Learning, Doing and Teaching
We've had quite a few new subscribers since the boys at Signal vs. Noise posted this quote from an article I wrote some time ago, 'The Little Book of Flow', (a draft of an ebook that really needs editing/rewriting as soon as poss).
"Is it possible to have a life where the ‘flow state’ is the norm? Is there a way to have ‘flow’ all the time regardless of where we are, what we are doing or what seems to happening around us? There is.”
... and then Leon from LifeHack.org posted a synopsis of the same post. Thanks to you guys for giving that article new life.
So I'd like to give a welcome welcome to anyone who is new here and also say a big thank you to all my regular readers who still stick around in spite of my irregular and often infrequent posting... You rock.
In a recent interview Robert Pirsig [1] was asked about his life as a relative recluse since the publication of 'Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance'. He replied, 'It is not good to talk about Zen because Zen is nothingness... If you talk about it you are always lying, and if you don't talk about it no one knows it is." I feel the same way sometimes but you have to say something, don't you? For me, Oscar Wilde nailed it in this remark:
The only way to suspend disbelief, cut through skepticism and create trust is to act as a real human being and get to the naked truth. As the sages say: 'Words that come from the heart can enter the heart.'"
And so this is the place I try to put into words those ideas I find the hardest to articulate.. and I guess the outcome of that can look a bit messy and incoherent at times. But I keep trying because it's the best way I know to learn stuff.
I think there's a lot of truth in this quote from William Glasser..
We Learn…
10%…of What We Read
20%…of What We Hear
30%…of What We See
50%…of What We See and Hear
70%…of What We Discuss With Others
80%…of What We Experience Personally
95%…of What We Teach Others
...although I'm not so keen on the word 'teach'. I've slowly come to realise that the only 'teacher' worthy of the title is the one we find within ourselves. So probably the only useful thing a teacher can do is to point us towards that part of us that is already free, enlightened and the source of wisdom... each one of us being our own best teacher and the only help we may need is in remembering that. Here's a definition of 'teaching' from the book 'Illusions' that I would go for:
Learning is finding out what you already know.
Doing is demonstrating that you know it.
Teaching is reminding others that they know just as well as you.
You are all learners, doers, teachers.
But the main reason I blog is because there's a hidden jewel in blogging that I don't think most people 'get' until they actually start themselves. It's about the connections you make. I wrote it about here --> Bloggings Hidden Jewel.
Notes:
[1] Here are a few pearls from the same Robert Pirsig article:
"Traditional scientific method has always been, at the very best, 20-20 hindsight. It's good for seeing where you've been. It's good for testing the truth of what you think you know, but it can't tell you where you ought to go."
"Why, for example, should a group of simple, stable compounds of carbon, hydrogen, oxygen and nitrogen struggle for billions of years to organise themselves into a professor of chemistry? What's the motive?"
"The only Zen you find on the tops of mountains is the Zen you bring up there.
[2] I don't know who to credit for the cartoon drawing so if anyone can help me out it would be appreciated.
