The Flip side of Madness, Weaving Webs of Consciousness.

How do I make clear my story of a healing journey as I weave the matrix of my educative story of the journey of my learning that is rooted in its many strands of a Nurse, a Shingon Buddhist Priest, a Soldier and an Educator? This journey has been sustained over time and includes my enquiries into my claims to know through the filters of my learning and the living of my spiritual and educational values. The context of the journey includes the process of designing implementing and evaluation a new Paradigm of a healing nurse curriculum in a Japanese university.

Abstract.

The exploration and formation of this PhD enquiry explores my knowledge creation, and my claims to know the representation of that knowledge. It seeks to show that every human life is an educational process of learning. The inquiry sustained over more than 12 years looks at how reflecting on one's own experiences in life can be an educative experience and process informing our consciousness. The generation of my own unique living educational theory is grounded in my actions and in my responses to internal and external stimulus.

My analyses of the many strands contained within this PhD are being submitted to peer review to evaluate the validity of my claims to be showing how human essence can transcend some of the darkest sides of human behavior. It acknowledges the active filters of being a Buddhist priest and being concerned with compassion and the generation of a good mind. It shows the struggles not as a victory narrative but from the position that a conscious mind can create a healing space.

It documents, the conception, designing, implementation, evaluation, redesign of a healing nurse curriculum. Showing how the curriculum responds to educational theories using action research methodology. It deals in depth with the problems of data collection and analysis associated with healing. It shows the process that the idea of a healing curriculum had to pass through in order to be given academic accreditation in a Japanese university. It also looks at the issues the author faced in trying to hold and live his values often in a hostile environment, a foreign culture and a medical system that labeled all form of healing as outright quackery.

It documents and explores Buddhist concepts of consciousness, in relation to mental health and well-being. It looks at the spiritual aspects of the mind while seeking to measure with scientific rigor the physiological changes of the human body.

It is a factual story of an educational journey of an informed consciousness, its high points, its low points. It seeks to show that we can use the process of our living enquiry as knowledge generators to influence the formation of global communities with global consciousness in the nested (w)holyness of our humanity .