Module 1 - Course Introduction: The Fantastic Truths and the Essence of Us

(Leader Opening statement - suggested - about their preparation for this course and the length of the program given their own design and purposes) 

Start: The first thing we are going to do this morning is to go outside and look at the sky. This program we are embarking on today asks us to consider drawing knowledge from mother nature and to consider if mother nature plays any role in our lives.

This should be Fun!

First exercise:  “Is there an essence of being Human?” While observing our natural surroundings please consider the following question - What does it mean to be the “Bigger” person” as opposed to a “Smaller” person? Also when we think of a person who is “Remarkable” rather than “Ordinary” what words come into your minds? 

While outside make a list. Then chart results. Bring inside and hang up on the wall for the remainder of the curriculum. (See sample results chart below)

(Return indoors if you like, hang the chart, discuss results) Can we agree as a class on what a bigger person looks like? Or someone who is remarkable versus ordinary? Also, discuss what "character" looks like. What does virtue look like? Is there a consensus in the classroom?  

Now let's consider what will be referred to during this course as The Fantastic Truths, and Natural Laws. The creator's order of things is called the natural law. It was first introduced by Marcus Cicero and other Roman and Greek philosophers nearly 3000 years ago, and although it has been stated in different ways, it is founded on the following three concepts:

The Findings /The Fantastic Truths/ The Natural Laws:

• Natural Law 101 - Human beings are born good. We are meant to be remarkable (in our capacity for virtue) and not ordinary. 

• Natural Law 102 - We are meant to be humble, not arrogant, to live in awe of all those things that we will never know.

• Natural Law 103 - We are meant to be modest and moderate in all things, balanced, and not extreme.

Discuss these natural laws. Do they seem familiar to you? 

Now discuss the following contentions:  

(Leaders- the course is geared to encourage participants to do independent research, to try and disprove any of the following statements)

(Participant Cards)

• When taken together these natural laws create a framework, which millions of philosophers and religious leaders, over thousands of years, have posited as the way we are meant to live our lives.

• The framework offers time tested principles for human conduct that result in our success both personally and collectively. 

• The Natural Laws are grounded in the specific concepts of the individual pursuit of virtue and the actualization of our higher gifts. More simply it says that duties and obligations to self and others are pathways and not burdens.

• If you go to any church, or read the bible, or if you go to another place of worship; if you read self-help books, or listen to TED talks, they are all expressing the same principles, the same framework, just in different ways.

• The American founding fathers recognized, agreed and relied upon these specific natural laws, in order to create our system of government. 

• When we live our lives according to these natural laws we do well, individually and collectively. 

• The more we detach from these laws we fail. 

• What the Natural Laws say is that when we live according to this framework, we live according to our true nature. 

Teacher: Today's medical doctors have confirmed with scientific certainty how we stave off illness, and gain happiness, and wouldn’t you know, living according to these principles is not only good for our health, but essential to personal fulfillment and happiness. 

(All Together )

• Human beings were meant to be Remarkable, not ordinary. 

• We are to be humble, not arrogant. 

• We are to be moderate, not extreme.
  
  Teacher: The founder of this course spent over five years, prior to the creation of this curriculum, hiring independent researchers to find countering positions that would discount the principles of Natural Laws, or prove that they do NOT represent truth and reality for mankind. The harder we looked, the more clear these truths revealed themselves across cultures and time, and proven by our life experiences. That is why this course exists, and why we began to call these things, the “fantastic truths”.

Main Contentions of the course, for you to try to disprove: 

(Participant Cards)

• There is a reason why our society has been performing so badly for so long. There is a grand scheme to things down here, which is not to be taken lightly. 

• When we act like an ordinary species, we run afoul of the universe’s plan. We are endowed with a calling to move beyond our ordinary, to grow virtuous and to advance all other species. 

• We have a true nature. When we defy our nature, we distort our reality. 

• Life, like any other game, has rules, and when we don’t follow the rules, we lose the game. 

• There is a reason why the great majority of us go through our lives acting according to these natural laws without even realizing it, because the natural laws are the essence of who we are, and who we were meant to be. 

Discussion:  Do any of the foregoing statements seem inaccurate? Do you think - at the time of our birth - human beings are ordinary or remarkable?  Is it true or false that for the most part we will do better in our lives, and have more success and happiness both individually and collectively,  when we are humble or rather - arrogant?  What about modesty and moderation, rather than being extreme? Do we do better in life when we seek the middle ground? 

On a scale of 1-10, what does the class believe in the accuracy of natural laws? Are you open to believing that there could actually be a predestined path for human behavior? 

Discussion quotations: 

“Standing on the bare ground – my head up­ lifted into infinite space – my head bathed by the blithe air and uplifted into infinite space, all mean egotism vanishes. I become a transparent eye-ball; I am nothing; I see all..” Ralph Waldo Emerson

“No one is born hating another person because of the colour of his skin, or his background, or his religion. People must learn to hate, and if they can learn to hate, they can be taught to love, for love comes more naturally to the human heart than it’s opposite.”  Nelson Mandella (1994)

Resources for Module One

Letters to Mikey,  Chapters 1-3. 

Take home article : People are Good; we can prove it. substack/gettingalongacademy

End Module One

Segway to next section:  

(Participant Cards)

• If Natural Laws have been so well established? 

• If we are born SO good?

• If these fantastic truths have also been scientifically proven as fact?

(All Together) 

• Then why do we fail to follow them? 

Teacher: There are a number of very powerful and confusing forces which cause us to detach from our true nature, become untethered from the natural laws, and not live our lives according to the fantastic truths. The ingredients that follow are complex, each by themselves. 

However, it’s the unique way in which they work all together and feed off each other, which gives them enduring and unstoppable power.

The ingredients bring out the worst in us. They blind us. They are very much like a perfect storm. (Discuss the concept of the perfect storm).

 We have never been able to overcome these ingredients.  Until NOW!

Now, let’s turn to the Top Ten Ingredients to why we detach from the natural laws and live according to a distorted reality.