Developing the Attitude of Learning

Posted on by Sen.



Your attitude towards life decides your experience of it. The attitude of looking to “learn” is the most powerful attitude to carry since it allows for an inherently positive experience of life. For example, when you are in a seemingly negative life situation, if your attitude is to just complain, and feel frustrated, you will never allow yourself to really get a sense of the learning that this situation is trying to provide you – and when you don’t “learn”, what needs to be learnt, you just keep repeating the same life situation again and again until you finally learn, after which a new reality can come through. If you see yourself repeating the past negatives constantly (like living the same negative experiences in new faces) it just means you are not “learning” and hence there is no positive growth in your reality.

The simple way life works is that when you’ve really learnt everything that you need to learn from a present reality, you become ready to move to a new/expanded reality. Until then you mostly just keep repeating the same patterns, and life feels as if its gotten stuck on a tune. The immediate reaction people have when they are in a negative situation is to complain, fret and be frustrated, rather than having the attitude of allowing what arises and bringing awareness to their inner space to get a sense of the negative patterns within them that this reality is reflecting – such an attitude is a complete shift in paradigm from the old attitude of fretting about a negative reality.

When you just sit complaining about a negative reality you are inherently focused on the negativity and hence keep perpetuating it – this allows no room for growth or improvement to come in, or allows it very slowly. Instead, if you simply look to learn from every situation, to look within and identify the negative patterns that your present situation is helping reflect (which is what awareness is), you keep letting go of inner resistances steadily, and thus moving out of contrasting/negative realities more swiftly.

Be the change you want

Reality always manifests from inside to outside – the inside is what creates the outside, or rather it’s our inner vibration that attracts our external reality. So if you want a change in your reality, guess what needs to change first? – your inner space. By this “inner change” I don’t mean you need to change who you naturally are, rather you need to change your maturity level, expand your outlook, let go of inner resistances and deepen your understanding. Your natural makeup is your uniqueness, and it’s something you need to align with, but your maturity level and your learning can keep deepening eternally – in your physical life, you will never reach a point where you have nothing to learn, if you think you’ve reached such a point, you are basically living in denial.

When you know that physical life is an eternal movement of learning, why would you feel that you are stuck in a negative reality, instead of seeing it as a platform for learning and growing as a person? Instead of the attitude of “why is life doing this to me” develop the attitude of “what is the learning this situation is giving me” – in this way you won’t be wallowing in self-pity and would thus not keep perpetuating a negative life situation for long, you will learn, grow and move on to an improved reality. Worrying, blaming, complaining and fretting serves absolutely no useful purpose, instead it does the opposite by creating more resistance – it’s just a waste of energy when you indulge in any of these behaviors. If you want change, look within and change the aspects in you that have attracted your current reality – it’s always about bringing awareness to an inner negativity and thus letting go of it.

Use your awareness for faster learning

A lot of people ask about how to let go of negativity after bringing awareness to it – if you notice, this is an inherently illogical question, it’s like asking how to stop eating bad food when you’ve become aware that it’s bad – well, you just stop feeding it to yourself, it’s not a technique it’s just the normal thing to do. When you become aware of something negative you automatically stop fueling it. Of course, it takes time before the negativity can die away, because it has a lot of past momentum, so you have to allow time for it to dissolve – instead of constantly worrying about when it will dissolve. The fact that you’ve become aware of a negativity is enough for it to dissolve, so your job is to just “learn” by bringing awareness to your resistances, and the growth will happen on its own. Negativity, that you have been carrying for years, needs time to dissolve even after you let go of it – it’s pure physics that a object which is already in motion requires time to stop even if you are not fueling it, it will move on its past momentum for a while.

The power of your awareness keeps growing when your attitude is to look within to detect the patterns of resistance/fears and negativity in your inner space. You can’t achieve a strong awareness overnight, it takes time. It’s like when you wake up from sleep in the morning, it takes time to feel fully awake – so again you need to allow for this time instead of constantly fretting about it. Of course, the fretting happens when one is highly irritated with the present reality and wants out, but this fretting inherently is delaying the change. If fretting is happening from the past momentum of the mind, just let it be, don’t try to suppress it and don’t give belief to it either, just allow it to dissolve by staying in an open awareness. When you know fretting serves no purpose, you will no longer fuel this behavior in you.

When you’ve learnt what needs to be learnt from your present reality, you automatically move into a better reality (the one without the negative elements of the old reality). Life is an eternal growth of course, so don’t imagine that you will ever reach a reality where you would have nothing to learn – the deal is to keep moving forward rather than be stuck, because it’s the stuckness that feels depressing. Movement forward always feel exhilarating because you keep staying in sync with your life-stream’s pull and hence will feel less resistance in you. The attitude of learning ensures that you never get stuck and thus live out your potential to the max.


