HOW TO EDUCATE ALL FOR EXCELLENCE

MY ROCKY ROAD TO EXCELLENCE IN EUCATION My road to excellence in education has not been a rosy road. My road to excellence in education has rather been a rocky road. My life five saving signals on the rocky road to excellence are: *the unconditional love from my parents *mindfulness as a way of life *my two-way learning road *the awakening of the positive side of the sleeping in me *the magic of congruency between my learning and my calling In this chapter, I would like to only talk about the role and importance of unconditional love . The unconditional love from my parents has been my best way to: *the best there is in my external learning world *the best there is in my internal learning world *the best there is between my two learning worlds *the beauty, the bounty, the harmony and the melody of the world around me *the formless form of the Absolute in form within me and all around me I WAS TRAPPED IN THE MIDDLE OF NOWHERE I did not know which way to go. On the one hand, my parents told me that love, compassion, honesty, integrity, humility… are values I should live by. On the other hand, once I left my parents, my daily life was telling me, “Wait a minute. Who you know is more important than what you know. What you have is more important than who you are. Power position, material possession, name, fame... is what makes or breaks people. Why then bother about your shared values?" I love my parents. I trust my parents. I owe them so much. I believe, almost religiously, in all what they told me. To defy or deny what they told me was to defy or deny a vital part of me. That was impossible. But to ignore what was going on all around me was to be unrealistic too. What should I do? Which way should I go? I had no idea. I was lost in the midst of untractable wilderness. The values I have been told to live by did not allow me to go blindly with any flow or to go totally against any flow. I was in limbo. The monotony of my day-to-day life was unbearable. My mind was closed off. My heart was broken. My feelings were frozen. My inner emptiness was a slow and silent and fatal hidden killer. To survive, I needed some life saving signals. My classmates were going to school for passing grades. I was going to school for guiding stars. I needed some new and better ways of seeing the world. I needed some new and better ways of being in the world. My personal school became,‘The School Without Walls.’ Nature became my greatest book. I could learn from anyone, starting by the innocent child in me. I could learn from anything including from adversity. To survive, I had to: *open up my closed off mind *mend my broken heart *melt down my frozen feelings But I did not know how. My deep need for a more meaningful life brought me closer to some of the world’s great religious and spiritual traditions and collective wisdom. My deep need for meaning brought me to the writing of some of the world most famous thinkers. Their inspiring thoughts brought me back to what my parents have already taught me. For instance, I was happy when I read poet Robert Frost’s three following verses. “Two roads diverged in a wood and I-- “I took the one less traveled by “And that has made all the difference." Like Frost, I was in a crossroad. Contrary to Frost, I did not know which way to go. I did not know how to take the road the less traveled by. Frost’s words were more than simple words for me. Frost’s words reminded me what my parents have told me, “If the whole world stands on this side, stand still on the other side as long you know that you are right from the bottom of your own heart.” Frost’s words became some of the guiding stars I was looking for. I started stepping slowly outside the traditional learning box. I started building my own two-way learning road between the two learning worlds. I started paying more attention to the congruency between what the outside world was telling me and what my inner world longs to hear about.