In some ways our personality or identity is like a plant which feeds from the most unlikely material to produce beautiful leaves and flower. The plant can transform manure into living leaves and petals. Our identity feeds on experience and information – some of which may appear uninviting, painful, or unwholesome. In fact the experience may be all of these, and be depicted by manure, and if not put to our roots – our process of becoming aware of things in an intensely felt manner which links feelings with intellectual insight – remain a disintegrating influence. Learning processes which pile intellectual information on children or adults without helping them to allow their deep feeling responses, are piling manure on the psyche while cutting off its roots. Personal disintegration is the result.
