World Unity Week 2021: The One Academy and Us

Spiritual Heritage Education Network is a grassroots organization. It is dedicated to re-envisioning and redesigning the future of education including contemplative learning of unity in diversity of the universe. The plan and hope is, that by formally acknowledging and teaching this, we can usher in an era of world unity.

Our organization, like many other grassroots organizations, is co-convening World Unity Week 2021 (https://facebook.com/events/765490387729800 and https://worldunityweek.org/), a virtual mega conference on various aspects of world unity. It is an undertaking of the Unity Earth (https://unity.earth/) organization. 

World Unity Week 2021 will be held from June 19 to June 26. Recognizing the power of inclusion inherent in the practice of deep yogic contemplation, the dates are chosen to include the International Day of Yoga.

There will be over 20 simultaneous presentations in different zoom rooms on various aspects of world unity. Our zoom room is entitled The One Academy. This zoom room will be active during the four days of June 22 to June 25. Our activities and discussions will focus on using contemplation methodologies to develop self-formation to cultivate world unity at various levels of education from primary school to university.

The educational psychologists Robert Roeser and Stephen Peck suggest that contemplative education is a: “set of pedagogical practices designed to cultivate the potentials of mindful awareness and volition in an ethical-relational context in which the values of personal growth, learning, moral living and caring for others are also nurtured”.

You and your family, friends and associates are invited to present and participate. Please register here  and indicate your intent. It will take no more than a few minutes.

 If you intend to present a talk, a workshop, a practice or a discussion, please register to host an event and inform me by sending an email here. Don’t forget to select The One Academy as the preferred zoom room for your event.

f you register as an event host, you will be asked to provide further details such as bio, event description, your picture, the room for your event, etc. Please choose The One Academy as the zoom room in which you would like to present in. Note this is an international conference and we will endeavour to schedule the timing of your presentation to best suit your individual locales. We plan to live-stream and publish videos of your presentations on social media platforms to spread the word to all, far and wide. 

Us and The One Academy: Shared Vision

The one Academy is focused on envisioning the future of education which includes contemplative learning of unity in diversity.

Learning is a three step process that begins with a cognitive process of listening, sight, taste, touch and smell. The second step is reflection where we recall, review and relearn the content of the first step. These steps are adequate for survival.

But they are not enough for survival in health and harmony. Our organs of cognition can only perceive well defined objects. Thus, learning resulting from them is concrete, definitive and divisive. Though true, it does not tell the whole truth which is accessible only in the next step of deep contemplation.

The defining characteristic of the contemplative step is its state of mind with little or no random recollections. When such a mind recalls the object of learning in the first two steps, the object reveals its whole truth. This learning is holistic. It unites while that of the first two steps can only divide.

The One Academy is focused on (1) contemplative practices to eliminate random movements of the mind and to develop one pointed attention, (2) the summit of the truths learnt by the contemplative explorers of the world, and (3) the unifying, self-regulative and transformative power of contemplative epistemology and pedagogy.

Education can change cultures. We are looking forward to your participation and contributions on contemplative education to make the vision of one planetary family of the wise a worldwide reality.

You can read here a proposal that we intend to publish for the attention of stakeholders in local, regional, national and international education and governance to envision the future of education to judiciously blend unifying contemplative learning with the prevailing education at all levels from primary to university.