Mentoring

Based on the wisdom of Greek mythology and an analysis of archetypal individuation and integration from a Jungian perspective, mentoring has come to have many definitions.

Recall the myth of Odysseus off to the Trojan War who entrusts his son, Telemachus, into the hands of his friend, Mentor, who is Athena in disguise. One could argue that for the West, Athena most closely embodies the warrior and wisdom figure at the root of Naropa’s own contemplative education tradition embodied by Chögyam Trungpa Rinpoche.

Essentially, for our purposes mentoring is a learning relationship between a person accomplished in a field of knowledge who is the mentor and a person who is more or less at the beginning of the learning trajectory who is called a protégé. Together they are identified as colleagues.

Having experienced this learning relationship, the protégé then someday becomes available as a mentor to another. Mentoring is a unique kind of learning process for those involved; it is a complex, contemplative and integral level of functioning and learning. Mentoring is an essentially contemplative component to Naropa University’s Interdisciplinary Studies program.