How to Teach

Would you agree that a way to accomplish peace is to teach the following:
1. Treat others as you would like to be treated.
2. Role playing.
3. Identification of the consequences of doing otherwise.
4. Examples of what our world is becoming vs. what it could be?Taking it part by part:

Treat others as you would like to be treated.
This is also "teaching by example". We all do that now without really knowing that we do it. In our actions and words, we blindly teach how we want to be treated. But it goes one step further. We see ourselves in others and what we don't like, we admonish; what we like, we praise. If I am the butt of a joke, it is because I set myself up for it, but also because someone else saw the irony of their own life in me. If I am praised, it is because I did something exceptionally well, but also because someone else recognized their own good in me. If we were all without judgement, we would not see "good" or "bad". It would just "be" what it is. We wouldn't be stone-faced about it either. Our emotions would still run the full gamut from sad to happy, but there would not be the condemnation of any judgement. The only praise would be that of "you lived your life as best you could".

Role playing.
This isn't much different than teaching by example, but the words emphasize an interesting fact. Acting out a story is another automatic response of humans. The story we act out though is that of the past. The story is often one of best remembered experiences. We replay the tapes of good and bad to make a point with others or even ourselves. We set up the best of what could be from the experience of our past and hope that "acting as if" will really make a difference. And it does. "Acting as if", or role playing, teaches our own mind the behavior of what we want to learn. It does little to teach the minds of others except in giving them the opportunity to mimic our own display. The real teaching of the mind comes only when we internalize what we see - role play in our own minds that which we enjoy. Role playing for others is not a complete waste of time, because even if they don't benefit from it, we do.

Identification of the consequences of doing otherwise.
I certainly support this. But how? Do we simply speak out what those consequences are or do we provide real examples of those consequences? How do we learn math or art or science except by experimenting with examples, seeing what goes wrong, and making the necessary adjustments in our learning to get the desired results? Should we not also be taking this form of learning to include the real life of guns, drugs, sex, birth, death, and all the other taboos? Be careful now. When the mind takes this statement and thinks it can willy-nilly perform any kind of experiment to see what the result is, the outcome is obvious: chaos and destruction. For if we experimented with science and math and art in that same fashion, we wouldn't have much success in focusing on what it is we want to teach or learn.

Examples of what our world is becoming vs. what it could be.
Seeing things as they are is a lot better than trying to see things the way we want them to be. But "real" seeing is not in identifying ourselves in the world we see. Real seeing is seeing the world the way it is without our "filters". You think it might not be possible to witness a rape or murder or some other heinous crime without feeling disgust, hatred, anger, pity, sorrow, or any other emotion. As I said, those emotions will always be there in us, but the notion of those experiences being labeled as a crime, as bad, as whatever, are all part of our language - they are not a part of what is happening. We give names to things, then give value to those names that don't exist in the thing itself. Then we react/respond to the value and not the thing. When Columbus came to America and found gold ornamenting the natives, all he could think of was the wealth he found. He did not see the gold as the natives did, as mere ornaments. He also saw the natives as slaves rather than as a fellow human being with the same rights as he had. Do you think we witness "crimes" any differently? So which has more impact on you, to watch a lion kill and eat its prey or watch a soldier kill and rape its enemy? If you felt about the lion's prey the way you felt about the soldier's enemy, you would strike out against the lion as you would against the soldier. And if you did that on every level of life, life would soon be over for all of us.

Be careful now. I am not saying that the weak should not be protected from the strong (or even vice-versa). It is up to each of us to determine our own participation in life, and to do so with the safety of others as well as ourselves foremost in mind. "Live and let live" means a lot more than sitting by and watching life go by.

To explore the universe, explore your mind.