BY RINA JAKUBOWICZ ON MIND BODY GREEN
My deepest passion is learning. I’ve travelled far and wide to study with different teachers, but I’ve also consciously developed a daily practice of learning. Every day I dedicate myself to learning about the way things work — communication, nature, music, love, emotions, healing, science, and most importantly, who I truly am.
On its own, my learning practice has been one of my greatest teachers.
Here are four truths I’ve discovered about learning:
1. All roads lead to the truth.
Innately, I have always felt that I have lost something. Through my studies of yoga I have come to conceptually understand that what I have lost is my understanding of who I truly am — the true and pure Self.
Since I am ignorant of my truest nature and know that I am ignorant of it, it keeps the seeker in me intrigued. There are times it gets frustrating and intense to know that I’m lost, but those spells are part of the process of letting go, shedding expectations and stopping the judgments of myself.
2. No matter how much we think we know, we know nothing at all.
As I have immersed myself in ancient yoga teachings for the past 15 years, the one thing I keep learning more about is that I don’t know anything at all.
In the beginning my ego would rebel, get in the way, stand up for itself and proclaim (with delusion) that it already knew everything. But my intellect grew tired of this BS-reaction of my ego and humbled my mind. I began to accept that although I am in this position of a yoga teacher to some, I am really a forever student in my heart.
Even the great Albert Einstein said, “What is my knowledge compared to my ignorance.”
3. We can always learn from others.
According to my teacher, Swami A. Parthasarathy, “The wise learn from other’s experiences. Fools learn from their own.”
Without realizing it at the time, this learning-from-others is what I have been trying to do all along. Truth-be-told that there are moments that I am wise and moments that I am a fool. Yet it continues to fluctuate much like ocean waves.
4. Life is an experiment.
I always like to think of myself as a science experiment with a big heart — forever hypothesizing, forever exploring, forever learning and forever loving the magic that surrounds me and is within me. There is always something to learn … as long as we are paying attention.
Stay objective by looking at your life like a science experiment. Observe your life impersonally in order to see through the layers of emotions and confusions. Seeing with clarity allows you to know what your truth is, and then being able to act from that truth.
Photo Credit: Tony Felgueiras
