Hi All!

I'm wondering what the statement "The lesson is in the learning" might mean to anyone as a personal experience?

In a recent conversation with friends, we were discussing the notion that perhaps the kind of "hard wired" outward conclusions we go seeking, aren't necessarily the whole or even the most important point of the seeking -- maybe, what we're trying to understand or discover or learn about (ourselves? others?) is in the experience of our focused efforts, as the experience of private growth of mind and heart. Perhaps the meaning of anything is within the experiences that come out of, or arise from the involved active efforts we make to understand our own connection to it. Maybe it really is as the Speaker Material suggests, that the lesson comes about, or the answers become clear to us, only through our willingness to ask the questions and "do" our own learning - pursue our own information and draw our own conclusions.

Does anyone have an example of having learned something unexpected that helped them in some way, even if they didn't "fix" the problem in the exact way they thought would be the most ideal as a conclusion?

In my own example here, we were talking about chronic pain, and my question was whether "fixing" the problem -- becoming entirely pain free -- was the real point or the meaning behind having the problem. After all, in learning to cope, manage, and thrive past... is there not some redemptive meaning -- some skill set -- some understanding that we can use, or apply to other sorts of problems? Do we believe we would have learned these things, gained this understanding, if we had just eliminated the specific pain from a mechanical manipulation/means alone?

What do you think about this?

Spinfo

How can a mother continue to hurt her adult child knowing what she is doing? Does she want the child to hurt or is she just ignorant to the fact of her adult child’s feelings. I feel the mother wants her child to hurt. That somehow this woman gets some kind of sick revenge by seeing her child hurting.
The mother continually disregards her child’s feelings and it hurts me immensely to hear this. I feel my hands are tied and basically there is nothing I can do. I want so bad to talk to this woman and shake some sense into her but I know that this won’t help!
I feel some people are aware of what they are doing the majority of time and many people in this world are GAME PLAYERS and are afraid of the truth, they are afraid to sit down and talk honestly about unpleasant situations and how to fix them. I think they enjoy the games that they play and go through life playing their games with other peoples emotions.
I’m still trying to figure out the lesson in the learning here, on one hand I think I get it but on the other hand I want to change people and demand that they stop manipulating and intentionally hurting people that they supposedly love, but then I realize that I can’t change other people.

Hi Smart Lady!

What if your last sentence in your post here is the practical meaning of how “the lesson is in the learning”? What if the real point for you, as your personal lesson out of this situation, is not necessarily the same point of the other people’s learning; and therefore, the knowledge you are gaining from being part of this situation is helping you better understand what it means to your own life, to realize “we can’t change other people”?

What if, from being involved in this situation, and from knowing so acutely that “you can lead a horse to water but you can’t make it drink”, you have gained some information for your self about what, why, and how such interactions can help you to find deeper compassion for yourself and others? What if this situation is meant to give you a clearer understanding of what different, new choices you can make? What if the lesson here is to learn an understanding that will help you move toward a more fulfilled and enriched personal life experience, while simultaneously enhancing your ability to help others do the same thing?

I’m surely not suggesting that you simply throw up your hands and turn away here, or close the door on helping any of the people involved. But to acknowledge the truth that “others' power is theirs” just as our own is ours, can often allow us a “re-focused” choice for our own actions,reactions, and interactions. To grasp this particular “rule to the game” about life-power can help us choose to concentrate on finding other more effective ways of using our own knowledge in our own lives; while still keeping the doors open to genuinely "helping" others, if-and-when an appropriate, useful, ready-and-wanted, opportunity/possibility to help, appears.

Such a grasp allows us to use our own strongest core energy-lines, toward building our own "life-supportive lives" of meaningful activity and growth; putting our energy of life towards the goals and ideals we believe in, rather than only reacting in ways that generally dis-empowering both ourselves and other's with chameleon beliefs; not really helping anyone at all. For, once we develop such conscious ability to build new interactions/relationships through new understandings of our own, then we can transfer that expertise out, or actually share it with others in meaningful ways for each of us. This is truly a win-win situation!

Once we allow that we aren’t responsible for what others are choosing, we free ourselves from the paralyzing frustrations of trying to change things that are not ours to change – for the necessary inward changes that will help others act in more meaningful ways, belong to those others. Of course we all know this – as you ended up saying here. But maybe the lesson to be taken here is about how to use that knowledge in a new, more helpful way for all parties – including ourselves.

This particular lesson about the responsibility we have for our own power of choice, is one of the most difficult to ever get our minds around. It is a huge puzzle piece in building our own understandings (from our own inside-out) about the power of our self-hood and the meaning of our days of being alive. I’m not even suggesting here that somehow we will instantly stop “getting angry” over these sorts of situations when we see such a clear abuse by other’s power-manipulating, going on.

Personally, from one angle, I’ve almost come to be grateful for this sort of emotional self-shorthand reaction – it helps me never forget these lessons that freed me to make new choices to help myself as well as others, trying to apply my own power in creative win-win ways (still from the inside-out). Such a re-action also reminds me why it is I take on the daily responsibility of discovering my self-to-Self identity and of learning how to enact my power in more care-full ways. Always an on going effort…

From Speaker Material, I’ve learned something of the concepts that have helped me more clearly recognize the truth that my learning is a choice that's ultimately up to me, just as it is for other’s. Just as my own power of choice rests beyond other's judgments and opinions, other's power of choice lies beyond my judgments and opinions. Our choices are always within our own power. If my personal judgments and opinions unwittingly diminish (dis-empower) either myself or others, I'm missing the point of life's lessons-in-the-learning.

