourself is your choice. Not knowing yourself is

also your choice.

If you desire to know yourself, it's you who must take

responsibility to be your own teacher. You perform both
roles. In that you are the person who asks the question.
In which case you are the student. But also in the sense
that you're the one who's going to answer the question.
You're the one who's going to be the student, by going
in search of the answer. But ultimately, when you find
the answer, you're going to be the one who gives the
answer to yourself. And in that sense, you take on the
role of both teacher and student.

This is far more important in self-knowledge, than in

associative learning. Which doesn't add anything to
your life, except the experience of going through a
memory exercise.

It's more important in learning about yourself, because

what experiences that you have come from inside you.
Those are your questions. Those are the questions for
which you need to go in search of the answers.

That's why I like Maslow's statement when he says, "All

of life is education, and everybody is a teacher, and
everybody is forever a pupil."

How well you do in Emotional Literacy Education, is

directly related to how great your desire is. How great
your need is to know yourself. If your need to know
yourself isn't very great, if you put up a lot of blocks and
defenses to learning about yourself, then how much you
learn is relative to that.

If your need to know yourself is great, if the feeling is

intense, then your success will be relative to that. It's
about being responsible for yourself, taking
responsibility for your own emotions, and using
Emotional Literacy Education as a benefit to you. It's an
opportunity, which is not imposed on you.

I wrote, "If you desire to know yourself, you must

become your own teacher, and be your own disciple,
and learn about yourself."