Curriculum End - 

(Participants))

• Proof that there is a predestined path for human conduct, which we are not following, is all around us. 

• It's in the eyes of the hater. 

•  It's in the wars we fight. 

• It's in the tears we shed after school shootings and other tragedies. 

• It's in the help we give to each other after such tragedies. 

• It's in the frustration so many of us feel about this underperforming society we live in. 

• It’s in the shared embarrassment so many of us have for our national politics.

(All Together):  

•  “It's in the strange feeling we all have that there must be a better way!” 

Teacher:  

Have we ever stopped to consider why so many of us are always saying “This world is so messed up?” but that we can’t put our finger on what it is that holds us back? 

 2600 years ago Marcus Tillius Cicero said, “The creator’s order of things is called the Natural Law. A fundamental proposition of the natural law is that man was given a special dispensation for reason… As one in the same Nature holds together and supports the universe, all of whose parts are in harmony with one another, so men are united in Nature; but by reason of their own depravity they quarrel, not realizing that they are of one blood and subject to one and the same protecting power. If this fact were understood, surely man would live the life of the gods!“

Millions of people who have gone before us have told us the same exact things which matter for human health, happiness, and for getting along in a diverse society. These things have not changed in thousands of years.  

(Participants))

• The framework is known. 

•  But as Cicero said, we don’t listen ….   

Teacher - The framework is simple:  

(Participants)

• When we attend to our duties and obligations to self and others we become strong, thrive personally, and become a force for good. 

• When we focus on our own rights and privileges we become weak, we go to a dark place and bring others down with us. 

• Nothing in the extremes is good for us.  

The world's leading religions have tried for centuries to ground us in these principles. We are told about their transformative value with unbelievable frequency and consistency. The great majority of people on the planet already agree that these ideas are fantastically true. 

Yet we still don’t listen! 

(Participant)

• What would be so bad?

• If we were to teach and learn how gifted we really are, 

• That we have incredible capacity to be good; not only for ourselves, but others

• That our purpose in this life is to act on these gifts.

(All together)  What would be so bad? 

(Participant)

• What would be so bad, if we finally wed ourselves formally to these natural laws? We can all believe in different Gods or no God at all if we wish, but we would unite around a simple truth, that human beings share a special role in nature.

• That is, it’s  in our nature to protect each other, to hold onto our higher gifts, to be a force for good, not bad.  

• What would be so bad ? We would learn that it matters greatly how we treat other people in this life and how to treat each other as equals. To be modest and moderate, and to humble and not arrogant; to live life with awe and wonder for all those things that we will never know, and with a duty and responsibility to a collective higher calling. 

• A life full of eternal optimism, instead of a life defined by our lowest moments and worst traits! 

(All Together) What would be so bad? 

Why do we continue to deprive ourselves of a shared approach of seeing each other and behaving toward one another?

Class exercise:Teacher led. The Ingredients Wheel (Pictured here - The ten main ingredients now written onto the wheel)  Spin the Wheel. 

Notice the faster it spins, we are blinded, we cannot see or comprend the ingredients because of the spinning wheel.  It is the way they all spin together, to blind us and cause us to underestimate, underanalyze, and grow accustomed to these ingredients. We have never been able to slow things down, and to analyze the ingredients deeply enough or to tie them directly back to a violation of natural laws. 

The natural laws are packed with "counterintuitive" truths - which are Hard To Believe!

(Participant Cards) 

• It's hard to believe, what we say matters that much to the lives of people whom we do not even know, or that we have to work so hard as individual citizens to advance humankind or be a cause of its destruction. 

• It’s hard to believe, so many fine people born into the world can have so much capacity for greatness, but yet turn from good to bad, from light to dark, from positive to negative.

• It’s hard to believe, so many of us lose the battle with our divided minds, and become unbalanced, either too far left or too far right, too conservative or too liberal.

•  It’s hard to believe,  the uncaring attitude of so few, becomes the uncaring attitude of so many.

