Say what now?!
Ha, I love this gif. If I'm being honest, this has been me so many times.
As I've gone through life and contemplated it all through inquiry, I've come to see that most things show up as a paradox. Things that seemingly, as opposites, cannot co-exist.
Like learning how to unlearn.
It took me awhile to integrate this into my understanding of things.
But in this journey we call life, I've learned that paradox is the way of things. It's both/and ... not either/or. Our sweet minds have spent our lives dividing things up into black & white, good & bad, right & wrong as a way of trying to protect us.
Turns out, there's no such things.
And what I love about paradox is the mind can't get its head around that. And that's a good thing. It's like a Zen koan, meant to flummox the mind so that it lets go and .... YOU <insert fireworks> emerge in its wake.
The you that exists beyond concepts of right & wrong, good & bad. Beyond concepts of who you think you are. This is what needs to be unlearned ... all of the false concepts we've adopted in such innocent believing that are now preventing us from living with peace, joy, clarity and with a boundless enthusiasm for -- and faith in -- life!
So, no biggie. That's all we're missing out on in the absence of unlearning our stressful beliefs.
So! ... the foremost thing I can say about unlearning is that it comes down to you. You become the teacher AND the student. As Krishnamurti said, "You need to be a light unto yourself."
And it turns out that we're hard-wired for this. We have been craving this all along, this finding our own wisdom. We just didn't know that it was an option. The mind's default position is, "I can't trust myself. I can't rely on my own perception of things." So we seek out the apparent experts and apparent knowledge to let us know what's what.
And we are left feeling unsatisfied because deep down, we know that we can trust ourselves and that nothing else will be enough.
Learning I think of as something done as a receiver, a beneficiary of someone else's knowledge. With unlearning, however, I think of taking the reigns of this whole learning thing and becoming my own teacher. It turns out that I can ask myself what is true about me, about life, about others ...
In fact, it's the only way. It's the only way to find out.
So, welcome to self-inquiry if it's new to you. (I sometime drop off the "self" and just call it inquiry. Same same, so as not to confuse you.)
Let the UNLEARNING begin! [Use LIGHT30 for $30 off]
All blessings,
Kathryn
P.S. I wanted to send this first blog post out to everyone so that you would get the $30 off coupon. If you wish to continue receiving the blog posts, then simply sign up for my monthly newsletter (you'll receive another coupon when you do which you can keep or re-gift!) and you will get an alert whenever there is a new post (usually once/week). : ) xo
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