Learning
"Know the mind to use the mind efficiently"
Introduction
Defining Learning
In this article, we will explore how the mind processes information so that one can understand how learning happens in the mind in general and on the journey of Self-Transformation.
Learning In Depth
Limits Of The Mind
The mind can only handle so much information at once.
For instance, it may be perfectly fine for one to hold a conversation with someone, but how about holding two at a time?
Although the mind is infinite potential, there is a limit to how much information the brain can process at any one time. When one is not aware of one’s limits, one can overwork the brain, making it inefficient.
To understand this from another perspective, one can analogize the processing power of the brain to that of a computer. A computer has only so many resources to process any given data at any one time. And when the demands exceed its resources, problems can result. For instance, if a computer only has enough resources to play one movie file, then playing two movies files at once will lead to undesirable outcomes: stuttering images, overheating—the computer may even give up and shut down! Likewise, when we demand more than our brain can handle, it can lead to confusion, lack of understanding, and even headaches if not mental shutdowns!
So, if one wishes to use their brain efficiently—whether it is to solve a problem, to do creative work, to study, learn, and so forth—one must develop an awareness of their limitations. Developing this awareness will help one to know just how much information their mind can actually handle and how to manage their learning before the mind is driven to inefficiency.
Becoming aware of how much one can handle
The practice of meditation can help one to become aware of how much information one's mind can handle. Through the practice, one will be able to become ever more aware of how the mind is feeling at any given moment, thus, allowing one to notice moments of stress and confusion, which are signs of the mind being pushed towards its limits.
One can also develop an awareness of how well one's brain is processing a given piece of information. The following are some questions that one can ask oneself to make the assessment.
“Do I really understand this information or am I just memorizing it?
“Are there things that I don’t understand?”
“How well can I relate to the information?”
“How well can I recall the information?”
Asking these questions can help one to assess how well the mind has digested and processed any information.
Developing this awareness is important because one can then identify the parts of the information that one does not know well and work on clearing any lack of understanding in those areas. It’s important to always clear any unresolved questions of the mind because one’s mental resources will always gravitate towards them until they are finally resolved.
So, for example, if one is learning about something new, for example, the concept of investment banking, one can identify which parts of that concept one has not yet fully grasped and work on them until it’s fully known. To pile information into one's mind when there are still confusions will only cause inefficiency in one's learning.
This is how one can learn efficiently—to work on the unresolved confusions so that one’s mental resources can be freed from dwelling on them and be used for other things.
Habit Patterns Of Inefficiencies
Thus, the efficient way of learning is to spend time with what you are learning until it’s fully known rather than trying to learn more things when there are still unresolved confusions.
However, in life, one can develop a habit of using their mind inefficiently and there can be many reasons for this.
For instance, one may lack the patience, attention span, or passion in whatever subject they are learning and thus rushes through the learning process.
One may even be too lazy to search for answers or too afraid to ask questions, thereby causing more layers of confusion to be piled within one's mind.
Here are some tips for one to develop a healthier habit of using one’s mind more efficiently.
1. Be constantly aware of what you do not know well and work to clear any confusion before feeding your mind further information.
2. Learn to ask questions about things that you are unclear about.
3. Learn to be patient, taking time to seek answers to things you do not know.
The more one improves their habit of learning, the easier their life will become. It’s like starting work at a company. When you try to do a new task that you do not know well, the more your mental resources will be spent on dwelling on the unresolved questions rather than on completing the task. And without sorting out the unresolved questions, you’ll just get a headache every time you do that task, leading to an unenjoyable experience.
However, if you just take your time to identify and work on what information you need to clear up, a lot of your mental resources can then be freed up for doing other things. So, instead of spending months or years struggling to do something that you find difficult, just spend some time to identify what you need to know more so that the difficulty can disappear.
So, in life, if you find yourself experiencing difficulties in doing a particular thing or if you find yourself unable to grasp a particular concept or if you find yourself unable to improve in a particular area, what you can do is to spend time identifying what you are actually confused about or need to know more of.
An example:
If you are a composer that is always struggling to compose, you can identify what your weaknesses are and work on those. You can ask yourself: “Do I know enough about the theory of harmony?” “Do I know enough about constructing a melody?” “Do I know enough about rhythm?” Becoming aware of what your mind is always spending its resources on, i.e. what you are always struggling with, will help you to identify the areas of confusion that you can resolve to improve your creative process.
Another example:
If you are a person who struggles a lot at expressing your opinions to others, you can take time to identify the confusions that may be happening in your mind. These may be areas about grammar, sentence constructions, ways of using body language, tones of your voice, simplifying complicated concepts—it can even be the lack of awareness of one’s internal thoughts, and so forth. Addressing the areas of Self-Expression that you are unfamiliar with will help to free up the mind from using up its resources on dwelling on confusions so that you can use your mind fully on expressing yourself properly.
So, if you desire to use your mind to learn efficiently, learn to use your mental resources wisely. Instead of letting all your mental resources go to waste on dwelling on half-learnt things, complete what you need to learn so that the mind can work without any confusion.
Path Of Creator
Learning Process on the journey of Self-Transformation
On the journey of Self-Transformation, the goal is to learn more about oneself. This is how one can properly address their sufferings—i.e. their fears, anger, judgement, unhappiness, and so forth.
How does developing Self-Knowing solve one's Sufferings?