14 Comments

  1. robert

    Sen, amazing article. I have a question for you that I have been curious about.
    Is hearing too much music bad. I sometimes spend almost half my day if not more listening to music. Sometimes it gets me very worked up. Do you know if listening to music too much has any bad effects like maybe making you more anxious and restless throughout the day?

    I would really like to know, thanks.

    1. Sen Post author

      Robert, its fine to enjoy the various forms of entertainment available to us in this world, the only problem is when they become a means through which we try to run away from ourselves, using entertainment as a form of distraction to keep from facing the negativity within – that’s when entertainment becomes a form of escape, and thus an addiction. The simple question you need to ask yourself is are you okay to be without music? When there is no music do you feel restless, agitated and frustrated? If you had to sit in a room without music for a day, how uneasy would you feel?
      Music can easily be a means through which you may be distracting yourself from sensing the agitation within. When you are free of your inner agitation, you won’t be using music as means of distraction but mostly as a means to savor/appreciate your physical existence.

  2. Treeter

    Great question Robert been wondering the same thing!
    And Sen thanks again for helping us all learn!!

  3. Eternus

    You’ve no idea how much all this has helped, and continues to help me in my current situation. I am continuing to feel the light of my awareness shine through, and I believe it’s only a matter of time before negativity dissolves (although it’s not something I’m “waiting” for). You can accept, and learn from any situation life throws at you. It’s just a case of allowing it to happen. 🙂

  4. gary guthrie

    Simply amazing…and what a timely manner this has been available for me to read. Your a blessing Sen

    Carpe Diem

    Everything is great. Life is as it is….

    GBG

  5. Anu

    Simply Stupendous. There was a time in my life, no more than 6 weeks ago, I used to look for “techniques” on how to stop doing “unwanted” behavior. Obviously, the techniques “never” worked and I kept searching….it was like a mirage.

    Beautiful article on how desirable “change” amd how “illogical” questions on how to not do undesirable behavior when one becomes aware of it.

    Sen – you are a very wise man…..thanks for helping us all out

  6. Sharon

    Hello Sen 🙂

    I just having a question re your sentence about not needing to ‘change who you naturally are’. How do we know who we naturally are, underneath the ego? Are we all meant to be the same seeing as though we are all expressions of love? I am asking this as I have issues occasionally with my husband and with myself over my personality. I can be quite grumpy but also very happy and I feel like my ‘natural’ self is somewhere in the middle, calm but almost kind of boring in a way. But my husband often thinks that I am being ‘grumpy’ if im not being ‘happy’. He sees the happy mood as the best me but I disagree and just see it as another mood is all. But on saying that I feel as though I should be happier, more joyful. Is that who we naturally are under the ego? Or can who we naturally are be someone who isnt outwardly ‘happy’ as in outgoing and laughs a lot etc etc. I grew up with a lot of abuse and feel that this upbringing is why im not as joyful or happy as others. Even though I have come leaps and bounds with self realisation lately in that I have grown in understanding of myself and maturity and let go of a lot of resistance, it hasnt outwardly changed my personality much, only my feeling of peace and acceptance on the inside. If anything I feel a lot calmer most of the time and not ‘happy’. Do you believe that the personality changes as you let go of more and more resistance? Even though I am quite content with who I am now and who am I becoming, it is true that I would like to have a happier more carefree and outgoing personality (and I do feel that that is the real me underneath). But like you said you cant force things and I cant force myself to be more outgoing etc but you also say to be the change you want. Or is all of this wanting to improve my personality just based in ego anyway?? Gosh I hope this actually makes sense it is hard for me to describe.
    Looking forward to hearing your thoughts!
    Thank you so much in advance for taking the time to help,
    Sharon

