True School: A 30-Day Community-Based Transformative Educational Program

Abstract

The aim of this study was is to uncover the interdependence between self-transformation and community participation through analyzing the self-reports of participants in a 30-day community-based transformative educational program called the True School, organized by the Konohana Family in Fujinomiya, Japan. This research explored the question: What conscious phenomena, in terms of self-awareness, were experienced through participating in a 30-day community-based transformative educational program called the True School? The Konohana Family is an intentional community located in Fujinomiya, Japan, whose cultural belief system is based on transcending ego. Daily journals and a critical hermeneutic conversation were used to explicate the conscious phenomena experienced. Some experiences that the participants aspired for were later felt, and some experiences that participants felt were later aspired for. The researcher found that, prior to the True School, participants experienced emotional conflicts and repressed their personal desires. They desired acceptance, personal ownership, transformation, and wisdom. They aspired to feel autonomy, confidence, creative expression, fulfillment, and vulnerability. During the True School, participants wanted to feel confidence, creative expression, and vulnerability. They experienced compassion, embodiment, empowerment, gratitude, intuition, joy, vulnerability, will, and wisdom. After the True School, participants felt acceptance, faith, joy, non-attachment, and wisdom. More so, locus of control (LoC), the belief in a source of control as internal or external, was found to modulate self-construal and worldview. LoC was considered to be synonymous with ego, as the belief in a separate self. When ego is intended to be acknowledged and suspended or transcended, harmony is experienced and community forms. This research addresses the significance for further applications of community-based learning environments, specifically with the intention of transcending ego.