Obstacles to relying on inner teachers

While my coming to rely on my own inner teacher came somewhat easily to me, I'm very aware of the difficulty of the challenge for most of us. Our minds function very differently when we are relying on our inner teachers. We feel differently about ourselves, what we've received and who we appear to be educating. Our effects on learners reinforces our connections to our inner teachers and cultivates the same in anyone who deeply learns from us. The obstacles to relying on our inner teachers appear far more vast and interconnected than those that blocked the recent adoption of cell phones, blogging or iPods.

During the past year in this blog, I've considered how the obstacles might be alleviated by the rampant self expression, self-directed (PLE) learning and interactions with RSS subscribers here online. I've wondered if the change to long tail, wikinomic business models could transform conventional schooling by altering employment opportunities for graduates. I've hoped that explosion in the number of people with a "storyteller outlook" could replace the authoritarian delivery of content. None of these possibilities has sustained my optimism.

Meanwhile there is increasing evidence of emergent systemic collapses that could dramatically alter the questions being asked, changes being considered and issues getting explored by most of the population on this planet. Conditions in education, business, services delivery and government that are currently taken for granted -- could be challenged as an unreliable predictor of the near future.

If educators, administrators, business leaders and legislators stop clinging to their current assumptions, many may become pressured to change how their minds function. Large numbers may realize they have not been getting a sense of what to see, say and do from within. Many may come by the right kind of breakdown where they begin to rely on their own inner teachers.

For now, I am going to assume that this scenario will play itself out. I'm not going to dwell on the disruptions that may provoke the change of hearts and minds. Rather I will delineate a change model for leaving the status quo and entering this different state of mind. My mentoring of entrepreneurs for the past two years has familiarized me with these arduous changes intimately. Perhaps a second order change will come about by providing a map that prevents disorientation, panic and wrong turns. Please keep in mind that the map is not the territory and there is no one right answer to comply with. The journey occurs in one's own change of outlook, feelings and mental functioning. What it takes to get to this envisioned destination is unique for each of us and arrives there one mind at a time.