    1. Sen Post author

      Sharon, what I’ve noticed is that a lot of changes do happen to your personality, along with your state of mind (what your mind is driven by also starts shifting as discussed in this post – what are you driven by?). Even while writing this post I was quite certain that the mind’s core personality is not going to change during this process, I found out “recently” that I was wrong – it’s a learning for me. The fact is that the mind’s personality is bound to change as it comes into a deeper awareness and alignment. To me, now, this pointer of not needing to “change who you naturally are” is totally redundant because who you naturally are keeps changing as you evolve in maturity and awareness. I guess a better pointer is to not “try” to change yourself from force, and allow change to happen – trying to change yourself can create a resistance by the feeling of hatred that’s spawned by this effort. You will definitely notice yourself coming out the “grumpy” nature, or even the subdued nature, more and more, and be more vibrant in your being, especially since this is the yearning in your heart as it were. This change need not be forced, don’t try to be the “happy” person from a place of effort, allow the inner transformation to happen on its own simply by resting in your space of being – the state of total allowing/release. You just inevitably come to a place of being driven by love, which obviously changes your personality a great deal. Now, this is a realization I had quite recently, because before I was quite sure that my mind’s personality is not going to change, and I saw some huge changes over a small period of time. In fact there are quite a few older posts where I talk about the fact that it’s not possible for your mind’s personality to change, so I would have to spend time deleting or changing those posts. This is one reason I prefer writing a blog more than book because it allows you to keep updating your upgrades.

  7. awan

    Hi Sen,

    Bow from Netherlands to you. It’s a great writing you put here.

    What do you think with personal development in related with your point of view: awareness?

    I mean, as a business person one must have target for an achievement.

    He/she should define the goal of the organization and also for each employee.

    If the manager just let a bad employee do whatever they want, how the company can be succeed?

    What is getting better naturally in the term of economic world as today?

    Can organization awareness lead to success of the organization?

    1. Sen Post author

      awan, awareness allows you to be in touch with your inner wisdom/guidance thus naturally allowing for personal growth in the form of achievement through creative contribution, in a manner that feel aligned with who you are without requiring a struggle created by disconnected living.

  8. Sharon

    Thank you so much! I’m looking forward to watching how my mind will grow and change! Glad to hear that your still learning too, makes the whole process seem more human and attainable 🙂

  9. Tibrahi

    Sen,

    In addition to Sharon’s question and your response. The previous blog post “The Core Personality of your Mind” deals a great deal with explaining how the personality of our mind is not going to change and it is “Hard-wired”. And the recent realization that the personality can indeed change, has caused some confusion.

    As I have progressed with this process, I have noticed my more natural personality to come out around people (and my grumpy, judgmental, sarcastic, pessimistic personality has fade) and I have shown more of my light and dark nature as before I wouldn’t allow to use around others due to fear (which I also think brought out more of my natural personality or as commonly put “being yourself). Was this an actual change in my personality, or was this just me allowing my natural personality to come about? Also, the actual “core” personality of the mind does it change, or do you come more into alignment with your personality and then the personality deepens and matures in a similar direction. And also, can the dimensions in each individual’s mind change and we can have new dominant dimensions in our mind, or do they just come out of imbalance as we begin to reduce unnecessary momentum and align with ourselves.

    Example: Can someone whose dominant dimension is in fear get rewired to have a dominant dimension of joy, or do these dimensions mature? (I forget actually if it has been said if the dominant dimension is hard-wired or not).

    Finally, how does the personality (and do the dimensions of the mind have to deal with personality?) change as awareness, alignment, and life experiences happen and what causes this change? I have seen that some parts of peoples personality have changed as they have grown and some have remained consistent through-out their lives.

    Thanks

    1. Sen Post author

      Tibrahi, why is it important to “know” what your natural personality is – instead of just living it and growing towards evolving it in a manner that’s aligned with the expression you desire. If you enjoy your personality it’s an indication that it’s aligned with your sense of your “ideal self” and if there are aspects about your personality that you don’t enjoy and desire a different expression, you have the freedom to “transform” it through the state of allowing, by letting your life-stream re-program your brain (even genetically) towards it. The pointer that “the core personality of your mind is hard-wired and can’t be changed” is a very limiting statement to make, and it can create a sense of limitation in you – and I would be doing a disservice if I end up giving a limiting belief to someone. Personal experiences shows me that it’s possible to change traits of your mind that you thought were part of your core personality, these traits change when you desire them to change and then allow yourself to rest in the space of being, letting the intelligence of your life-stream touch these aspects in your mind. In fact, if such a transformation was not possible we wouldn’t evolve genetically and that’s a huge limitation on our power of free-will. Neither is it important to worry, or analyse, what your dominant dimensions are – in the state of balance, it has no value. Your job would be to sense if you feel any aspects of you need to change, or balance out, and then allow it happen – your choice towards transformation is critical towards allowing the transformation. If you believe you can’t change an aspect about you, then you can’t change it – but when you a make choice to allow it to happen, it will happen that way. Your life-stream has infinite intelligence and it can bring about any transformation that you desire.

  10. Tibrahi

    Thank you for the response Sen

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