Two weeks ago I had the delight of bringing my 8th grade class out to our homestead on a rainy day to help diverge runoff and shift the downward spiral of erosion into the upward spiral of life. The work appealed to most of the students. They accomplished lots of shifts. Sean came up to me to share a discovery he had just made. Often when making subtle shifts it is hard to tell which direction the water is flowing. If you stir up a bit of silt with your tool, the suspended cloud of silt will drift with the current. He shared this discovery with me. Unfortunately, I muffed the interaction. I came from a “Yeah, I know that. It is such a fundamental aspect of this work that I’ve been using that technique for years” instead of a “I think you just discovered a really powerful tool. Congratulations on thinking about what you are seeing so that you discover new ways of using your life energy.”
The way I interacted came from a point of view of knowledge as property. I have more knowledge and I can demonstrate this by not needing to accept another’s gift of discovery. Though this first point of view sees the acquisition of more knowledge as good, it is seen mostly as an individual matter with a tinge of comparison and competition within it. The way I should have interacted sees knowledge like water in a desert ecosystem’s “body”. As knowledge grows, possibilities increase. It behooves all to nourish the growth of knowledge throughout the “body”. From this point of view, there is both knowledge and, more importantly, knowledge about how to discover more knowledge. It was this second kind of knowledge that should have been at the center of my interaction with Sean. I’ve had little chance to teach water diversion to anyone; my teaching talents in this area are immature. If I want to teach this to help shift balances within this marvelous world, I need to learn to teach more mindfully of my real intentions
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