This second blog about STIR’s first lustrum deals with awareness and education as it developed in STIR. On the day of our announcement in 2009 Nicolette Meeder participated and found her own life’s mission to commit to STIR. Now she is founding partner of the STIR Academy.

Enlightening
In the early phases of the STIR Foundation “City of Tomorrow” we already developed very strong impulses to try to get an understanding on the complexity of the “human being” itself. My own very deep moments of inner illumination had made me aware of new dimensions of spirituality beyond the dogmatic mechanisms of churches and within the true meaning and significance of life. It also made me aware of awareness and life before and after enlightenment. This all had come together in a clear understanding of the “I am” breakthrough and the revelation of the abundance of the universe, the force of life through energetic cycles and the disturbance of self awareness until the moment of spiritual awakening.

All this also revealed a critical view on our evolutionary path and the way we reached a point of singularity that would either produce a gigantic collapse or a mayor breakthrough of humankind. In my own research I came to the conclusion that one cannot happen without the other. The only difference with the past is that I envisaged the possibility of a mayor breakthrough and collapse occurring peacefully through a burst of awareness rather than a traditional confrontation through arms.

In the first blog “re-positioning society” I described the practical possibilities to address the global issues through local solutions using sustainocratic ventures and the transformation economy. Its precedents in Eindhoven have made the working and values visible. Expanding it across the world will take tensions away through applied knowledge and integral system and social innovations.

To consolidate this the practical approach should repeat itself as much as possible but also should become part of our learning processes.

Breakthrough of the collective consciousness

The transformation of education
My own learning and awareness processes had shown me that life itself is a teacher and our education at school would need to change too if we want to prepare our next  generations within the context of sustainable human progress. Many people already showed a critical standpoint on the current way we educated our children and displayed the wish to change the system. Within STIR it became an ongoing process too.

STIR Academy

STIR Logo

When I developed the societal redefinition by positioning our interests in awareness and co-creation using human values rather than economic growth and greed, it became clear that our educational system was not adequate anymore either. Our constitution states that “education serves government and business interests” which is a relic from our industrialization and history. No wonder we feel that our children are being educated to populate a puppeteer theater rather that develop insight on life’s essentials and personal development.

Every interaction with our school system got us into trouble between management, teachers and pupils. The students loved our humanitarian approach, many teachers did too but the management and system were totally against. “Entrepreneur of your own life” is of course not done when the hierarchies in society demand docile youngsters who look for a lasting job to pay for their mortgage and loans in a consumer driven money dependent system’s reality.

In STIR Academy we created all kinds of instruments based on the development of awareness through physical, intellectual, emotional and spiritual impulses. Examples of our invitation to a new world have been filmed (in Dutch)

And in English

We designed minors and mayors, university lectures, games (“The secrete” and “The hero”), challenges, etc. but the old system would not connect massively to our initiatives. The financial dependence on state financial means and inspections blocked openess to educational innivation and modern insight of system’s and human complexities. Government was still very much focus on trying to solve its problems through the money driven mentality of the last decades as described in a recent blog.

If we wanted to proceed with our intentions we were forced to build our own school and education platforms. We started to work with the “drop outs” from the old system that either had become a financial burden and bureaucratic challenge, or became new age entrepreneurs through their own chaos and awareness development. They are all talented human beings that have a lot to offer but fall out of the old system for many reasons. We learned to see all these people as potential pioneers of the new world that was arising and slowly started to challenge the old one by making the power of this type of learning visible to the world. We could further facilitate that by:

• Offering precedents of change and insights from all over the world
• Getting local speakers to address those interested with new insights and their personal experiences
• Challenge people to not just listen but also stand up and do something with the inspiration
• Help those who do step forward with guidance and support
• Connect those who are ready to increasingly complex co-creative ventures or challenge them to start one of their own

The STIR Academy started to develop leadership HUBs (STIR Portals) through those who were interested in displaying a changing world to their own community and see what happens. STIR Academy developed relationships with intellectuals and new age pioneers across the world, inspiring itself through the wisdom of nature and the universe.

STIR Academy, global awareness building and knowledge sharing (Sustainocracy)

In Eindhoven we had experimented with this type of value driven humanistic education by showing that our entire live is a school. We live through our own cyclic patterns all the time, developing awareness as we go along. We needed not just address the cognitive basic of education but also the emotional, spiritual and physical values of reflection through action. If we wanted the cultural change we needed to facilitate the entire cycle of human complexities by inviting people to simply do it, experiment and challenge themselves to work together in meaningful ventures.

We now envisage STIR Hubs everywhere, simply exchanging  knowledge and best practice through internet, skype presentations and online training. We all take from STIR and give back, forming an organic platform that runs itself. The only guidance is the STIR definition of  sustainable human progress and the co-creative positioning of progress in the top of our complexity model

STIR Academy positions itself in the field of co-creation between change and symbiosis

Human evolution is a co-creation

AiREAS was the first sustainocratic venture and STIR Academy the very first school to live life by learning to understand it. We also needed to transform the practical reality of our daily life. AiREAS would measure our progress and STIR Academy provides us with the understanding. FRE2SH was born to deal with the practicalities in our daily lives.

But that I will deal with in the third and final blog about our first 5 years.