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Natural Talents
We know people are different and have different
natural abilities, talents and interests. Society tends to have a ‘one size
fits all’ approach to education, with schools following a fixed syllabus and
children being tested against predetermined expectations, as well as each
other. This is how we determine who to put where in society, and who will
succeed and who will fail, according to our own preconceived ideas as to
what these are.
I am not saying there is anything wrong with
this, but I wanted to write a few words about my own strengths, and
weaknesses, as a child at school; struggling with the syllabus and style of
teaching.
Signs that something was possibly different in
me started pre-school, as I drove my Mum almost crazy with the constant
asking ‘Why?... Why?... Why?... Why?...’. This need to understand, combined
with a sensitivity to the feelings of others – both in people and animals -
(and the effect this had on me) was probably what determined how I was to
turn out; but before I turned out at all, it was going to be tough.
The need to understand and find a way out of the
emotional struggling was indeed the driving force behind my spiritual
development, but it is the need to understand specifically that I would like
to look at here.
You see, my experience of schooling is that it’s
about learning (education); and learning, as I was to find, was far from my
strong point. I would forget things quickly and any sort of learning was
almost disastrous. I particularly remember the many evenings in my very
young years, where my Mum would be assisting me with my homework and she
would be shouting at me to get this right through sheer frustration, as we
had been through it over and over. But then she had found her schooling
easy, leaving with good qualifications and speaking several languages, but
something was lacking for me and I just could not do it. This led to my
often getting into trouble at school fighting (being hit with slippers and
shoes etc) and I made little or no progress in lessons. I remember one
particular teacher banging on my table (when I was about 7 years old)
screaming at me for not learning what she was teaching, and another keeping
me back after class so I missed my playtime for not understanding opposites.
(I could understand that the opposite of black
was white, and the opposite of ‘yes’ is ‘no’, but when it came to the
opposite of a door, I would insist that the opposite of a door was ‘no
door’, and likewise, that the opposite of a window was ‘no window’. Why
‘door’ was the opposite of ‘window’ I could not understand. They are
inanimate objects and while they can be linked as items inserted into a wall
of a house, I got into trouble for not understanding why this made them
opposites. I don’t know your view of this, but I still see that you can link
any number of items, such as chair and table, pen and paper, monitor and
keyboard, dog and cat, horse and cow, car and bike, rain and snow, etc. but
I am still not convinced that this makes them opposites.) :o)
Anyway, the troubles at school resulted in my
being sent to boarding school at the age of 9 years old. Here the troubles
continued but the school was big enough that I became one of many, and was
by no mean the bottom of the pile, in any sense. Except for, once a year,
every year, when we would have a General Knowledge test for the entire
school. We would be given the answers to take home for the Christmas
holidays. It was meant to be a bit of fun and no one gave it much attention.
However, I would be in the bottom two, each and every year, out of nearly
100 pupils, from when I started at 9 years to when I left at 13 years. Even
with being given the answers to read first, I had no interest in the
questions being asked and could not retain any of the answers.
I would remain at that school until I was 13
years old (running away at about 11 years old but then going back). At 13 I
started at another boarding school, even bigger than the first, and for some
reason I was put in quite high level classes for some of the subjects; far
higher in fact than my exam results warranted. I was eventually instructed
by my maths teacher to visit the headmaster’s wife, as it had been she who
decided which classes to put people in. When I met her, she got out my file
and explained to me that, although my exam results had not been very good,
my IQ results were, and these suggested I should be able to cope with higher
classes. I was allowed to drop a grade for maths, but still struggled;
eventually running away from this school at 14 years old, never to return. I
had learnt when cramming for tests and exams at the school, that I could
remember things, if I worked really hard, just long enough to get though a
test’ then they would be gone.
The next school was a very small tutorial
college in London, and I settled in here much better. One amazing change was
I found maths became quite easy and I soon became top of the class. However,
following a parents’ evening where my Mum met my maths teacher, she
explained to me what had changed and why I was now able to do things that
had been impossible previously. The teacher explained that each time I was
stuck on something, instead of trying to teach me again, he had learnt that
if he asked me what I was thinking, usually I would almost be there, but on
my own in a completely different way to that being taught. He would then
have to change his own perspective, give me a simple nudge to fill the
missing gap, and I would be there. I took my maths GCSE a year early, taking
only the middle paper (where a grade ‘C’ is the maximum possible) so as to
get a pass under my belt, with the plan of getting an ‘A’ the following
year. However, very soon after the first exam, the teacher left to go into
nursing instead. We then had an elderly lady who had been teaching for more
years than I had been alive, and all that I had learnt was lost. Only a few
weeks passed before I was back where I had stated, unable to perform
calculations that had been straight forward previously. I took the paper
again the following year, scrapping by with another ‘C’. To this day I have
never reclaimed what I had achieved with that teacher.
