To Learn is to Enter Into A New Space

To learn is to enter into the new. Often, what we “think” is only a collection of mental image pictures - mostly given to us passively in the world, or actively by others to restrict, control, and socialize us. Real knowing is always attached both to feeling and will. Thinking and knowing is a creative act, when truthful.

To engage the experiential part of yourself on a physical, mental, and spiritual level is to create a new space within yourself that then must be filled with your psychic energy. New things, like thoughts, emotions, and creative impulses can only come from within ourself, coaxed out by stimulation in the external world. Otherwise we are simply mimicking and copying other people’s behavior patters and mental image pictures. Real learning is a drawing out of knowledge and wisdom that already exists within us - in a new and radical way.

Learning is an art form. One has to learn how to learn, if one is to engage the self properly and with enthusiasm. So often, we are taught incorrectly how to learn in your youth, by teachers and an educational system that values mimicry and memorization over critical thinking and spiritual engagement. There are six levels in learning, and understanding where you are can support where you are trying to go.

1. As a child, innocent, and without realizing there is anything to learn.
2. As a child, learning to read and communicate using symbols
3. As a child, when we realize there are other people who can teach us beside our parents
4. As an adolescent, when we begin to discern the difference between teachers
5. As an adolescent, when we are empowered to choose what we want to learn and our teachers
6. As an Adult, when we realize that all learning is growth within created by external stimulation

People who are working from the lower levels of learning move from school to school and teacher to teacher, because they do not yet realize that the teacher and the school is only a transmission instrument they must use to access what they already know within themselves. They judge and criticize what the teachers and schools are doing, or how they are doing it, and seek “the whole truth”, a complete and total worldview, or something they deem to be “trustworthy” or “ethically pure” that they mistakenly think must be granted to them by some external source. No teacher, school, or practice is “more true” than any other; the test should be, “do I feel more like myself/more comfortable in my growth around these people?” If so, then it is a place you can dig deeper within to learn.

The beauty of alchemizing this and embodying this way of learning it is that once you experience it, you come to know that the world is your teacher. In this way, while it’s important to pick a group you feel comfortable with, and teachers you respect, they almost cease to be more important that your own process. Every circumstance, every moment, every act is there to connect you to your inner wisdom and inner knowledge. It is yours, and once you own that, nobody can take it from you. You cannot forget the knowledge because it is of and from you.

Our work, as students, is to focus on learning and preparing ourselves for the next step on our path, always. Learning how to learn throws a living, penetrating, and extraordinary light upon our inner truths and wisdom. It brings us certainty, a connection to our meaning and purpose, and is an infinitely exciting way of engaging in the world.