“When we stop learning, we die.”
— Richard Branson
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At an earlier age, I had all the answers. Now I have very few.
Is this learning? Probably ... hopefully!
I do enjoy learning – and I think all humans are the same. Looking at my little kids at least, we all start being super curious and super happy gathering up knowledge and experience and getting better.
Maybe we get tweaked on learning at some stage. I mean, all learning has the cost of having to be willing to appear stupid. We've also all had some brutal teachers and coaches that have shamed us too. You have to be pretty humble and secure in yourself to learn and admit mistakes, don’t you?
And that’s what learning seems to be all about – discarding the old and limited within you for something different and more expansive: Admitting that you don’t have all the answers, and the ones you do have seem to be provisional on future experience.
It’s like climbing a never-ending mountain: There’s always more to see, a bigger perspective to discover.
Valuing growth over wanting to appear to be right is a fine attitude to embrace. Being proved wrong or discovering something new then becomes pretty exciting.
Hand in hand with this is that all of us are happiest when it feels like we’re making progress and moving forward. Being stuck in a rut isn’t good for anyone, at all.
Having an expansive mode of living and being tops constriction every single time.
But all expansion requires a leap into the unknown; and that’s where we can fall off track from the life-giving nature of learning.
It can be so much easier to keep doing the same old, same old – it’s comfortable because it’s familiar and certain.
Like the person doing a job that they hate, simply because they know it provides some kind of financial security – even if that job is slowly killing them. Or the one that stays in a relationship that does the same – because we know what it’s like here; we have no idea what it’s like out there.
We shy away from the edge, from uncertainty and a leap into what can seem the abyss of the unknown. Even when it comes to personal belief, relating differently to others, or even to ourselves, what I know seems to be so much better than what I don’t.
Constriction feels safe doesn’t it? It feels better to shut down and not let anything new or uncomfortable in – just in case we make our position in life worse.
Yet, and yet …
Expansion is indeed life-giving. I meant that.
The more you do it, the more you let go of the fear of the unknown, the more used to being uncertain you get, the more you feel the aliveness of growth and the lightness of freedom from fear.
I keep coming back to the second line of the Serenity Prayer – “Give me the courage to change the things I can”.
So often in an inner path, we look for a kind of peace that is sedation. “I just want to be able to ignore all the places that are uncomfortable” – we want to have peace with compromise and indecision and uncomfortable conversations and choices.
In fact, that is the stereotypical view of a spiritual path, isn’t it? Sticking our heads in the sand in order to ignore “reality” (whatever that may be).
But for me the greatest learnings of a spiritual path are around fear and uncertainty –
Not the ignoring of them, but the assimilation of such intensity and becoming comfortable in it; the realising that life comes down to this one crucial choice:
Expansion or constriction?
Love or fear?
I’ve seen what fear does to me, and to others, and it’s not pretty.
Learning to lean into love and not let fear dictate any choices I make isn’t easy, but it is simple once you realise how debilitating fear and constriction is.
The one thing I have learnt without doubt is wrapped up around this point.
Life is uncertain. Growth and learning is uncertain. There is risk to every decision.
But you, in your Self, are certain. Your existence and presence is undeniable and un-revokable. It cannot be damaged or stolen from you.
While in words it seems puny comfort, in practice and experience it is everything.
You can weather every single storm – not to mention the fear of destruction and chaos in any storm – when you find your alignment with the present moment and the presence of now.
It is the one thing you can do to make all of life more certain; to make the choice for expansion more joyful.
That is the one thing I know for sure; the one thing I’ve learnt for absolute.
Always, always, always go within.
Within you are all the answers. And if there’s no answers, there’s absolute patience. There is serenity and acceptance and courage and energy and wisdom and clarity – already there.
If you do nothing else in this life, if you follow no other “spiritual” or inner teaching …
Follow the wisdom of basing your life in the one place life and certain is – this moment in time.
Follow the joy of getting used to choosing for expansion; or at least not letting fear dictate what you do.
Learn those and everything else is easy and simple.
As Louisa May Alcott, author of Little Women, once wrote,
“I am not afraid of storms as I am learning to sail my ship.”
And if I can assist, please let me know.
Go well,
Arjuna