Navigating Nemeta
Nautical map: The harbor at Friendship, Maine, in Muscongus Bay
The content of NEMETA ranges over hundreds of lessons (units) which present text and talks plus many illustrations, distributed in this way:
- the twelve Courses, 1 – 12
- the three Vocations (13 – 14 – 15)
- 16 Planetary Tantra (open access for registered guests), including a Forum
- The TREEHOUSE: 17 The Terton and the Terma, members only, and 18 Breaking Nous, plus members Forum
- The Dragonfly Sutra / DOG ZEN
- The Fallen Goddess Scenario
- Visitors section, selected material accessible to registered visitors
- The Menhir, the campus bulletin board with items of interest and updates on all new features and content posted
Additionally, it includes Projects, FAQS, a page explaining navigation (this one), a page for joining as a member, and a search tool (magnifying glass – press enter after typing in your word). The LOGIN access is in the upper right hand corner of the home page.
Terms that apply to navigating the School:
unit: a screen of one or more pages; equivalent to a lesson. It may contain text only or text with a talk (mp3 audio) and usually has illustrations, and attachments for you to download.
block: a set of units/lessons, indicated in CAPITALS. Blocks are numbered 101, 102, etc., but this notation does not refer to sequence or degree of importance: rather, it is a way to indicate selected units so that they can be studied as a group. Students are strongly advised to learn by blocks, instead of wandering at random from one unit to another. A block is a measured selection of unit contents. Nemeta is so rich and extensive that units have to be measured out in this way to minimize confusion and overwhelm.
landing page: the home page of each Course or Vocation. Content on the landing pages, often including an introductory talk, is accessible to anyone who comes across Nemeta. You do not even have to be a registered guest to access it.
curriculum panel: the panel that lists the units arranged in blocks. Unit-lessons organized in blocks in this panel are accessible to members only. The exception is the Visitors section where the units are accessible to registered guests. Likewise for the units and Forum in 16 Planetary Tantra.
Notation System
There are approximately 790 units in Nemeta of which about 440 are published so far, and new units are continually being added. It happens that upon accessing any unit from the curriculum panel and delving into the content, you may lose track of what Course you are considering. To enable students to stay on track with the content they are viewing Nemeta provides a system of notation. In the title of each unit you will see the number of the Course or Vocation, 1 through 18, as well as the block in which the unit is contained: 102 is the notation for all units in block 102 of any course, such as Course 3 Grail Studies.
Each unit carries this notation in its url/title, corresponding to the block titled in CAPITALS in the curriculum panel. That way, you always know what Course and block you are considering when you are immersed in it. Again, it is strongly advised to absorb the material by blocks.
There are some exceptions in notation. For example, the Highlights and Previews:
Here the unit-lessons are not arranged in blocks so the Course number alone is shown: Course 8, Kali Yuga.
Another exception concerns units that need to be considered in sequence:
This is a section of the curriculum panel for Course 6 Living Myth. In block 102 titled LOOKING AT MM, three units need to be studied in sequence as indicated in the titles. Not so for other two units in 6.102.
Finally, the unit-lessons in The Fallen Goddess Scenario have the notation FGS rather than an assigned number. Likewise for the units in The Dragonfly Sutra, notated DFS, and Dog Zen, notated DZ.
University Format
Nemeta operates as a WordPress platform on an infrastructure that borrows from an elaborate system loaded with features of the kind used to run an entire university and monitor the progress of the students enrolled in different courses. Some of these features have been disabled, others cannot be: START COURSE and RETURN TO COURSE, for example. You occasionally have to use these features to access the units and navigate between units and the larger structure. Other university-customized features that you see are extraneous and can be disregarded: the five-star review system, the number of students enrolled,”units completed” and so on. PLEASE IGNORE THESE FEATURES.
SUBSCRIBER ACCESS
Subscribers are registered guests who can stroll around the campus of sacred groves and peruse the Course landing pages, but not access any units except in Vocation 16 Planetary Tantra and the Visitors section.
THE MENHIR
At The Menhir you find progress reports, updates, sneak previews of member-only material, improvised comments coming from JLL, announcements of events and projects, and more. This feature of the School may be compared to the campus bulletin board in the “student union” building.
Check The Menhir each time you login to the school to stay abreast with updates of material.
revised 15 June 2021