•  It’s hard to believe that it’s our failure to pay attention to how we take the “slide” and become detached from virtue, that we end up with millions of narcissists running around with too much self-confidence who are walking all over millions of super empaths who have too little. 

• It's hard to believe that it’s not in our nature to be imbalanced.

•  It's hard to believe if we cut off extremism we will cut off hate.

•  It's hard to believe the unknown creator of all things would pack our lives full of so many obstacles, and would make the traits we need to be successful the hardest ones to build and maintain!

•  It’s hard to believe that our purpose is to carry out our creator's intentions. 

(All Together Card)  

“It is hard to believe that the guy who created this course simply pulled together all of the world's most practical wisdom, and delivered it to us on a silver platter” 

Yet it's all true. 

Millions of people believe in the natural laws, and are willing to make the sacrifices required of the framework!  Most people are out there right now behaving according to the rules, and trying hard to hold onto their higher gifts in the face of great trauma and great odds.  But they need our help. 

(All Together)

It will require more of us to stay on the path and recognize the Fantastic Truths about us! 

The ingredients are nasty! The ingredients on the wheel are “plausible lies”, and “myths” which slowly overwhelm and overtake us, and steal our reality from us. For reasons which nobody will ever know; the traits we need most to be happy and successful, personally and collectively, are those hardest for us to maintain. Nobody knows why life is so hard. Nobody can tell us with certainty that these things are nature's laws, and our destiny, and this is likely a main reason why we don’t listen.

(Spin the wheel again, discuss the foregoing statements)

Our world of “ordinary” has been a very weird place, but that doesn't mean that we are doomed forever. Our new normal may present the greatest opportunity of our lifetimes!

Natural laws give us the road map to changing the way we evolve. There have been incredible breakthroughs in our understanding of what causes our minds to close; what causes our anger, excessive self-righteousness, and the moral outrage to form toward people who are not like us, or who have differing opinions than us.  We can learn how to retain our goodness, hold back our known temptations, and to slowly reduce our flaws.  Today, there are many more practical and accessible tools that can help us prevent unregulated thinking, loss of faith and hope. Understanding our own human nature has always been at the forefront of our advancement, and if we look in the mirror and stop blaming each other, we can learn how to overcome our faults together,  improve our brain chemistry, and move from negative to positive thinkers! 

There will always be naysayers, and people who will not follow the Natural Laws. There will always be people who tell you that widespread peace is not possible. Therefore, we can expect to continue to struggle with pockets of hate and violence for some time. However, this doesn’t change the most important fact - that you have a choice! 

These natural laws; these fantastic truths are not going anywhere. You are now armed with the perspective that would allow you to transform the world into a better place. 

See For Yourself - Homework: Research the power of the great unknown, research the power of the middle, and to research the power of humility over arrogance. Ask yourself three questions: when outside immersed in nature or when looking into a mirror: 1.Can I deny that I have a true nature? 2. Could it be that only our fighting against a force as powerful as nature could produce the totally nonsensical, illogical, and divided times that we’ve been living through?

#. Could it be that: “We will never live the life intended for us, until we believe as a society that there is a path intended for us”? (Discuss)

(Additional suggested discussion) How do we know what right and wrong behavior befitting a citizen looks like ?Can there ever be normal , as it relates to being a citizen ? Who is to decide what the middle looks like or what normal looks like? Could I possibly play a role in ending the terrible division, war and conflict in America and across the globe? How will I live my life differently?

Quotations: 

“For neither wilt thou do anything well as it pertains to man without at the same time having a reference for things divine.” Marcus Aurelius, Meditations 3-13.

“The foundation stone of national life, is and will forever be, the individual character of the average citizen.” Franklin Roosevelt

“Four score and seven years ago our fathers brought forth on this continent a new nation, conceived in liberty and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal, now we are engaged in a great civil war, testing whether that nation or nation so conceived, and so dedicated, can long endure…” Abraham Lincoln, 1863

“There is nothing so wrong with America, that cannot be fixed by what is right with America” Bill Clinton, January 20, 1993