This ‘leaving the known’ is in such profound opposition to the very foundation that our education paradigm rests upon. ~Kathryn Jefferies, Ph.D.
The human race is in a metamorphosis: transforming our consciousness is akin to creating a new species. It requires — and will result in — a paradigm shift of the highest proportions.
~ Kathryn Jefferies Ph.D.
In Jefferies’ vision of education, children thrive through self-inquiry, and in so doing, evolving humankind to the new consciousness required in order to preserve human survival on Earth. Dr. Jefferies describes the nature of the mind and the intellect, explaining how this is not our highest source of intelligence as our current education paradigm presupposes. As Einstein and the other great scientists have known, in order to access true intelligence, we need to go beyond the thinking mind to pure consciousness. In this, we discover that this intelligence is, in fact, who we are.
In the lineage of spiritual teachers including Krishnamurti, AWAKE lays out what our current education system is educating for, why it can never be enough, and what we can do instead. She acknowledges the transformative work of current spiritual teachers Eckhart Tolle and Byron Katie, asking what the implications of their work are for education.
In other words, if what we call enlightenment is the profound clarity of perception that leads to the understanding of why the great problems of our world exist and what to do about them (such as inter-nation conflict, global warming, poverty and social stratification) as well as individual struggles such as depression, then WHAT ARE THE CONDITIONS THAT BRING ENLIGHTENMENT ABOUT?
Dr. Jefferies writes about her own deep insights into life–her own process of awakening–walking the reader through a first-person account to actively demonstrate what’s possible.
“Deeply insightful, intelligent, and original, AWAKE is a book like nothing you’ve ever encountered before.”
Peggy McColl, New York Times Best-Selling Author
This is such an incredibly important book for our times… This book articulates a profound exploration of mind, consciousness and awakening, through a perfect balance of academic research and Jefferies’ own transformative experiences into deeper realms of understanding the nature of Self. This book is a game-changer for education — and for anyone interested in gaining a better understanding of how most of us have come to live within the limitations of our conditioned minds, and the possibility of exploring (and discovering) the deeper creative intelligence that is innate within each of us.
~ Laura Shaw, Parent, Educator, Coach & Blogger at theawakeningheart.com
AWAKE answers the most important, burning questions in our hearts, but ones we are afraid to ask for fear we can never know the answers: Who Am I? What is Life?
Until this point in history, most of us have been unknowingly limited by our ideas about reality. Now the definition of intelligence is being redefined. The highest intelligence arises independent of thought, beyond the reaches of the intellect. Dr. Jefferies calls it “ontological intelligence,” the intelligence of being.
Explaining the awakening experiences of Eckhart Tolle (author of A New Earth and The Power of Now), Byron Katie (author of A Thousand Names for Joy, and Loving What Is), and Krishnamurti (author of Education and the Significance of Life) and herself, Kathryn uses the lived reality these contemporary spiritual masters inhabit now as a way of extending a hand back to readers to pull them forward to their own awakening.
