Drop out so you can drop in

Reuben Berger
Nov 8
3 min read

The Great Unlearning: How Our Society Trains the Genius Out of Us

Our society makes no sense.

And it all begins with the school system.

A NASA study once revealed that 98% of preschoolers test as creative geniuses — curious, intuitive, brimming with imagination. By grade 12, that number drops to around 20%. By adulthood, only a small fraction remain truly connected to their creative spark.

Why? Because our schools don’t cultivate genius — they systematically condition it out of us.

A child enters school full of wonder, wild ideas, and raw authenticity. But soon they learn there’s a right and wrong answer, a correct and incorrect way to think, to draw, to speak, to be. Over time, the system drills one core lesson into their psyche:“Don’t be yourself.”

By the time they “graduate,” they’ve been rewarded for conformity and punished for originality. They’ve learned to ignore their feelings — that inner compass that points toward joy, curiosity, and meaning. And once that compass is dulled, people drift into lives that may look “successful” from the outside but feel hollow within.

We call it education, but much of it is really domestication — the taming of the human spirit.

When you’re cut off from your feelings, you’re cut off from life itself. You lose the ability to sense what your spirit wants to do, and without that connection, every day becomes a quiet act of survival instead of creation.

And so millions live out their lives as half-versions of who they could have been — polite, obedient, overworked, and under-inspired.

But life was never meant to be lived that way.

Life should be a grand adventure — or nothing at all.

Healing Havens was born out of this realization: that to heal, we must unlearn. We must return to what we knew as children — that life is play, creation, exploration, and love.

When Feeling Becomes the First Step Toward Healing

For most of us, life keeps us too busy, too distracted, too afraid to actually feel what’s going on inside.But when we finally slow down enough — when the noise fades and we begin to truly sense what’s living beneath the surface — we often discover something we weren’t prepared for: a sea of unpleasant emotions.

Grief. Shame. Anger. Fear. Loneliness.

They swirl around like ghosts from the past, whispering stories we’ve tried to forget.

Naturally, when those feelings rise, we look for help. We reach out to what society calls the “mental health system.” But here’s where things get strange — because, for all its certifications and credentials, psychology often ignores the spirit. It dissects, diagnoses, and categorizes, but rarely helps the soul remember why it’s suffering in the first place.

In truth, what many people need isn’t more analysis — it’s spiritual guidance. Someone to sit beside them in the fire, not just label the flames.

And when that guidance isn’t there — when no one seems able to help us truly transmute our pain — we do the next logical thing:

we numb.

We reach for addictions — alcohol, pills, screens, sex, relationships, even work — anything to escape what we can’t bear to feel. We live in a culture that rewards avoidance and calls it success.

The result?

A fundamentally narcissistic society, filled with sad, lonely addicts — people chasing pleasure but starving for connection, attention, and love.

Yet beneath all of this lies something profoundly hopeful: pain is not the enemy. It’s the invitation.

The discomfort is the doorway to transformation — if only we have the courage, and the right environment, to walk through it.

That’s why Healing Havens exist — to offer that environment.

A place where people can finally stop numbing, start feeling, and begin the sacred work of becoming whole again.

It’s time for humanity to graduate not into careers, but into authentic living.