Life is a lesson: you must learn it like a child

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.