One experiences suffering because one has not yet learnt enough about oneself; if one had always been fully aware of the cause of their sufferings, one would have avoided such undesirable sufferings. So, from this perspective, the suffering states of the mind simply signify that there is a lack of Self-Knowing.
See Catalyst - Knowing in detail.
Therefore, the solution to one’s suffering is to learn more and more about oneself—to learn more about one’s fears, one’s anger issues, one’s limitations, one’s attachments, negativities, and so forth—and these are called the darker states of the mind because they represent the parts of oneself that one has not yet fully known.
For learning of The Self to take place, one must learn to still their mind. The best practice for stilling the mind is of course the practice of meditation. It’s important to practice meditation if one desires to know more about themselves because without stillness, it would be difficult for learning to take place.
Remember how we explored that the mind can only handle so much information at once—that when there’s too much information to be had for the brain, then there would little resource left for the brain to do anything else. So, imagine a scenario where you are experiencing a suffering state of mind, for example anger. When anger arises, many things can be happening at the same time, for instance, there can be different kinds of negative sensations, punitive thoughts, and painful emotions arising within. Without Stillness, one’s brain will simply be overwhelmed with the information that is gushing through one's experience. When the amount of information is more than one’s brain can handle, then confusions are bound to arise, erasing all opportunity for one to learn about the experience.
That is why it’s important to practice meditation. Practising meditation will help one learn to Still one’s mind so that one can clear the excesses of the mind through stillness. With a still state of mind, one will then have the capacity to learn about the nature of one's experience even more. Without developing Stillness, one will simply be constantly overwhelmed by one’s suffering experiences and never learn anything new but to repeat the same habit patterns, i.e. of blaming, judging, reacting, and so forth.
Journey of Self-Knowing.
As you develop Self-Knowing, you will always realize new things about yourself.
To understand this, let us use the analogy of a child learning how to read.
When a child begins learning how to read, much of their mental resources will be spent on how to associate different sounds with the right words. And with time, as the child practices sound-word association again and again, making mistakes along the way, the child will gradually internalize more and more of what they need to know in order to read the words. During this time, because much of the child's mental resources would be spent on associating words with sounds, the child may read words out loud but not understand what they mean. It’s only when the child has fully known the sounds of each word that they can start to notice other things, such as their meanings. And like this, as the child completes the knowing of what they are learning, the more they can notice and learn new thinsg, such as inflexion, grammar, sentence structures, and so forth.
In short, this analogy is to simply illustrate the point that if one has not yet fully known what they are learning—i.e. unresolved questions—then one's confusions can hold one back from noticing or even learning new things.
On the journey of Self-Knowing, as you come to know a part of yourself more and more, you will naturally begin to notice other parts of yourself. Perhaps in developing Self-Awareness, you will become aware of the moments that you are reacting negatively. And after developing this awareness so well to the point where it is no longer taking up your mental resources, you will then start to become aware of the beliefs that caused such negative reactions. And then you can become aware of the beliefs that are generating your miseries effortlessly, then you may start to see the solutions to them. Like this, the more you know about yourself, the more you will free up the mind to notice and learn something new.
So, this is just a great generalization to help you understand how Self-Knowing is a journey of gradual unfolding, where one piece of the puzzle must be found and known before one can discover another.
That is why there’s really no shortcut to Self-Knowing. To rush through Self-Knowing can thus be meaningless and even cause inefficiencies.
Like mentioned before, the mind can only handle so much information at once, so the best way to develop Self-Knowing is to simply practise meditation to develop the Stillness of the mind so that one can learn about oneself in every moment of one's experience, for every life experience will always reveal to one valuable information about themselves.
Transform the Suffering states of mind to improve the mind
Up until now, we have explored how the mind can only process information properly when it has enough resources to do so.
And as one develops Self-Awareness, one will slowly realize just how much one’s mental resources are always being consumed by the things going on at the back of one’s mind. This becomes clearly apparent as one closes their eyes to look into one’s inner world through the practice of meditation. In no time, as one tries to maintain Stillness in the practice, one will start to uncover all the chaos that is happening within: the sensations that are constantly happening in one’s body, the wandering emotions, the ceaseless thoughts, and so forth. Sometimes the amount of information that one gains from peering inwards can be so overwhelming and confusing that one’s mind can feel like giving up the practice.
So, it’s only when one looks into oneself that one can discover that one has not been using their mind efficiently, that one is always dwelling on some issues waiting to be resolved. What one will discover is that these will always be about one’s sufferings, i.e. worries, fears, anger, judgement, jealousy, and so forth.
That is why working on the suffering states of mind can help one immensely in not only elevating the quality of their experiences in life but also improve their mind’s ability to learn and be creative.
In short, when the mind is absolutely Still, then its ability to process information will be at its finest.
Develop Stillness will help you to learn and develop great wisdom from your life experiences, for life experiences will always reflect back at you information about yourself. You can always know more about yourself through your experiences by learning from the reactions, thoughts, and emotions that are happening within yourself. Without developing Stillness, one will simply be overwhelmed by the information pouring through. With Stillness, one will discover the learnings to be had from their life experiences.
Know and Transform The Self!
Reading articles helps with understanding, but to transform the mind, one realizes the truth from experience.
For such an enlightening journey, the Self-Transformation Course has everything you will ever need!
