Posted September 30, 2016 in Monthly News

Willingness to Learn

“If you’re not willing to learn,
no one can help you.
If you’re determined to learn,
no one can stop you.”
~ Author unknown
quotelicious.com (website)

When I read this opening quotation in my friend David Bloyd’s thought for the day, I resonated deeply with the implication. Reading on, I saw this newsletter article coming into being. David wrote:

Being willing to learn—it doesn’t say being able, it doesn’t say being able to afford learning, it doesn’t say not wanting to learn. It says, “If you’re not willing…” In other words, the message is that we can all learn, regardless of our finances, our access to resources, our backgrounds. We may not all become great scientists, authors, or inventors, but here’s a world of learning available. We tend to think that there are certain pockets of society or populations or communities that can’t learn. They just don’t have the ability, we say. But that just isn’t true. Look at Helen Keller. Who’d have thought that someone who couldn’t see or hear could become a great author, political activist, and lecturer? Or how about Beethoven? He was deaf, and yet wrote some of the finest music ever. And today’s Steven Hawking—an English theoretical physicist, cosmologist, author and Director of Research at the Centre for Theoretical Cosmology within the University of Cambridge. He has early-onset ALS, is confined to a wheelchair, and he now communicates using a single cheek muscle attached to a speech-generating device. I’m sure you could name many others who have overcome a variety of physical and mental handicaps to learn different skills, talents, and capabilities. They were all determined to learn and couldn’t be stopped. So before we say “I can’t…”, let’s be willing to say I can and I will, whatever it is that you might like to know.

I was immediately taken back to The Recovering Hero Proclamation by Aaliyah LivingWell, aka Gina Dawn Gavaris. Her writing, too, inspired me, resulting in profound change in the way I think of and do my service in the world.

I have no need to save others.
I have no need to rescue others.
I have no need to outshine anyone.
I have no need to out-think, out-perform,
out-produce anyone – including myself.
I do not need to know anything.
I do not need to be an expert.
I do not need to fix anyone, or any change anything.
I do not need to dazzle, impress, or inspire anyone.
I do not need to be the hero of my own story.
In truth, I am organic, evolving, and fallible.
I allow things to unfold naturally, and I trust the flow.
I joyfully accept and experience my humanity.
I need nothing.
All already is.
Blessed be.

People I know are experiencing a lot at this time. My nephew is back in jail, having been released from two years in prison, then encountering difficulty in the program that was designed to help him be released on parole. A group of folks I love are watching their service to the dying be eliminated in an organization where they previously felt their work was valued and their jobs were secure. A friend is witnessing her adult son’s process with alcoholism and depression. My friend who lost her adult son a few weeks ago has a blood clot in her leg this past week. It would be overwhelming to feel responsible to fix all of this.

Add to the personal experiences, our collective circumstances that seem to need fixing: climate crisis, political chaos, financial uncertainty, cancer…

What is an appropriate way of being willing to learn, while not being attached to trying to fix things?

We are obviously not all blind like Helen Keller, or deaf like Beethoven, or in a wheelchair like Steven Hawking. (Note-Beethoven’s famous compositions were done prior to his going deaf.) Even so, it is undeniable we all have obstacles. However, obstacles are the stepping stones to our learning. I love how Aaron (as channeled by Barbara Brodsky), says it: “There are no problems, there are only situations that ask for your loving attention.”

Loving attention?

Yes. Loving attention is what we bring as we see others in fear or pain, and joyfully accept and experience our shared humanity—meaning we stay connected to some of the important points in the proclamation. We do not need to know how things are going to work out. We can allow things to unfold naturally, and trust the flow.

Nothing lasts forever. This, too, will past. The problems, the chaos, the uncertainty. These are conditions, and conditions are always temporary.

Buddhist teacher, Pema Chödrön, speaks about bringing warmth to the conditions. Our capacity to be present with the conditions of our own lives is intimately linked to our ability to be with others in the conditions of their lives.

These conditions in our lives are current. When we meet them without any need to deny, suppress, project, or fix them, the world just speaks to us in a different way. Experiencing life has meaning, including experiencing difficult conditions.

Pema says everything is a path to awakening. Perhaps that is what our willingness to learn is about. Our mind creates our world. As long as we think of something as a problem, it will be a problem. When we are willing to see every situation as something asking for our loving attention, the conditions themselves are experienced as a path to awakening.

“The best and most beautiful things in the world cannot be seen or even touched—they must be felt with the heart. Life is either a great adventure or nothing. Although the world is full of suffering, it is also full of the overcoming of it.” ~ Helen Keller

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