APOGEE

APOGEE

APOGEE Haiku

distant vista known
the vision of SELF expressed
this your apogee.


the four directions
as above so too below
all sounding its call.


chambers of the heart
quadrants of pulsing passion
breath of life in quest.

Rose Marie Raccioppi

http://www.apogeelearning.com


The Seven Ancient Principles of Hermes

1. The Principle of Mentalism [MENTALISM] “The All is Mind; the Universe is Mental.”

2. The Principle of Correspondence [CORRESPONDENCE] “As Above, so Below; as Below, so Above.”

3. The Principle of Vibration [VIBRATION] “Nothing rests; everything moves; everything vibrates.”

4. The Principle of Polarity [POLARITY] “Everything is Dual; everything has poles; everything has its pair of opposites; like and unlike are the same; opposites are identical in nature, but different in degree; extremes meet; all truths are but half-truths; all paradoxes may be reconciled.”

5. The Principle of Rhythm [RHYTHM] “Everything flows, out and in; everything has its tides; all things rise and fall; the pendulum-swing manifests in everything; the measure of the swing to the right is the measure of the swing to the left; rhythm compensates."

6. The Principle of Cause and Effect [CAUSE EFFECT] “Every Cause has its Effect; every Effect has its Cause; everything happens according to the Law; Chance is but a name for Law not recognized; there are many planes of causation, but nothing escapes the Law.”

7. The Principle of Gender [GENDER] “Gender is in everything; Everything has its Masculine and Feminine Principles; Gender manifests on all planes.”

Hermeticum.info - Principles: the Emerald Tablet the Kybalion and the
Seven Principles of the Universe
http://www.hermeticum.info/principles.html

The Emerald Tablet of THOTH
Tablet 11
The Key to Above and Below

"List ye, now to my voice and become
greater than common man.
Lift thine eyes upward,
let Light fill thy being,
be thou ever Children of Light.
Only by effort shall ye grow upward to
the plane where Light is the All of the All.
Be ye the master of all that surrounds thee.
Never be mastered by the effects of thy life.
Create then ever more perfect causes
and in time shalt thou be a Sun of the Light
Free, let thine soul soar ever upward,
free from the bondage and fetters of night.
Lift thine eyes to the Sun in the sky-space.
For thee, let it be a symbol of life.
Know that thou art the Greater Light,
perfect in thine own sphere,
when thou art free.
Look not ever into the blackness.
Lift up thine eyes to the space above.
Free let thine Light flame upward
and shalt thou be a Child of the Light."

http://www.crystalinks.com/emerald11bw.html

In deep meditation the call to APOGEE was newly heard
and so today's post and reference to Thoth and Hermes
...a reflection of my life's work
the symbolism, the metaphor, the application, the expression...
the art of BEING.


For the Full Kybalion Text
http://www.kybalion.org/kybalion.php

Once read understanding will be ever joyful.

A Shared Perspective

"From childhood onward, we all learned to cope with a complicated situation where the most basic feelings and perceptions were blended with one another much of the time. Life would be simpler if we could see directly into the crystal-clear ideals, the wondrousness and beauty, that the yogi declares to be at the heart of life, meaning our own hearts.

But a skeptic often harbors an idealist within who has suffered the pain of disillusionment one too many times. If idealists are born to be disillusioned, why not be disillusioned to begin with? Again and again, Freud stressed the importance of “the reality principle” as an index of psychological health. The reality principle is the recognition that you are not the world’s creator. Your ego stops at a certain boundary, beyond which you have no influence.

A baby is thus considered primitive because he feels that he is the center of the world, indulging the fantasy that everything is himself. As a child grows up, he is supposed to shed this infantile illusion of boundlessness. “Me “ and “not me” congeal into their separate spaces, and hopefully it is not long before “me” learns how to cooperate with “not me.”

Parents are generally quite anxious to promote this cooperative attitude, even when their child is obviously too young to adopt it. They ignore the child’s discomfort out of fear that he is being selfish. It is hard for them to see that their own hidden anxiety is being reflected here – they are afraid themselves to be fully self-accepting. Their own parents signaled that being self-centered was wrong, and this value judgment is being passed along now by seeing most forms of satisfaction as “selfish.”

