The Meditation Room

Temet Nosce (Know Thyself)

The sign hanging over the doorway of the Oracle's Kitchen read the above.

The Matrix had a powerful influence on me, as I know it did tons of people, all over the world.

The movie was a rallying cry for people to recognize their dissatisfaction and unfulfillment with the gray emptiness of the capitalist dream.

The movie told people to instead look inside themselves, deep, inside themselves to find the "truth" of their own inner strength, of faith in themselves.

The Meditation Room

Schools in the Velja approach would all have meditation rooms.

I imagine rooms based on a Japanese style.

The sound of flowing water.
Soft cushions on which to kneel or sit cross-legged.
Scrolls hanging on the walls with wise proverbs written in Chinese characters on them.
Bamboo walls with their look of earthiness and flexibility.

The Student

Knowing yourself,
Knowing who you are,
enables a person to act in harmony and accordance with their perception of themselves.

This is absolutely vital to living in a way that does not feel strained and disjointed, out of whack with one's inner sense of rightness.

A healthy adult is one who feels "in tune" with themselves.

In The Velja Approach, students would be practising this fundamentally intrinsic aspect of human existence from a young age.

Whenever a student felt that they were lost,
confused,
unsure of their direction,
and they had exhausted external channels of guidance (parents, teachers, friends, books....),
they would have a quiet room to go to where they could search deep inside themselves for the answers only they themselves can give.

The school would provide the facility, the "tool", but would not force the student to make use of it.
That door would be one the student would choose to venture through on their own.
That is what The Velja Approach does :
provide the students with the "tools" to explore this life,
the adult encouragement and support to explore freely,
and the adult maturity to allow our young people to explore without imposing limits on their imagination or sense of wonder.

Know Thyself.