The above sounds pretty gloomy, with a hint of
hope, but the hope and a sign of things to come was made stronger when my
chemistry and biology teacher, who was studying psychology outside the
school, had agreed with the headmaster that she could test the whole school
(teachers and pupils) for one of her course projects. I was about 16 years
old.
I was by no means the star pupil in the subjects
she taught us, but she was about to expose another side of me; one that had
very rarely been seen, let alone acknowledged.
I forget (typical, Huh?) the specific details of
the test, but it was to do with linking up words on cards, and she started
off by saying there were no right or wrong answers. A few questions in I
said to her ‘I don’t mean to be big-headed, but will they all be as easy as
this?’. I could see a very definite pattern and, contrary to what she had
said, there were indeed answers that were correct, and those that were
incorrect, when it came to matching up the words. A few questions later and
she said ‘Nick, I think you’re a genius; really!’. I got them all right.
After the test, people would be talking about it, saying how it made no
difference which cards you picked; but I knew different.
I did not do particularly well in my exams and
left with a few mediocre qualifications, still not knowing what to do with
my life. However, my need to find answers had not disappeared and, having
laid the gauntlet down to life, demanding that I be shown the truth, I was
soon sitting in front of a psychic at the College of Psychic Studies, at 17
years old, in my final attempt to find out why I felt the way I did.
The psychic explained that I was already on a
very high spiritual level - several rungs up the ladder on the way to
enlightenment - and I would progress very quickly if I wanted to-. He also
stated repeatedly that I had such amazing clarity and had the ability to see
above problems. Thus began my conscious journey to realise the truth.
Now, the above story is quite interesting, but
the point of it was to show that, even if a child is not considered
academically intelligent, that does not necessarily mean they are totally
unintelligent; or that they are not going to be excellent in other ways
totally removed from academic learning. They are likely to have skills or
natural talents or abilities which need to be discovered, if the child is to
realise their potential; and by that we mean their own potential, and not
what we as parents, teachers or politicians say they should be achieving. We
are some way off schools being able to focus on discovering the hidden
aspects in children, besides those which emerge naturally through day-to-day
activities, but that would be the ideal.
It did occur to me occasionally during those 13
years that I was going through it (endeavouring to live consciously to
realise the truth and be free of the pain of the emotion), what would have
happened had I been brought up focusing on spiritual studies, such as in a
monastery of some eastern religion of similar? Would that have helped my
development? In my own case, now that I have got through it, there is every
chance nothing would have changed and I would have ended up here anyway.
Just as in the story of Siddhārtha Gautama (later to become The
Buddha), where his father, the King, was told that his son would either be a
great King or a great Spiritual leader. On hearing this, he ensured his son
saw none of the atrocities outside the castle walls in order to attempt to
prevent him becoming developing any interest in spiritual activities and
ensure his son became a great King. However, one day Gautama took another
route home from the one his father had prepared for him and came across a
village of poor and sick people; thus his journey began. Shocked by what he
saw, he left the castle, his wife and child, and devoted his life to the
search of the truth behind suffering.
So, maybe life has a way of bringing out our
strengths at times, in spite of society and what is planned for us, rather
than because of it.
My memory for facts and figures and times and
dates, and names and places, is still horrendous. That has not changed. What
has changed is that I am able to prepare for this by ensuring I do not need
to remember things. If I need to remember something, I make arrangements so
that there is something in the right place to remind me.. be it a message on
the answer phone or an email for when I get home etc. The point is, I know
never to rely on my memory.
The problem-solving ability in me has been
focussed on finding the end of suffering in myself, just like The Buddha.
And since then it has been on explaining the process, as well as the state
itself, in the simplest and most direct way possible. Several people have
commented on my having achieved this (thank you), but we all have strengths
and weaknesses, as you can tell from the story above, and there is nothing
to be gained from gloating about anything that one seems to achieve. If
schools were able to find all our innate skills and talents, and promote
these, perhaps everyone would have a particular activity they are naturally
very good at (potentially expert, with a little tuition in the right
direction).
Until then, we struggle through, trying to fit
into the metaphorical boxes society has laid out for us, like putting a
square peg in a round hole. It can work, to a point, but it may involve
knocking some corners off; .
Moral of the story: Don’t feel too bad if you
are not good at things others are. All is not lost.
:o)
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