The raw selfishness of a newborn baby is not a model for future behavior, needless to say, but it needs to be tempered naturally into more selfless behavior. If the growing-up process sacrifices a child’s very sense of being, then something has been lost that is too precious to lose. Being carries with it a subtle feeling of uniqueness, and out of that feeling comes a sense of union with the world, of being bathed in beauty and love. This is reality, too, but of a higher order."

Adapted from Unconditional Life: Discovering the Power to Fulfill Your Dreams, by Deepak Chopra (A Bantam Book, 1991). Care2's Soular energy, (April 28, 2010).

From: NYMETROPARENTS:

Rose Marie Raccioppi, MS FABI is an awarded and honored Holistic Educational Therapist, founder and director of APOGEE Learning Enhancement Training Systems™, Past President of the Rockland and the New York Association for the Learning Disabled. In private practice for 26 years, Raccioppi creatively serves the needs, gifts, and the potential of all learners of all ages. She integrates the academics, the arts, music, dance, sports, using the interests of each child to support improvement goals. Her effective approaches have consistently resulted in positive change for the student, academically, creatively, socially, physically and psychologically.

An APOGEE Tenet

Engage the child, allow the child to identify with the intent or purpose of the instruction. Teach the child on a gradient appropriate for the child's particular affect, emotion, desire and competency level.

YouTube - "CHILDREN" (by Kahlil Gibran)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gRIkUrDcN4M&feature=related

Self-Awareness

APOGEE Learning Enhancement Training Systems™

• seek higher truth of self from the depth of inner awareness
• promote readiness and openness for learning
• reduce stress experienced in everyday encounters

• identify and refine inner resources for enhanced personal effectiveness

As the students become more aware of themselves, more respectful of the care they must give their own bodies, more aware of how – what they do, what they think, what they believe, what they fear, what and how they feel, influence their ability to learn, they no longer feel defenseless in the wake of stress nor do they continue to be the victim of stress. These students have come to more fully understand the significance of themselves, their feelings and their own inner resources as they witness the “A” replacing the “D”, the success replacing the failure, the acceptance replacing the rejection, the calm replacing the chaos.

Questions, comments, inquiries are welcomed.
For more information and contact:
http://www.apogeelearning.com

In answer ~ What is an APOGEE Achiever?

What is an APOGEE Achiever™?

An APOGEE Achiever is one who makes the choice to appreciate potential and chooses to live a vision fulfilled. It is the student warrior, the warrior of spirit, belief, vision, and right intention, it is the one who heeds the inner calls to freedom, to creativity, to artistry, to exploration, to the knowing of SELF in all dimensions, in all realities, in all possibilities, in all change, in all BEING.

The mission of
APOGEE Learning™
A Paradigm to embrace

Aspiration
Potential
Opportunity
Growth
Empowerment
Exploration

http://apogeelearning.com

And So The Questions...

The truth, the innocence, and the all-knowing spirit of life fills our first breath. Who and what answers our first cry? What happens in the moments of life that fill the years to follow? Do we become the sum total of who touches, who answers, who denies, who ignores, who accepts, who rejects, who encourages? What moves us out of the shadow of our own experience? How do we hold on to the promise and joy of our own experience? How do we befriend that knowing within? What is the power that breaks the grip of oppression? What is this power that declares in silence, in words, in deed? What's this power that knows only itself as its teacher?

Why do systems that purport to educate have increasing numbers of youth shutting the doors of school behind them? Why does society have increasing numbers of school age children leaving the very systems that are supposedly preparing them for the world of work, independence and productivity?

A birth of a child is filled with promise and joy. Each birth is another opportunity to allow life its meaningful expression. The child almost instantly seems magnetized to particular stimuli and experiences. Why is the child so drawn?

Wherein lies his or her individual quest? Do we allow the child’s responses and in turn learn more of what life is when newly presented? Do we allow the child to experience joy of knowing self? Are we able to guide, nurture and encourage inquiry and exploration? Or do we impose and ultimately destroy what is open, curious, exploratory and creative? Why these questions? When one has been an educator for over forty years these are the questions that challenge the credibility of your profession.

