Till now I used to say ‘Learning is important but unlearning is equally important’. We must unlearn those things which have become irrelevant or have lost their significance in the current time.
Recent realisation further fine tunes the understanding. How learning happens in the first place! We observe, analyse, customise the information based on our past understanding and experience; then we conclude or form opinions. If we can imagine this conclusion or opinion as a crystal, this crystal occupies space in our mind. Now that’s the start of the problem or suffering because we become fixated with our crystals. These crystals are our creations, we own them, we love them. So when a new experience or a person comes up with his crystals, there are two possibilities; first, our crystals might jell with each other and even grow bigger in each other’s mind; two, these crystals might clash. In each case, we think we are jelling or clashing but in reality its our crystals which are doing it. Since we identify with our crystals, we mistakenly take it as our own self, the outcome is feeling good or suffering.
Now, why we adults suffer whereas children (up to the age 4-5) normally remain happy. Children remain in present, they don’t revisit the past. Suppose her toy gets broken and the child cries but if you distract her by saying, okay let’s go for a drive, she will stop crying and would start enjoying the next activity. The same doesn’t happen with adults. This is because adults identify with their crystals. They believe in that and can even fight to prove that their crystals are better than others’ crystals. They believe their thoughts as truth whereas children don’t think this way. Children are open to modification and learning. The baggage of learning is for adults.
Then probably not creating crystals in the first place is a far better way than unlearning. This will depend on our relationship with self. Now relationship with self means relationship with our thoughts and thinking process. If we understand that our thoughts are a product of different type of conditionings in our life, we would be able to loosen up a bit as our thoughts can’t be universal truths. So we can observe, analyse and customise according to the need and move on. We can use the information of mind as a pool to form an opinion or conclusion (a temporary crystal) but dissolve it back as soon as the situation is over; no need to stay with it. Let it be a kind of functional relationship only. I call it ‘Law of Functionality’. Our relationship with things, persons and situations or circumstances should be based on this law. No fixation with anything/anyone and no judgements. This way we can take the same person as a new one every time or experience every situation in a novel way every time. Or every morning when we get up from bed, we can say hello to a new us.
Let there be a fluid state always as life itself is a flow.
