Pioneering Despite Inconvenience. Miami 1971
Here’s a tale about launching TM for credit in American public schools. Also a tale of howling cats.
“Pioneering is not feeling well,” wrote the poet John Berryman. But despite your tender feelings as an innovator? They’re not always the point, are they?
Today’s teaching tale has a funny side. Not only because it’s easier to laugh, nearly 50 years later. More important, you’ll see how unlikely beginnings launched ambitious success of a certain kind. Resulting in the first accredited teaching in public schools in America… The first teaching of Transcendental Meditation (TM) through a course in “The Science of Creative Intelligence.” A teaching that spread to many more American school systems and states — up to a certain point.
A Pioneering Tale that Might Help YOU
Keep reading and you just might find some Life Lessons that apply to you. Right now. Especially if you’re launching a startup. Or otherwise an innovator.
Alternatively, like me, you may simply care passionately about Self Improvement. Therefore, you’re always on the lookout for inspiring stories, what I call “teaching tales.”
For any of these reasons, you may long remember the following tale of pioneering despite inconvenience.
How I Found Myself Pioneering Despite Inconvenience
We were a team, Donald Davis and his wife, Laura Davis. (That’s my second in a series of seven names in this lifetime, names that would eventually bring me to the name Rose Rosetree.)
Together Donald and I first studied with Maharishi Mahesh Yogi for a month in Poland Springs, Maine. Later we completed Teacher Training in Mallorca, Spain. The essence of all that was recounted in my memoir, “Bigger than All the Night Sky.”
After Maine and Spain, where to go? We were sent by America’s Regional Coordinator to start up a physical center in Miami. Of all the weird places! By day, I listened to buzzing mosquitoes. By night, I heard ambulance sirens. Equally upsetting, to me, were all the palm trees. To this native New Yorker, palm trees always seemed just plain WRONG.
Yet we shoved all discomforts aside — including such poverty that, for two weeks, we lived on cornmeal and tomato paste. Of course we shoved all discomforts aside! Because Maharishi wanted us to give Introductory Lectures and then initiate, initiate, initiate. To us, at the time, there was no higher calling.
Our Biggest Pioneering Prize
Actually, it turned out, Maharishi wanted more of us. Always mighty entrepreneurial for a monk, he came up with a plan to get TM into public schools. For credit. And he wanted us to help him.
The name of his new course was “The Science of Creative Intelligence.” (SCI) A series of his audio lectures was newly recorded on the hot new technology, VHS. Cleverly built into the course was a little assignment for each student: “Learn Transcendental Meditation.”
Consequently, teachers like Donald and me had a new goal: Get public schools to agree to teach SCI for credit. Automatically we raced toward that unlikely goal, acting just like the true believers we were. What followed?
The first TM course in a community college, at Coral Gables. And then, wham! Getting approval to teach SCI at a high school in Dade County, Florida.
Pioneering Despite Inconvenience
To their credit, two big executives wanted to try before the big buy. Both the Superintendent of Schools and the head of the School Board. (As I recall it.) Mostly I was scared to even look these two hotshots in the eye, let alone teach them a thing. You see, for some unaccountable reason, they chose me — not Donald — to teach them.
Initiation Day dawned hot and… eek, so rainy!
Early that Saturday morning I arrived at the home of our hosts for the day, two “strong meditators” whom I’ll call “Joe” and “Gladys.”
Why commute to their digs? Because Our Official Miami TM Center — a tiny apartment — was barely large enough for “checking” meditation. In addition we had enough space to plan our lectures and mail out our press releases. As for actual teaching, we always had to use somebody else’s place.
Three months before, I’d felt very comfortable teaching at Joe and Gladys’s house. After all, unlike Donald and me, these people actually owned furniture, beyond a lumpy bed, kitchen table, and chairs.
Only this morning I was in for a rude shock.
Pioneering Despite Inconvenience: Initiation Day for the Hotshots
Now? That house stank. You see, I simply can’t find any pretty-pretty, transcendental but honest, term for the olfactory allure of that house.
Recently, Joe and Gladys had bought a couple of cats. By now, these had definitely dominated that dwelling.
