Teachers Teach Us

Well this may shock some of you, but perhaps not all of you, but I have to admit it. I am a very naughty boy. I do hope I will be forgiven. A little while ago I received a letter through the post informing that I had been pictured travelling at 36 miles per hour (mph) on the Washway Road. The speed limit there is 30mph. I had two options pay a fine and 3 points on my license or go on a speed awareness course. I chose the latter and I am glad that I did. It was actually four hours well spent as it got me to think about my driving once again. As the course went on I remembered, I relearned, some things that I had forgotten. The course was taught well by two driving instructors. Yes there was one or two dissenting voices, who didn’t want to be there and thought that it was unjust that they were there. For me though it has had a very positive effect on my driving ever since. I am grateful for the lessons learnt and particularly the teaching.

I’ve been thinking a lot ever since about the many lessons I have learnt and re-learnt over the years and the many wise teachers I have known.

It came to my mind once again this week. I noticed picture after picture of friend’s children, in their uniforms, returning to school after the summer holidays. I’m sure that they had mixed feelings about this, some excited and others not too keen on the idea. I had thought about it too as I was returning to work last week after three weeks away. The day before I had experienced what I call “The Bulls Eye” effect. It is a familiar feeling to anyone who attended school in Britain in the 1980’s. It was a feeling that came on during Sunday teatime as the program “Bulls Eye”ended and I realized that in the morning I would be returning to school. I was talking about this feeling the other day as I was playing a board game with Sue. During the game I was asked which job do British people think is the hardest? I got the answer right, it was a school teacher. Now I’m sure that this would not have been the case thirty or forty years ago, but it is now. I can’t imagine what that feeling must be like over the Atlantic in America where some are suggesting that the teachers ought to be armed, due to increasing number of school shootings. Then of course there is the headteachers, there jobs seem the toughest of all.

It brought to mind the following…

Early one morning a mother went to her sleeping son and woke him up.

"Wake up, son. It's time to go to school."
"But why, Mama? I don't want to go to school."

"Give me two reasons why you don't want to go to school."
"One, all the children hate me. Two, all the teachers hate me, ..."

"Oh! that's no reason. Come on, you have to go to school!"
"Give me two good reasons WHY I should go to school?"

"One, you are FIFTY-TWO years old. Two, you are the PRINCIPAL of the school."

So I want to offer thanks and praise to the teachers I have known in my life, there have been many. Yes the ones from school days, but also the many who have taught me many lessons throughout my life.

There are teachers all around us, as there has been throughout human history. Some have specific names such as masters, gurus, crones, rabbis, elders, sages, priests, sheikhs, even ministers and they have played vital roles in revealing spiritual truths. They have done so both directly and or indirectly through parables, koans, stories, sermons and personal example and they have recommended methods that can lead us to enhance our spiritual lives and therefore open us up to everything and that which is more than everything and yet can be found in everything. Sometimes we need such people to get us started on our journey.

That said we can learn just as much from the ordinary people in our lives, the ones who encourage to give life a full go. You see everyone and everything in life can and is a teacher, even seemingly negative and painful experiences, if we remain open to them. As I look back at my own life I reckon I have learnt more from suffering than joy, from getting things wrong rather than getting them right for these experiences have humbled me and therefore opened me up to more than I could ever have even begun to imagine.

Rabbi Jesus is one of the great examples, maybe the greatest of simply teaching what it means to live in and by love. He taught in the fine Jewish rabbinical tradition, but he did so in unorthodox ways. He had the courage to break the rules of form and he put the people first, before the rules. This seems harder for teachers to do today. A classic example of this was in the healing of the crippled woman on the Sabbath. He was criticised for healing on this holy day of rest, but taught through his example that compassion out trumped societal rules, he lived, taught and died by the rule of love.

The example I see from the great sages is that the “way” that they speak of is truly about love, good teachers teach truly from the heart. The real lessons of living that matter the most is about teaching others to live by heart. This takes courage, which as I have taught many times is rooted in the French word for heart. As Parker J. Palmer has highlighted “Good teaching requires courage—the courage to explore one’s ignorance as well as insight, to yield some control in order to empower the group, to evoke other people’s lives as well as reveal one’s own.”

Good teachers help us to fully engage with life and encourage us to overcome the fears that can hold us back from living the lives we were born to live. It’s not about finding ways to rise above life but to fully engage with life, in its messiness and its rough and tumble. Again as Palmer has highlighted “Fear, not ignorance, is the great enemy of education. Fear is what gives ignorance its power.”

The great sages, the great teachers lived in the mess and muck and life, in the rough and tumble, they did not live apart. Those who have taught me how to bring my spirit alive have shown me the same. They were simple ordinary people and yet they were the professors of the heart. Again to quote Palmer:

“In is original meaning, a “professor” was not someone with esoteric knowledge and technique. Instead, the word referred to a person able to make a profession of faith in the midst of a dangerous world. All good teachers, I believe, have access to this confidence. It comes not from the ego but from a soul-deep sense of being at home in the world despite its dangers. This is the authority by which good teachers teach. This is the gift they pass on to their students. Only when we take heart as professors can we “give heart” to our students—and that, finally, is what good teaching is all about.

I have known some great teachers in my life; my life has taught me many lessons. Sadly though I have forgotten far more than I ever thought I could have known in my life. This is why I have to keep on learning and re-learning these life lessons, as I discovered during the summer at the speed awareness course.

Life and the people we share our lives with have so much to teach us. All we have to do and be is awake, to keep our hearts open enough to be fully awake.

Life is the greatest teacher of them all and we as a part of life can teach just by our presence in this world. People have taught me many things, in so many ways without ever really realising it. I have often only realised those lessons many years later. Lessons I have tried to pass on to others.

You don’t have to be academically inclined to be a true teacher, just a professor of the heart. The best lessons in my life have come from ordinary people living in the mess and much of life. One of my greatest teachers was an ordinary man, from Oldham of all places, who taught me , amongst many other things, how to listen. This all began by practising and noticing when I wasn’t listening, especially when others were talking. He taught me to observe when my mind wandered off or to notice when I was listening how much of my time was spent on working out what “brilliant” response I was going to make, in an attempt to refute what the other person was saying. He taught me that when we are listening to another we are extending ourselves to that person, we are giving them a gift; a gift that we can both share in. In making space for the other, we create a sacred space, we make space for God and we get a taste of heaven.

This truly opened me up to people in a way I had never been before; it brought me alive to life in ways I had never been before. Now of course not all the great sages come from Oldham. Those of ancient times taught similar lessons to this ordinary man. That said I am not sure that I could have accessed what they taught all those years. It required simple language from an ordinary man. He spoke the language of the heart and I was prepared to listen. I learnt a valuable lesson that day; I learnt that the language of the heart is universal, it can break down any barrier. Those simple words opened me to experiences I never knew were possible. Those experiences opened my senses, particularly my ears, I finally had ears that could hear and I began to finally hear so much more than mere words. The ears of my heart were opened and as a result I began to live by the heart and found the courage to truly be.

Everything, all life, can be our teacher if we are open to it. If we have ears that can hear, if all our senses are awake to everything and that something or perhaps nothing that is are the core of everything and yet beyond everything.

We can all become professors of the heart.