Module 9: Inherent Worth
The Awakened Schools course has emphasized remembering, re-authorizing, and re-inhabiting who you already are as an educator and as a person attentive to inner life. The following practice invites you to move forward by staying awake to the living movement of these practices as they continue to dynamically unfold in you.
1. Begin with Affirmation (5 minutes)
Take a moment of stillness. Place both feet on the ground. Breathe.
Acknowledge what this course has already confirmed:
You do not need to become someone else to do this work well.
You have permission to trust your inner authority.
Your attentiveness, care, and presence are already a meaningful contribution.
Silently name one way you notice this course has re-authorized you—as a teacher, leader, human being.
2. Shift from “Practice” to “Posture” (5 minutes)
Ask yourself:
What posture toward life feels more available to me now?
What quality of attention do I want to carry into my days?
You may notice a posture such as:
Greater spaciousness
A renewed capacity for wonder
More patience with not-knowing
A softer stance toward yourself or others
These postures matter as much as any formal practice. They shape classrooms, conversations, and communities quietly, over time.
3. Locate the Edge (5 minutes)
Growth continues by noticing where life is inviting you next.
Reflect:
Where do these practices feel alive and generative right now?
Where do they feel thin, routine, or tired?
Where do you sense curiosity, resistance, or longing?
Simply name one edge, a place where attention feels invited, but not yet clear.
4. Make One Gentle Commitment (5 minutes)
Choose one small, living commitment, a companion for the coming weeks.
This could be:
A brief daily pause you reclaim
A way you listen more deeply in one setting
A question you carry into your teaching
A practice you adapt, rather than replicate, for your context
Let this commitment be flexible. It should feel life giving.
5. Close with Trust
This work does depends on trust:
Trust that formation continues even when unnamed.
Trust that wisdom emerges through experience.
Trust that your inner life and outer life inform one another.
You are invited to allow the content of this course to continue evolving through you.
Take one final breath. Notice what you are carrying forward. Let the rest go.
A closing reminder:
Staying fresh in your quest invites responsiveness to yourself, to others, and to the quiet movements that shape a life of teaching and care.
For Light
Light cannot see inside things.
That is what the dark is for:
Minding the interior,
Nurturing the draw of growth
Through places where death
In its own way turns into life.
In the glare of neon times,
Let our eyes not be worn
By surfaces that shine
With hunger made attractive.
That our thoughts may be true light,
Finding their way into words
Which have the weight of shadow
To hold the layers of truth.
That we never place our trust
In minds claimed by empty light,
Where one-sided certainties
Are driven by false desire.
When we look into the heart,
May our eyes have the kindness
And reverence of candlelight.
That the searching of our minds
Be equal to the oblique
Crevices and corners where
The mystery continues to dwell,
glimmering in fugitive light.
When we are confined inside
The dark house of suffering
That moonlight might find a window.
When we become false and lost
That the severe noon-light
Would cast our shadow clear.
When we love, that dawn-light
Would lighten our feet
Upon the waters.
As we grow old, that twilight
Would illuminate treasure
In the fields of memory.
And when we come to search for God,
Let us first be robed in night,
Put on the mind of morning
To feel the rush of light
Spread slowly inside
The color and stillness
Of a found world.
From: To Bless the Space Between Us, John O'Donohue
Penguin, 2008.