For over two decades children, teenagers, young adults, adults and parents of those who have been tagged failure, learning disabled, emotionally disturbed, attention deficit disordered, hyperactive, gifted under-achievers and “lazy”, have chose to avail themselves of services that provide a renewed opportunity to explore self, learning style, creativity, and those experiences that have encouraged or have dimmed the joy of learning. What have these last two decades of service taught me? It has brought me closer to the pain of so many and closer to the joy experienced when freed from false beliefs, misconceptions of self and a sense of powerlessness. Those who tell their story tell of the judgments, criticism and pain they experience as students of failure. Yes, many “drop out” of school and “drop into” the health, social service, welfare and judicial systems. Failure and the thwarting of what is whole and natural is indeed the hallmark of disease and dysfunction, be it personal, social, economic or political. Understanding of what is supportive of individual difference is basic to the creative and harmonious use of human energy and motivation.

If we hope to creatively and harmoniously use human energy and motivation we must be supportive of individual differences and self-knowledge. If we are to be true to the precepts of a democratic system of governance, we cannot create systems that negate, demean or discriminate. A system that tags a first grader as a failure must be newly accountable. If a child does not readily acclimate itself to the world of filling in blanks, matching pictures, coloring in spaces, matching symbols to sounds is this child a failure? Or have we, the bearers of judgment and the creators of arbitrary standards, failed?

For full description of services visit:

http://www.apogeelearning.com

A Post Script

I WELCOME any and all comments to be posted on this blog. The collective political 'we' is deafened by their own created din. There are those among us who are to be heard, those who live beyond the din's pervasive call, those who hear the knowing messages of Spirit and Truth and in Grace, open the way for our children. Let us gather our creative endeavor, word, song, music, poetry, art, links, to advance a dialogue resounding with the needs of our children at its core. YES, children are our future - Let potential soar!

YouTube - The Greatest Love of all (Live) - Whitney Houston
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gvPYXHM94DQ

This a song - a mission - a mandate - holding to the promise of potential!

APOGEE Learning Enhancement Training Systems™

Learn the Most Successful Study
and
Subject Mastery Strategies

Mastery of any subject calls for the the 3 Cs: (1) Commitment (2) Courage (3) Competence. An achiever, a student warrior learns that any barrier to study, to mastery, can be overcome. The achiever asks: How is what I am expected to learn relevant? What is its importance? What is to be done? How am I to start? What steps do I need to take? How is my success measured? What tools are there to help me? What benefit will I derive? Having answers to these questions provide meaningful motivation, assuring a Commitment, a willingness to invest time and effort.

Understanding of one's needs, of one's learning style, of one's interest, of one's talents, of one's strong points, confronting one's fears, doubts, concerns, brings one to a state of Courage, to a state of self awareness, to an opportunity to be proactive, to meet the challenge of learning and mastery.

Commitment and Courage provide the impetus for learning and mastery. Learning, to be effective and life long, must be cultivated from personal need and motivation. Competence is developed, is experienced when one sees the effectiveness of one's approach, effort and devoted time. The benefits of Commitment, Courage and Competence are cyclic, the process is cyclic, each opens the door to the other.

The achiever learns that (1) one is to know the meaning and the particular context of each word in an assignment, in an instruction, in what is read, heard or demonstrated. No word that is not fully understood is to be glossed over. Every word is to be 'cleared' for understanding, application and relevance. The achiever learns that (2) there is to be 'mass' to what is learned, how does this idea, concept, object, function, in the world of action, interaction, purpose? The achiever learns that (3) there is a 'gradient' to all learning. One needs to identify what the prerequisite skills are for each step, each requirement, each expectation.

These principles of mastery apply to all stages of learning, to the first grader, as well as to the upper grade student, and to the adult learner. One begins with the end in mind, in focus, in perspective. One learns to think, "Win/Win." Overcoming barriers to learning, is a game plan of (1) Self-awareness, (2) Intention, (3) Strategy, (4) Confidence, (5) Understanding, (6) Integration, (7) Personal renewal - all marked for winning scores.

Let us begin a dialogue that benefits our children
and their learning potential.

Rose Marie Raccioppi


Founded in 1983 - Documented Student Success!
Do visit web site for full description of services.
http://www.apogeelearning.com