Learning from Everything

Life is very instructive: too bad too many don't attend to the wisdom of their own lives -- for that is real intelligence, and not simply a trick to make others think so.  By that measure, we call "intelligence," but is nowhere close to being all that can be known -- at all times.  The mind that is completely open to all the intelligence around them, is letting the intelligence of all humanity guide them -- rather than thinking they alone can reinvent the wheel, in everything they do.  That is not likely to be an efficient way of living -- even for the most intelligent among us.

Instead, what one must be able to do, is assess and absorb the intelligence of all those around us -- who may know more than we do -- about that particular thing.  That implies knowing which to trust, and which to overlook, in providing that information.  Often, there are ulterior motives for providing that information -- often for self-serving purposes.  You only hear what is advantageous for them -- and not that that information can be beneficial to oneself.  In fact, it could even be detrimental to one's health and well-being -- but that is also what one can learn.

The good, the bad, and the ugly.  One merely accepts and takes in that information -- before deciding that nothing is going according to plan.  If one is paying attention, it could lead to a new beginning -- of everything they know.  And that is a good thing -- rather than a bad thing, because it is easier to relearn everything, than to just change one thing.  Then, one has to change every bit, as though it is unrelated to every other thing -- until one makes those adjustments.  But if they're learning everything with a fresh mind, one doesn't have to do those infinite adjustments -- the world is born wholly new, in a higher understanding.  

And that is what it is most difficult to learn -- that everything one knows, is not perfect knowledge, but some corruption of it.   It probably is an imperfect understanding of reality.  And so one is always finding out -- whether that knowledge, actually represents reality -- or whether they should find out directly by engaging it.  In that latter mode, one will learn more than they realized was possible.  Every moment has that significance -- in going many ways.  They are pregnant with the many possibilities.

A rare few make the best of them.  Most fritter away unlimited opportunities -- never making the best of any.  So the trick is -- how to make the best of anything?  That requires learning from everything -- from moment to moment, and the situation is always fluid, always in flux.  If it is knowledge of 50 years ago, the world has changed several times over since then.

There is no knowledge for all time -- and forever after.  Always, something new is coming into being, and something old is leaving -- and so the world is ever changing.  That need not be disruptive or ruinous, but simply the truth of the moment -- which too will change in time.  Only the mind attempts to make it a permanent thing, and life is not that way.  It is a flow of one reality to the next.  Everyone comes to realize that what was true when they were 20, is not the truth for when they are 60, and when they are 100, truth is what they make of it each day -- and only those who do, continue on for another.  But that is fair enough -- they've had more than their fair share of time, to do with it as they will.

What lies beyond that, is anybody's guess.