Does training, education work against us?

        An interesting  article on the BBC, “Can training kill off genius?”[i] has some serious provocative questions for education and training. It has serious even more provocative questions for personal development.  The author focuses on an artwork  “The Hungry Lion” by Henri Rousseau. Rousseau had a routine job and was not trained in the contemporary system of art during his life. He painted according to his imagination. When his works were viewed by the establishment, especially by the art critics, he was mocked and ridiculed.

     Fellow artists, Gauguin, Picasso, and Van Gogh recognized Rousseau’s genius. Interestingly Rousseau was self-taught. He used his vision, his imagination and his creativity to create and please himself.

     Years ago, 

     I had applied for a doctoral degree in clinical social work at two universities. One accepted me, but I quit because I found it dull and non-creative. One of the professors, in a moronic moment, proclaimed that as a PhD candidate, you should know everything about the subject of your expertise. Knowing everything is a feat that is impossible. The more you know, the deeper the reality becomes, the more of the unknown reveals itself. 

     Another university did not accept me, because the Dean of the Clinical social work program thought I wasn’t serious and didn’t already have a defined idea of a grand doctoral thesis. He thought I should have a thesis like Freud's theory of dreams. What a fool. Both experiences were a blessing.

     I am grateful for both experiences. If I had been accepted or continued with the program at the second university, I would have become lost in professional jargon and clinical ways of viewing a human being and their struggles. Although I was initially disappointed and frustrated that my path toward Phd status was not materializing, it set me free. 

     I realized like Henri Rousseau, being open to experience is the best way to live and learn. Being open to experience and flavoring it with the feeling and thoughts that come from the voices within ourselves is the best way to achieve our mission whether it agrees with current thinking or not.

     Not being in a Phd program, moving toward an authority status in the field, I was free to find my path, my true creative path. I discovered my ability to write poetry, my ability to capture something special in a photograph. My poetry and my photography were leading me to begin to explore emotional energy as a tool to help people heal from within, to help them become who they are meant to be. 

     In photography, my emotional energy complimented my personal growth, I began to emerge more as the warm feeling person that I am. The emergence of my warmth, and emotions helped me to capture in photographs the emotions of a person, an event or the beauty of nature, colors, patterns, and textures.The images that I photographed brought joy to those who saw them.

     Who I am is not defined by the norm, by the conceptual static framework of what others expected. External motivation or following the herd, i.e. everybody else, will negate our own potential. I believe it is only by looking within through a simple breathing meditation that we can discover our own talents and special qualities. Once discovered people may mock us for not following the standard path but following our own path will lead to fulfillment and happiness.

     I developed a paradigm of emotional energy on three levels that I successfully used as part of an anger management group for individuals who were recovering from an addiction.  I currently teach the psychology of emotional energy and will be conducting a workshop series on using emotional energy on three levels in the near future. Stay tuned for details.

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[i] Sooke, Alastair, BBC, 10/2/15, Mr. Sooke is an art critic of the “Daily Telegraph”