Learning and Living

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Throughout our lives we learn a great many things... This may start with learning how to say ‘Mommy’ when we are very young, and as time progresses we learn more and more things. Like behaving in a certain manner ~ what we need to do to get it our way...

Then as we reach the age that we go to school, we learn how to interact with others ~ how to play together, and bit by bit we begin to comprehend how we can express ourselves. And with that we may begin to see the value of things like reading, writing and arithmetic ~ the ‘three R’s’.

At some point there are things we need to learn, not because they are of interest to us or would help us on our personal path through life ~ but more because if we don’t we probably would fail our final High School exams. And while those things can be useful at some point in our future, we may find as we  move along our personal path that they are not quite as valuable to us as they were made out to be when we were taught.

Even things we set out to learn because they truly interest us may turn out to be fun while we are doing research about it, taking classes on the topic ~ as soon as the classes come to a completion, in spite of all our good intentions and initial enthusiasm, we drop it...

The question is why? Why do we start things, learn things ~ only to drop them as we have mastered them?

Looking at how this works for me, the answer is simple: I will only keep using those things that bring an added value to my everyday life.

So, let’s take another look...
Reading, writing and arithmetic ~ yes, I use those a lot! They’re definitely worth keeping around. Looking at behavior I have learned I find I have to be more discerning. Some of the behavior I have learned along the way permits me to behave within the perimeters of social acceptability, and as such are helping me in life ~ while other patterns of behavior are not quite as useful to me; even to the point of having the desire to ‘un-learn’ them.

This principle even holds true for spiritual teachings. Independent of the value of the teachings themselves ~ when they are approached as ‘a really interesting couple of hours every other week’ without becoming a part of our day-to-day lives, they may end up on the ‘they are not helping me’-pile. On the other hand, when we take those same spiritual teachings and start to incorporate them into our every-day lives ~ when we start living by them ~ chances are they will gain importance for us throughout our lives.
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