Teachers, Students, and How I Met RV

The Changing Role of A Student, part 1

Anybody who is a serious practitioner of a thing is "an eternal student of the Art."

The best teachers are forever students. That's a martial arts basic that carries well into RV.

But the role of a student changes. Once the role of 'student' is understood to be a lifetime path, the many changes along that path, and even the responsibilities of a student at different areas of the path, become more obvious. The world ceases to be the childishly simplistic "teacher vs. student" and becomes a "gradient" of individualized effort, mentor dynamics, larger group dynamics such as the team or fellow students, etc.

o0o

I believe that the terms 'teacher' and 'student' are in some ways very limiting as words, because they imply a fixed and one way relationship. Worse, they don't build in evolution aside from the on/off of it, which is just unnatural. It's one more way that the words we use help constrain the reality we experience.

I think it is more practical to consider the word and role of 'student' in the way we would the word 'child'. That is: that obviously, one is going to grow out of that phase, into another, more mature phase. And then will grow yet more. And then more. Continuing onward, until eventually the child is an adult, possibly with children of their own.

The child is still a child to the parents, and those of the parents' generation. In some respects they will always be perceived as a child. But eventually they may be older, and/or more mature, than their own parents were when they first became parents.

They are autonomous with their own ideas, and usually past the age of 17 or so, most children then spend the next 17 de-educating themselves from all the BS that culture, parents, school, church, media, and others inflicted on them. (Well, I did, anyway.)

So it isn't really that one is forever-only child or adult; it is more a "gradient percentage" of how much childhood, or how much adulthood, is present in the individual. And since people are unique, even aside from the body's age, there will always be varying levels of maturity in each person.

What is expected of someone, and what they are capable of, and even what they are driven naturally to want and to pursue, will depend on where they are in the process.

It is a summary not just of children, but of students. Of anything. Including RV.

o0o

Should a student begin from 'scratch' as we will call it, and find themselves a teacher they consider to be a positive chance for instruction and guidance, the role of the student is to learn all they can within that framework.

Granted, the teacher may be a complete psychopath as is sometimes the case, but even crazy people are right sometimes. Frankly even the worst people personally can be qualified in other areas. This is also something just as applicable to the martial arts field as to RV. Although somewhat less... flamboyantly. Well, usually. Martial Arts can be a pretty weird world too frankly. ;-)

When I began in RV in late '95, I was a sponge. No, I was like a sponge on steroids. No, make that, I was a sponge on steroids on compulsive manic investigative obsession. I don't do much halfway, and when it came to RV, it appeared at a time in my life when I was probably about to crack. I needed it in a worse way than most people.

I had first spent years as a medical-model near-scoffer. My introduction to 'new age' stuff was dominantly through my study of hypnosis and NLP. I would hang out at psychic fairs considering all the visitors and booth attendants fair game, in a rather blackly funny way. Let's just not go there. I'm a better person now. Anyway, that was followed by years of having wildly, intensely psychic (and bizarre esoteric) experiences, which would surely have put me in a straightjacket were it not for the books of Jane Roberts and Seth, who -- thank God -- gave me a sane 'framework' to put my experiences into. (See Bewilderness.)

The whole model of RV was something that allowed yet controlled that wild side. Something that aimed for a logical model of an inherently a-logical process. It wasn't just a great idea to me. It was my savior, my sanity, my opportunity to put together the pieces of myself that going from one near-extreme to another severe-extreme had caused in me. I think it was probably akin to a life-rope that arrives just as you are going under for the last time.

RV wasn't something I studied for awhile and decided I wanted to know more about. I heard about it, and that was just it. It took about 0.7 seconds to decide that was it. That was my study. That was my path. It was right and I knew it. From then on, it was just a matter of the pursuit.

next up: part 2

Nazi Germany Flashbacks

(The Firedocs RV blog refused this entry. Literally. It will post anything but not this one. One of the great mysteries of the universe. That's why it's here.)