Emotional Intelligence School programme, CDK Institute from Ljubljana

Proposer: Dr Robert Leskovar

The Emotional Intelligence School at the Centre for Spiritual Culture was established four years ago as a response to the need for people to be able to recognise their emotional impulses and their causes, and to establish high-quality personal relationships. We live in a world that denies emotion. A high value is placed on reason and its achievements, while everything else is unimportant. Yet people are multi-layered and emotional beings. Pushing emotion out of life is the cause of many problems faced in establishing contact, even in early childhood. People have found themselves in an empty space. The rhythm of life is increasingly rapid, we are all trying to get as much out of life as possible, we are becoming impatient, and this has a highly destructive influence on relationships. We fear mistakes, because we don't have time for them, but for this reason we cripple our true, whole nature. The teachers at the Emotional Intelligence School are aware of all this, and they have decided through programmes of self-discovery and personal growth to help first themselves, and then other people. They have very different educations, but they share the joy of exploring the human psyche. For this reason they decided ten years ago to quit the work they were doing, and to devote themselves entirely to new assignments. This was a decision to learn, first about themselves. Together they completed a four-year programme of education, which helped them to recognise themselves as many-layered, unique individuals, to discover a purpose to life, from which also derive the most important goals. Then they also completed a two-year programme of training for teachers at the Emotional Intelligence School together. Of course this does not mean that they are psychologists or psychiatrists, but people with a long history of self-discovery. They build on the knowledge they have through group learning, so that everything they impart to others has been tried and tested several times. They are trying to develop the most universal and at the same time applicable programme of ‘emotional literacy', and to awaken an emotional culture and develop emotional stability. The basic programme is supplemented by programmes for overcoming stress, acquiring social skills, gaining self-confidence and improving the communication, relationships and self-images of participants.