LISTEN AND UNLEARN: Life’s Conundrums?

LISTEN AND UNLEARN:  Life’s  Conundrums?

Some of us get woken up by the harsh realities of life.  We suffer so much that we wake up.  But we keep bumping again and again into life. Still, if we haven’t been bumped sufficiently by life, and we haven’t suffered enough, then there is another way: to listen.  I don’t mean we have to agree with what I’m saying.  That wouldn’t be listening. Because agreement and disagreement have to do with words and concepts and theories.  They don’t have anything to do with truth. (“You will ‘know’ the truth”)  Truth is never expressed in words.  So you could be disagreeing with me and still sight the truth.  But we need to have an attitude of openness, of willingness to discover something new. (“But, when the Holy Spirit comes He will lead you into all the truth”) That’s important, not your agreeing or disagreeing with me.  After all, most of what I’m saying are really theories.  No theory adequately covers reality.  So we can speak , not of the truth, but of obstacles to the truth.  Those we can describe.  We cannot describe the truth.  No one can.  All we can do is give a description of falsehoods, so that we can drop them.  All we can do  is challenge our beliefs and the belief system that makes us unhappy.  All we can do is help unlearn.  That’s what learning is all about where spirituality is concerned: unlearning, Unlearning almost everything we’ve been taught.  A willingness to unlearn ,to listen.

     Are we listening, as most people do, in order to confirm what we already think? Lets Observe  our reactions.  Frequently we’ll be startled or shocked or scandalized or irritated or annoyed or frustrated.  Or we’ll be saying, “Great!”

      But are we listening for what will confirm what we already think?  Or are we listening in order to discover something new?  Jesus proclaimed the good news yet he was rejected.  Not because it was not good, but because it was new.  We hate the new.  We hate it!  And the sooner we face up to that fact, the better.  We don’t want new things, particularly when they’re disturbing, particularly when they involve change.  Most particularly if it involves saying, “I was wrong.”  I remember meeting an eighty-seven-year-old.  And he attended a workshop like this.  “I should have heard this sixty years ago,” he said. “You know something.  I’ve been wrong all my life.”  God, to hear that!. That, ladies and gentlemen, is faith!  An openness to the truth, no matter what the consequences, no matter where it leads and you don’t even know where it’s going to lead you. (“You will know the truth and the truth will set you free”)  That’s faith.  Not belief, but faith.( the things hoped for, things not yet seen)   Our beliefs give us a lot of security, but faith is insecurity.  We don’t know.  We’re ready to follow and we’re open, we’re wide open! (The Disciples, Zacheus, Matthew –tax collector..)  we’re ready to listen.  And, mind you, being open does not mean being gullible, it doesn’t mean swallowing whatever the speaker is saying.  Oh no. (‘The Pharesees and Scribes have taken the keys of knowledge and hidden it. They have not entered nor have they allowed those who want to enter, to do so’) You’ve got to challenge everything I’m saying. (Put on the filters of the Holy Spirit) But challenge it from an attitude of openness, not from an attitude of stubbornness. And challenge it all, everything.  Recall those lovely words of Buddha when he said, “Monks and scholars must not accept my words out of respect, but must analyze them the way of goldsmith analyzes gold—by cutting, scraping, rubbing, melting.” 

     When we do that, we’re listening.  we’ve taken another major step toward awakening.  The first step, as I said, was a readiness to admit that we don’t want to wake up, that we don’t want to be happy.  There are all kinds of resistances to that within us.  The second step is a readiness to understand, to listen, to challenge our whole belief system.  Not just your religious beliefs, our political beliefs, our social beliefs, our psychological beliefs, but all of them.  A  readiness to reappraise them all.(“Speak Lord, for your servant hears”) And you’ll have plenty of opportunity to do that.

Read it once, twice, more if needed to understand the essence of whats being said. You can then apply it to yourself. Create your own Identity! Be Uniquely You. 

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