The outcome of anger can often signal us that we have learned and do know something of life's lessons. Anger needn't be only a "negative" reaction. Anger can serve as a purposeful expression in our reality-learning, if it is recognized as an instinctual grasp (a response that's mine, or other's), to seeing the result/outcome/impact, of dominative/unfair practices; knowing that these sorts of interactions come from dominative/unfair thinking. For in such instances, we can see the reality of affect on the larger circle of many people's experiences, as the actions-through-the-thinking of one person, reach beyond just that personal sphere of a singular self.

That such a reaction of anger may be justified, and may quite rightly represent our own inner knowledge, (or someone else's, directed at us), is not the end or the whole of the point to this sort of lesson-in-the-learning. If justifying our own "right reasoning", through our thinking, beliefs and feelings as our own understanding of relationship, is not the whole point of these experiences, then what is the point? This question is an even more important step of self-discovery. From the self-to-Self perspective, that choice, for our own further learning,is the more important point!

Maybe, how to initiate a more intimate self-exploration, (that comes out of contentious experiences triggering us to look beyond only our first, surface reactions), is the purpose of these sorts of involvements. To question what the meaning of our particular experiences is for us, is the personal point of self-to-Self relationship and learning; for it is from such questioning that we grow into our own grander, everyday self-hood.
Maybe these conflicts are meant to reveal our more intimate sort of reasoning to us, from our own more complex beliefs; leading us into a more elegant understanding about ourselves and our reality of shared self-hood.

To ask "why (me)", is different than to ask "what (is this about)". The difference is between understanding a general principle, as it applies to all of us, and understanding our individual, personal meaning and use of the principle. Perhaps, the reason for our involvement in any specific situation is to lead us to question from both a broader outward perspective and an inward more intimate perspective; and together, this then, is our own experience of learning. The idea that the lesson is in the learning, takes on a different sort of meaning when we see it as having both a macro cosmic and microcosmic value.

Maybe our problems are meant to show us, as experience, the path for our own growth. Not the specific ducks-and-the-geese of any particular lesson, but the process of our learning. If the lesson is in the learning, and the learning is within the experiences of our lives, then life is about the relationship between our experiences (as reality) and how we grasp the meaning of our lives (as reality) as a chosen path of personal power. Life is about our choices in directing our own power along our own path of learning (and our own learning along our own path of power). The Self-to-self inward relationship is our way to find this path of personal learning about our personal power.

The sort of conceptualizing that has me wanting to assign blame (to either myself or others) rather than realizing/accepting the truth of "shared" responsibility for our "shared" power of interaction; this is only a disguised misunderstanding of my own power of mind. Along such lines of thinking and feeling, we may miss the fact that such opinions and judgments are anything more than a chameleon, domination-subordination pattern of concept. Recognizing and understanding these ideas is often exactly what our Self is wanting us to learn, from these sorts of frustrating situations.

To find we're on a path of thinking that lands us at an “I’m smarter than you” conclusion that let's us feel superior because we believe that we "understand" while others "don't get it"; or leaves us aggravated because someone's cast us as the one who "doesn't get it"; can help us track our own reasons within our interactions, as clearly as we so often see (or think we see), others' reasons.

Superiority-inferiority conceptual frames, are simply a "way of thinking" (a conceptual framework), that concludes that our only choices are in "either/or" struggles - either they win and we loose, they loose and we win, we're right and they're wrong etc... To learn from our Self-to-self that there are other valid "ways of thinking", is to realize our power of choice includes our choice of how we think/conceptualize, and draw conclusions from our experiences.

To know the path of our own learning is to have some compassion for the path of each of us towards “free choice”. The underlying message of all self-to-Self learning for any of us is always one of decisions about how we each use our power-of-mind – about the choices that truly empower us – and thereby intrinsically support others. Individually, when we put our attention towards understanding equal empowerment for ourselves and others, we automatically begin creating this reality.

When we choose, very clearly and consciously, to set aside our frustrations with other’s unclaimed learning, and accept that their growth is ultimately their own, we can begin to claim our own learning as our own growth. To me that is always the point, to learn how to make our own knowledge-full decisions to put our energy of heart and mind toward specific projects of our own beliefs, and create out of our own power. To learn to create all forms of personal actuality/reality that reflect the self-to-Self identity, is what keeps us growing so miraculously into ourselves.

This is not meant to be a “smart ass” comment here, but maybe part of a short answer to “the lesson is in the learning” might also include an understanding/grasp of that old adage about taking care of our own business before trying to take care of others'…. It’s quite amazing how the deeper meaning of that idea can turn up, represented, in these situations where we see, and know, that the real problem is in everyone's personal understandings about self motives and power concepts - including our own.

Our own answers, our own knowledge, comes to us out of our efforts to understand our personal, individual life’s situations – just as you are doing with your efforts here in this situation you’ve shared with us. This is the learning. Maybe, our ability to draw our knowledge out into the daily experiences and expressions of clearer self-instigated self-motives that truly support our own beliefs, is the lesson – for each of us, and all of us. Maybe, learning to “create” new experiences, from our living-out, being alive within this specific human lifetime of our own, including all of our frustrations and problems, is the lesson for everyone.

Keep your good heart open friend. Keep your smart mind asking, looking, discovering – in spite of how frustrating it can be sometimes.

Hopefully helpful,
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