Feeling One’s Way

By Ina Hicks, 1967

During the few hours (that) we were at the Heathcote sessions in August, I was thoroughly impressed with the degree of Life arising out of so many there. We found the “feeling one’s way along” approach of the workshop exciting and stimulating. Discussion is important, and anyone who imagines harmony to come from anything but confronting difference and conflict may find discussions taxing. It is my opinion that it is not lack of authority we are after, but the real authority of each individual. It is impossible ever to be free unless we have the inner freedom to allow things to happen. When we are terribly bothered by differences, chances are we need to go off and discover in ourselves our current bit of fakery or self-deception.

The need to give expression to whatever gifts we have is becoming unspeakably strong. We know that without expression, the most vital sources dry up. From experience, we know that our particular way of “unteaching”—by drawing out rather than by pouring in—can create a threat to other teachers whose feeling of accomplishment depends on how much they pour in. It is a threat, too, to parents who lack faith in the innate store of knowledge and wisdom within their children. So, where to go we do not know.

A handful of Green Revolutions and one copy of A Way Out is all the background we have on the School of Living. Probably, further reading will simply fortify what I already feel…we are of a like mind, with some (thank goodness) differences. We plan to spend the next year disentangling ourselves; So that if direction comes we can take it—towards Canada, or maybe right up the road to Heathcote—who knows?