Hearing our inner teachers

To hear our inner teachers, we need to listen to different voices in our heads. Most of us have some very loud distractions that disrupt what we could be receiving from our inner teachers. Instead of getting blessed with gifts that respond to what we feel like learning, we are getting tormented by unwanted feelings and thoughts.

Our bodies come with pre-installed cognitive functionality to maximize survival, longevity and success. These automatic mental processes react faster than thinking about perceived threats and dangers. Constant vigilance is maintained without engaging the slower, glucose-consuming, reasoning processes. This high speed processor is designed for very stable environments that require very little learning to survive and thrive. Hunter-gatherers, herders and some agriculturalists have demonstrated the effectiveness of this version of operating system throughout human habitation of this planet.

This functionality is also viral, self-replicating and quickly cultivated in other earthlings. Our minds are brought inline when we have been socialized to stop daydreaming and to start paying attention to authority figures. We get rewarded for reacting to what is outside our minds and punished for "drifting into reverie". We learn to live in fear of what could go wrong, what trouble we've already gotten into and what will come back to haunt us if we stop paying attention. We assume we've been told the truth about real threats and enemies. We stand guard against these perilous assaults by closing our minds, not realizing we've already let the enemy inside to torment us.

When situated in highly turbulent environments, these mental processes crash. We live in a state of chronic anxiety when so much is changing around us. Our minds go crazy when we close our eyes after a busy day or for a moment in between frenetic activities. We are either haunted by dark fantasies or endless to do lists. We become extremely irrational or tyrannically controlled to put a lid of repression on much feared expression. We cannot chill out, simmer down or get a grip. We over-react to dangers and under-estimate opportunities. We cannot get a sense of what's really going on, what approach to take or what will have the best effect. We alternate between urges to be angelic and devilish. The voices in our heads cannot make up their minds.

Our inner teachers wait patiently beyond this fray. From their perspective, this fuss is not really happening. We need newer system software for our minds. We have a lot to learn about what's really real, how to see these misleading appearances and what to do amidst so much confusion. Our perspective has already been captivated by authorities, schooling and our experiences in danger. We have more to unlearn than to learn anew once we get things going with our inner teachers. It gets simpler once we learn what our inner teachers intend to teach us.