Even worse than the fragrance, I knew Maharishi’s policy about “No animals” near the initiation room. In case you’re wondering, it was already quite the balancing act:
- Preparing to do a lofty incense-rich ceremony, where I’d chant the names of all of Maharishi’s favorite ancient saints from India.
- Struggling to comport myself before Joe and Gladys with dignity. Yes, mustering the dignity of an INITIATOR, despite feeling all elbows and (now, sadly) nose.
- Frantically decorating the bedroom bureau with a couple of books and a bed-sheet, etc. All this in order to quickly make a lovely altar for the ceremony.
And, now, having to demand that my annoyed hosts throw their cats into the back yard. In the rain. Because they had to.
Pioneering Despite Inconvenience that Was Hard to Ignore
As for what I had to do, I had to initiate both of the make-or-break school officials. Besides my usual insecurities, this time I had to pretend that each executive wasn’t a hotshot. And wasn’t twice my age. And definitely didn’t intimidate me. Since otherwise, I’d besmirch the golden dignity of TM.
Definitely I couldn’t act as though it was unusual for my hands to shake. And obviously, the entire house stank of cat, which my initiates would just have to get used to. However, it became a little harder to disguise the yowling.
Sadly, those cats didn’t happen to like being dumped outside, under a pouring rain. With a persistence I might otherwise have found admirable, they yowled and growled all afternoon.
At least, the teaching went successfully. And so did the three following meetings. Fortunately, these were all held in a different location, without any cat input.
Even more fortunate, the big shots liked TM. So they approved SCI for a public high school. First in the nation!
Winning Lukewarm Praise
One of the local meditators, Steve Glickman, was now on his Teacher Training Course with Maharishi. Accordingly, I wrote him about what just happened with my big initiations, mostly emphasizing the cats. Later, he wrote me back.
Steve reported that he read Maharishi only the parts of my very detailed letter NOT about the cats. :-( Like, how the successful initiations augured well for SCI in all public school in America.
Glory be! Maharishi heard what Steve read out in that meeting. In response, our guru said, “Good.”
When that thrilling praise came back in Steve’s next letter to me, I began walking on air for a week.
Pioneering Despite Inconvenience, What Followed
The SCI course progressed, and that was what mattered. Not only to Donald and me. That course set a precedent. Fast forward a small number of years and SCI would be taught in other American public schools as well. Until it wasn’t.
And why wasn’t? Due to a court case in New Jersey. “Courses in transcendental meditation have been taught in ‘schools ‘in Dade County, Fla.; Louisville, Ky., Eastchester N.Y., and San Lorenzo, Calif.” (Incidentally, that last link is to the New York Times. Pretty funny, since I’ve given over 1,000 media interviews since my TM days. Yet this is as close as I’ve come so far to making the Times.)
Of course, Maharishi went on to other projects. Yet Donald and I had still scored a big success.
Over time, remembering that helped me.
My Biggest Life Lesson
What if, like me, you’re constantly collecting Life Lessons? For me, here’s what comes to mind from this particular teaching tale:
The process of plowing ahead matters.
Plowing ahead, as if clearing snow from a driveway.
Or back to how I learned to survive in Miami: Plowing ahead meant thwacking. Getting really good at using a towel to whack-and-kill mosquitoes in my apartment. That way, the siren sounds we heard every light would only come from the many, many ambulances.
As for future projects… Since 1986, what would plowing ahead mean for me? Bringing Energy Spirituality into the world, a field I wound up founding. Actually, for all my projects undertaken since SCI in public schools in 1971… I have found that it helped considerably to simply plow ahead.
No matter how it smelled. Or how howling the opposition. Nor how deafening the indifference of the public, from time to time.
Like that photo of me at the top of this article, shoveling snow! Guess what? I simply do what is before me to do.
Forget about “Keep your eyes on the prize.” That’s too highfalutin for a worker like me. Most of the time, I’ll keep my eyes aiming right in front of me, thank you very much. Also, I’ll do whatever integrity job is required for my current project of choice. Because, it always turns out, that matters.
