Overcoming Learning Blocks

Editor's Note: there is no more beautiful example of patience and understanding than that of Ann Sullivan who was the devoted teacher of Helen Keller. Blind and deaf, Helen awoke to a love of learning, discovery, and God, with the help of Ann Sullivan. Helen Keller became a world famous ambassador of good will. The picture is a recently discovered rare photo of Ann Sullivan, and a young Helen Keller with her doll. Notice the loving devotion and concern in Ann Sullivan's face.

When we exercise will, it is usually when we have been tempted to act ambitiously and emotionally. For example, we are often tempted to study. Learning is supposed to be fun. Reading is fun and effortless. But ambitious people without understanding have gotten hold of the education matrix. They pressure, goad, challenge or seduce us into applying effort to study. In essence, they are tempting us to reach for knowledge ambitiously.

This is precisely what happened in the Garden of Eden. Adam was not content with intuition, he wanted knowledge. So he reached ambitiously for knowledge. He then did, indeed, know good from evil, but he was cut adrift from the way of faith, of effortless discovery.

There is a big difference between learning through a discovery process, which is fun, timely, innocent, and effortless; and studying ambitiously to please teacher, get a reward, or out of responding to pressure tactics. The first is guilt free; the second makes us guilty. Unfortunately, most of us are tempted away from our first estate. We are emotionalized and thrown into fantasy and worry. We are teased and made angry and resentful. We are cut off from our delicate link to intuition by having been emotionalized and thrown into thinking and imagination.

Cut off, we look for an anchor for support, for guidance. And so we naturally turn to the very ones who upset us and tempted us from intuition in the first place. So we turn to the authorities who teased and challenged us, who threatened us, who bribed us, and who tempted us to perform for their approval. When we do, we get the brownie button of approval.

Some of us then become apple polishers for approval. Soon the knowledge we were tempted to study takes over as our motivator. Along with the grades, and the perks. Some become permanent students, sitting in dusty classrooms into their 20’s or 30’s. Others become the characterless ambitious ones who become pressuring, seducing, doting educators themselves or who become the kind of heartless achievers who do anything for the bottom line.

Others are not beholden by any particular type of authority. Instead they bow and scrape and people please everyone. Any person becomes the stress that they perform for and look for approval from.

Others rebel against forced education and become drop outs. They develop blocks against the pressure learning. They hate the system and they become the revolutionaries, the gang members, anarchists, or the pot smoking drop outs who find their own low life authorities to conform to.

So you see, pressure education gets to almost everyone: some via the conformity route, others through resentment and rebellion. Some of the resentful rebels become so guilty for their resentment that they eventually come back and serve the ones they hated to take away the guilt.

It is our motivation, the energy with which we move, and the source of our direction that I am writing about in this article. The right way, the guiltless way and the conflict free way to live and move and have our being is to desire to do what is right, pay attention to our God given intuition, wait for the wind of the spirit, and move in our own time and space.

The way that most of us act is just the opposite. We get lost in thinking and emotion, we react to something on the outside, become emotional and confused, and then move under outside direction. Can you see that when our action is motivated by a reaction to outside stimulus, the energy for our action is ambition, excitement, fear or anger?

If you pay attention to wordless intuition and then move unemotionally, you will be in accord with what is right, just and fair. But when we set aside what is right, sensible, or fair because of selfish advantage or face saving, then we take our direction from outside temptation.For example, if there is an opportunity to take advantage of someone, and you are excited by it, and you then move emotionally and excitedly, you will become guilty before conscience. You will have done wrong; you will have sinned in other words.

The above example is clear and easy to understand. But the fact that moving excitedly toward any goal (given you by another) will also make us guilty (and will have a different outcome than if you had moved intuitively) is missed by most people.
Here’s a classic example. There is a big difference between helping someone because you see a need and moving out of the goodness of your heart; and, on the other hand, giving because you feel obligated to or because you are guilty over resentment for being asked.

Remember what Christ said. He said: "Let not your right hand know what your left hand is doing." So when you give, help, or do anything, let it be simply because you want to do what is right. Some people are grace robbers: they tell you what to do before you have a chance to do it naturally out of the goodness of your heart. If they manage to change your motivation, then you will feel guilty, even though you did the technically correct thing.

Can you now see why pressure education is so deadly? Learning is supposed to be a discovery process. Learning should be timely, not too soon or too late. Kids love to learn, and when something is interesting to them, they learn at lightning speed.
But the educational matrix has gotten its hands on education. It pressures, bribes, motivates, challenges, rewards, punishes and makes everything externally based.

Can you see that if an educator tries to make something interesting, they are seeking to motivate and to excite externally? Can you now see why there are so many drop outs and kids who can hardly read when they graduate? The manipulative pressure and seductive tactics of educators without understanding only set up road blocks and learning blocks to learning.

Einstein did not do well in school. He ended up succeeding not because of school, but in spite of school. You cannot study your way to become an inventor, discoverer or entrepreneur. Nor can you study your way to God. All the great explorers, inventors, business people, and mystics have always followed their intuition.

This does not mean that a person can’t take a class or read a book. But let the gathering of knowledge flow from intuition, interest and a need. Let the learning be timely and be in accord with intuition’s timing, not according to another’s schedule. And let there be patience and love, not hype and pressure.

Recovery from any block involves seeing the resentment that underlies it and then giving up that resentment. The person must also learn how to relate back to intuition and learn how to flow from intuition. When learning is timely and relevant, and is an extension of what we intuitively are interested in, it becomes effortless.