Learning How to Learn

I don’t know about you, but I’ve spun my wheels a lot dwelling on stuff without finding a solution, and getting hung up on not knowing the answer.  The worry didn’t help.  I just burned energy going nowhere, because NOT burning energy made me feel like I wasn’t doing anything — even when there was nothing more I could have done.

I’ve read studies on inspiration and the “Eureka!” moments, and the current line of thought is that we don’t get those magic moments by pushing the problem through our head.  We get it when our subconscious has finished mulling it over, and we step back and give it enough space to give us the answer.  That’s why the “Aha!” tends to come not while we’re yelling at the computer, but while washing a glass.  Time spent worrying and struggling actually impeded that process.

I just saw the other day that Sri Aurobindo said, “True knowledge is not attained by thinking. It is what you are; it is what you become.”

I guess the trick is recognizing that point where THINKING about something is getting in the way of PROCESSING something.  Where the pursuit of knowledge actually gets in the way of us truly knowing something.

I think that’s why for a while I’ve been saying that the most important thing to learn is “how to learn”.  I’m still trying to get that right. 🙂

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