Take a deep breathe,
open up your eyes, now spread your arm and let life engulf you. Try to learn,
constantly, try to experience each moment as an outsider. Ask, what should I
learn now? Look at things differently. Don’t buy anyone’s opinion. Don’t believe
in anyone’s theory. Trust your guts, your intuition. Stop remembering your
past. Stop recollecting your memories and live in present, learn in the present
moment. Respect learning, learning is important.
Learning is similar to
an endless road, in many ways, wherein, each lesson are its milestones. Since
the time one is born, there are numerous lessons one ends up learning, until
one reaches an end. Different people learn different things, so do not compare.
Stop looking at others and stop secretly wishing that other people should
follow you. Learn alone and learn persistently. Learning a new lesson will either
bring “content” or an unpleasant discomfort. The key lies in how
one undertakes the process of learning itself.
Learn with a child’s
approach. Learning through a
child’s eye is not kid-dish but rather a very wise and mature way of knowing
and understanding things at hands. A child learns new things without any biases
or any previous conclusions, with utter honesty & innocence. Don’t tie
yourself with beliefs, be free, and be creative. The reward is in the process
itself so don’t let your inner child die. Learning as a child will make you
feel young as well. So maybe that’s the elixir we all are looking for!
The way our society is
structured currently, getting support to undertake this approach is
difficult, so be more cautious and keep making efforts and don’t get
depressed. Remember one thing, nothing important, crucial, valuable, insightful
will ever be given to you from outside i.e. by others, you are
bound to find it yourself, hence look inside, within yourself.
Make your own way. And don’t worry about why is this so, because it’s kind of a
blessing in disguise.
Learning is inherently
dynamic. You can’t learn a lesson and ask your
grand-grand kids to follow it word by word. That will be insane. The effect of
lessons learned changes over time, just as everything else does. This implies
that we must keep re-learning, constantly. The lessons taught to us by our
parents, our elders and our society may be stale, so we must cross check its
validity on a personal bases and re-learn on daily bases.
Learning is hard work. Though, learning is fun in general but at
times it can be painful like hearing critics about ourselves or getting disapproved
from someone etc. Don’t let your anger ride you left and right, in such
cases, and rather work on having a positive approach as in “something good will
come out of it, so let me give my complete attention, and try to learn, even
though it’s discomforting”.
Learning is mystical. The sources of learning an insightful lesson can
be shocking, unpredictable and or unbelievable at times. Like here is something
my brother was fortunate enough to experience, which I have tried to summarize,
succinctly below.
Lessons
from a Snow Storm: Life will keeps on
showering troubles, hurdles & difficulties one after another. But just
like, when in a snow storm, one shouldn't stop in the middle of the
road and wait for the storm to end, as it will be much harder to get out
of the snow, compared to if one would just keep moving ahead slowly and steadily.
If one’s just keep moving ahead, even though the snow is falling on him, making
him feel brutally cold & bitter, the snow may slow him down but it
certainly could not stop him from reaching his destination.
Here are a few more
insights based on my experience:
Lessons
from Spectacles or Glasses: Just
as glasses helps one to see things clearly, by manipulating the angels of rays
of light, before it falls on on the eye retina and one soon forget about its
existence, similarly compassion/mindfulness helps one, in taking the right
actions, either verbally or mentally or physically, by filtering the
unrighteous thoughts but one can’t feel its existence. Rather its much easier
to notice the lack of its existence.
Lessons
from headaches: Headaches
are unpleasant sensations/signals sent to the brain; our brain then labels it
as “pain” or “bad" or "unwanted feelings” which then fuels the urge
to quickly get rid of that feeling. But note that sensations are neither good
nor bad, they are merely signals. Thus, the ideal reaction after one receive such
‘headaches’ sensations is not to always take medicine and numb them down and to
get upset over them, until one loses consciousness about them. But rather to
take a break and let your senses rest, to respect those sensation and pay
attention so as to learn from them. This rule implies to any bodily pain in
general. Our brain needs to pay attention as in why am I getting these signals,
what are my body parts “informing” me? rather
then complaining about it. Try to silent your thoughts and listen
carefully. Obviously take medicines, when it became necessary but try to
keep noticing those sensations, they are part of you and they are insightful.
Lessons
from an ice sheet: Nothing sticks on an ice sheet. So is the
original state of mind when it's conscious. No idea, no thought, no wish, no
belief, no desire has any effects on a conscious mind. If a thought do comes
in, it will just slide by, but it would not stick. Remember the phrase “Cloud
passing by the sun!!” the clouds can hide but cannot affect the existence of
sun.
Now on the other hand,
if a thought or a desire do gets stuck, which is exactly what happens in our
mind(an unconscious) all of the time, this is quite similar to an act of
planting a seed of an invasive species on a fertile land. Then depending upon
how much one sustains/fertilize that thought, soon the entire fertile land will
be covered with a jungle of weeds: weeds of ideas, beliefs, desires or
attachments in general.
Meditation is one of the
tools that helps prune such weeds to bring back ones original state of mind.
Simply put, please understand that unconscious mind is very sticky by its
nature just as stones are hard. So the solution is not to get rid of or reduce
the stickiness of an unconscious mind, as that is impossible, any work done to
do so is bluntly futile. Rather work on getting more conscious and being
choosy, in allowing what should get stuck in your mind and what should not,
just like any farmer who chooses what to grow in his farm.
Keep learning. Adiós.
Comments
Post a Comment