It's Learning…

It is learning!

Once we stop thinking of learning as the product of teaching, as an accumulation of knowledge, data, information; we can begin to look at what it is.

Learning is how we remain open in the face of conditioning. It involves deciding without making judgments – to mangle Alan Watts.

Plasticity is a notion – we cannot know that some theory of anything is anything more than a useful handle for affecting how we perceive action – that provides a complex metaphor of a dynamic we can relate to. How is it that when we stress our sensorium and our capacities to do something; and we allow some time to pass; when we return to it; we can have greater sight and a different capacity?

Plasticity is a way of looking at this.

It's trueness as a concept is less important than the fact that looking at things this way, for us with our current conditioning, is fruitful. At another time and place, or with different people, perhaps seeing this as an interaction with spirits might be more fruitful. Or looking at it in some other way that is impenetrable to us right now.

Plasticity is a way to stir the pot. The next time we approach something is not just a repetition of the last.

This is fragile. If we come to another attempt with the idea that we are an "I" and "I am this!" We swamp any possibility that plasticity will work by the power of our expectation.

Just as; if we are caught up in seeing everything from within a realm of negotiation and are always looking for justification and to persuade and be persuaded; we swamp any possibility of attending to fragile insight. We swamp Watt's decisive-action-without-choice under the demands of maintaining confidence.

So learning how to learn involves gaining a working – not knowledge, so much as a – sensibility for the way these dynamics function. This leads to developing a trust in how things are. Watts talks about trusting that whatever we do will be the right thing to do. And how this is misused when we take it as license to overcompensate. At that point we are still looking over our shoulders at roles to be played. We are not trusting that we just are. And are just parts of everything.