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Hello Friends,

Last week I mentioned the parable of the choir. This week I have another story for you. I apologize for how long it turned out, but I hope you will read it.

I don't know if this story is true* 🤷‍♀️

So let’s call it an impressionistic story. A Great Story, if you will.

Many billions of years ago, a small planet formed around a medium sized star, tucked into the far reaches of a medium sized galaxy. Like so many others, this planet was battered and reshaped, pummeled by space debris, shaken by its own lithospheric upheavals. But over time, an atmosphere developed, and as the eons passed, self-replicating compounds formed and multiplied, growing increasingly complex, and life emerged on this planet.

Millions of years passed. An unimaginably large number of life forms came and went.

In time, a medium-sized mammalian species came into being. It was adapted to this planet in a myriad of new ways. It had a brain that could solve complex problems, develop tools, and impact its environment.

Like other animals, it had numerous built-in survival mechanisms. In moments of threat, it could channel its physiological resources to fight, flee, or brace for danger. And when the danger passed, it could return to equilibrium.

But this species, these humans, had also developed another threat response.

The most formidable threat response the planet had ever seen.

A threat response that didn’t just mobilize the organism, but synchronized the entire group. They clicked into place, channeling their energy and resources towards a singular purpose. Each one instinctively took a role, sensing, at a level deeper than thought, that survival required sacrifice, coordination, and a leader to follow. This ability to unite in the face of danger, to act as one, was an extraordinarily powerful adaptation. Combined with their problem-solving abilities, this capacity to instinctively organize under threat made them the most successful species in the history of the planet.

For countless thousands of years, humans activated this beautiful, awe-full hierarchical threat response to face natural disasters and dangers, then returned to balance. They had to.

For you see, all threat responses come at a cost. The body is not made to withstand such an intense diversion of energy away from its maintenance tasks for long. It is a short-term sacrifice, necessary to address the crisis. But after the threat passes, the organism must rest, recover, and return to equilibrium, return to harmony with its ecosystem.

But something happened along the way.

The hierarchy that had once been fluid, activated in moments of crisis, became entrenched. Instead of stepping into hierarchical roles when needed and stepping out when the danger passed, humans became locked in place. Roles were assigned, not chosen. The recovery never came. From an adaptive, temporary response, the structure hardened into a way of life. This prolonged stress on the system perpetuated a constant state of threat that further entrenched the hierarchical structure.

Over time, humans developed entire societies, religions, and worldviews based on the idea that hierarchy was the natural order. That it had always been this way. That it kept them safe. And anyone who did not fit the role assigned to them was dangerous - a threat.

Where do we go from here?

Before we talk about that, I have to wonder what it was that triggered the entrenchment of this most formidable of threat responses.

I have a thesis to offer you. Is it true? Again, I don't know. But I find it grounding and perhaps it can bring you some comfort too and shed some light on the path forward.

The Core Wound to the Human Psyche

As our brains continued to develop and we gained increasing levels of 'self awareness', something shifted. Some of us got a little lost in the idea that the self was separate from all that is. We lost the deep knowing of the true Self. The Self that is entangled at a subatomic level with all that is, ever was, and ever will be.

This was a terrifying "awareness" of separation, of Otherness. The greatest threat of all.

There was no escaping this threat of the Other. We needed to summon all the power we knew how to summon in order to address this threat, and that power came in the form of a rigid hierarchy that we dared not dismantle.

But of course, the profound irony is that this was the one threat that our incredible threat-response could never outrun or overcome. Because this threat was an illusion. The ultimate illusion. The great maya.

Our Indigenous family have been telling us for centuries that we must rediscover our kinship with all beings. We must see the spirit not just in the people, animals, and plants we share the planet with, but also in the land, the water, the air, the very universe itself. All that is is all of us. We were never separate.

"Ok ok Seemi 🙄 Enough with the airy fairy woo woo talk. If you don't wrap this up and bring it back to Montessori, I'm out."

Listen. I know I'm talking to the right people here. You love Montessori because you know it is bigger than the classroom and more than the curriculum.

This is cosmic task talk and ✨ it is time ✨ for this kind of talk.

I tell you this story because sometimes you have to zoom far out- across space and time- to catch a glimpse of your cosmic task and your cosmic Self.

So I am here to remind you: You are not alone and you are more than what you see in the mirror, more than what the hierarchy has told you you are.

I guess what I have really been trying to ask of you with these letters over the past weeks is for you to recognize who you are, step into that knowing, and find your voice.

Because it is your voice, the voice of the nurturers and the vision keepers, that needs to be setting the narrative.
Your voice that needs to be reverberating through the species.
Your voice that shakes loose the rigid structures of the hierarchy.
Your song​ that finally brings us back into harmony and heals the core wound.

It is a new era, friends, and it is time for you to be heard beyond your classroom.

And know there is a choir singing with you.

-Seemi

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PS You may be interested in this course: Syntropy: The Guiding Energy Integrating Montessori Thought and Process. ​
"This four-module seminar will awaken your understanding of love as a universal force, cosmogenesis as cosmic education, observation, and dialogue as a process to renew and maintain the essence of Montessori practice." Hosted by Dr. Philip Snow Gang, Founder of The Institute for Educational Studies (TIES), and a panel moderated by Tammy Oesting. Class starts on March 8th. https://ties-edu.org/syntropy/
(This course is not hosted by Trillium. Please contact TIES if you need assistance with your registration.)

PPS You are welcome to forward this email. It isn't published on our main website but here is a shareable link if you prefer to use this: https://pages.trilliummontessori.org/posts/on-hierarchy​

Catch up here:

1. ​Checking in ​
2. ​Stay Regulated​
3. ​We are the Vision Keepers​
4. ​Who is Setting the Narrative?​
5. ​On Community​

* Further reading if you're feeling nerdy and want to explore some of these concepts a bit more.

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