The Knowledge-Practice Meditation

   Knowledge begins with belief.  Education and communication are both processes.  There is an attainment, and a follow-through.  Or maybe there is a loss, and then an attempt to regain what has been lost.  Someone said, "wisdom is not about discovery.  It is a recovery: of what by rights originally existed." And this sounds mystical, and as many things that are mystical do their best to GIVE, freely, to anyone who wants to learn -- it is quite accessible.  Love is where we all come from, and ideally it is where we return to - but much different.  Being fully supported as a newly forming being, you were promised everything.  You were promised everything under the sun, all in good time.  And you loved exactly what you were given in that long moment, that you must have said or expressed something like, "oh my goodness, no, this is all that I need.  This IS everything.  Right here, right now.  I am loved.  I am happy."

Wisdom is alive in the recovery of this feeling.  The knowledge of abundance, and the admission of attainment.

    As a person grows and develops, wants and needs start to expand this timeframe.  But what was originally enjoyable never leaves.  You just learn to manage it differently.  You create for yourself systems... of reward or bypass... whereby you can deposit meaning into those experiences.  Now there is not only enjoyment, but progress, growth, skill, refinement.  It is all for the purpose of making things even more enjoyable, ultimately, although going through phases of not-enjoying is sometimes necessary to get to the time when you enjoy more.  For example, if you have to study hard for a test, you might not like cramming that knowledge into your poor brain.  But later on, you may thank yourself for having those materials to choose from.

    But why is so much knowledge institutionalized in such a way that learning becomes something the average person avoids, in exchange for entertainment or "fun."  Isn't learning fun?  (that's not meant to be a sarcastic joke.)  Again, seriously, isn't the process of becoming... well for example not just a bigger and thicker dictionary of over-complication, but gaining in refinement (perhaps eliminating myths, and arriving at more potent truths) -- isn't that fun?  It is fun to enjoy the fruits of that essential love that has been invested in you... and perhaps that is the core of all enjoyment that you experience.  If and when you are so rewarded.  And why not?!  If you have reached some holding momentum in your quest toward consistent and continuous enjoyment... perhaps such rewards are relatively frequent and even reliable.  But remember, some of the more dramatic attainments of truth, skill & enjoyment... sometimes they follow a phase of deliberate difficulty.  This makes sense; doing something the first time tends to be the hardest.  But it can also be the most rewarding.  As you yourself grow in skill and reliability, you get better at something.  It becomes more enjoyable.

    It seems as though formalized education is just a generous half of the puzzle piece.  The other half is in practicing the knowledge that you have learned.  In other words, there should really be an extra class of demonstration, integration, sharing and creativity - for every single class of just plain knowledge "download."  The question arises for anyone who is genuinely enjoying their brand new idea-prize; what do I do with all of this stuff?  How do I take this thing that they are calling "knowledge" out for a joyride?  (pound pound pound why does this not exist.)

    Another curiosity that perhaps less-than-dramatically is just-to-arrive on the scene is this: If these teachers are the experts, why are they not doing really cool things with all of their knowledge and education... the kind of things that would make students admire them like "whoa I wish that I had that knowledge-vehicle.  I'd be so cool.  I'd be the toast of the town.  I better study really hard so I can do that fun (and yes financially rewarding bleh) thing." Some do; a lot more in your tertiary educational spheres. Professors have written books, made speeches, been on faculties of leading-edge experiments, contributed to journals of new discoveries.  Or maybe they just strike you as good people and you want to be like them. Even if you don't yet know what's so great about these things they are doing - like it feels like it's in a foreign language.

     What if the expert teachers congregated with each other, maybe in the main auditorium as a sort of performance.  And they had an edifying public conversation, a town hall on all of the sorts of things that you would be learning that year...  Would it be exhilerating or maybe intimidating to see them in their advanced roles?  But surely you would pick up some of what they were talking about.  Wouldn't it stoke the fires of your curiosity?  I think the goal here is for you to be more excited about what you are to learn, than about satisfying requirements or getting good grades.  Seems obvious to me now.

    I'm not a teacher.  I don't think that I could be.  An interesting thing about knowledge that I've noticed in my life is this: when I get good at something, I could never imagine not being good at it anymore.  (don't say anything about age-related decline; I'm not listening) No but what I mean is - when you are at the beginnings of something, there is no dream that is too big.  Because they are all too big.  If that makes sense.  It probably doesn't.  I'm just saying that you don't know what you can do until you've already done it, and even then you probs don't have a clue how you did that.

    This is all pretty straightforward habberdash claptrap.  And let us now praise the curiosity that has arrived once we finally already know.  But to return to the frustratingly obvious gift of the once mystical, and now blindingy ubiquitous.  I was thinking after the meditation/contemplation that led to this essay (so many things, but specifically: )  what I was thinking was... I could posit a reality where all formerly engaging thought/monologue/conversation became more or less a drone of mind-numbingly boring, injected obviates of utter simplicity.  BLA. bla. BLAH.

    And why not?  Is this not the purpose of education-as-a-practice (I said that already, right?) to not just know, but teach to the ignorant birds and the trees, such that all of this knowledge becomes so automatic as to gently reduce itself to whispers and fading memories (my dog is hating on me for still writing this stuff ...clickety clacking and staring into the nothingness.  Perhaps you relate)

    But also I had at least two other life-changing, horizon-tally-distant shifts in perspective that each deserve their own essay.  One is this: the myth that in the face of horribly mis-aligned social "progress", the solution is some kind of return to tribalism.  That we all must go backward before the human race "crosses the finish line" or... runs straight into the wall of total extinction.  Cuz that doesn't sound like fun.  But there is this myth that we could, like, turn around and start running in the opposite direction.  Go live off the land in a rainforest somewhere.  Etc.

I don't want to believe in the eventuality of extinction.  But neither do I believe that the human tribe can return to pre-civilization. 

    Anyways.  Something about meditation and the nature of enjoyment.  Oh, yes.  Does being good at something automatically mean enjoying that skill.  Or is there an entirely different version of reality, where we find ourselves focusing on the skill-that-is-not-a-skill of increasing the basic goodness, the inherent love that we were born into, the returning to that abundance.  The belief in an enjoyment that is not based in knowledge or skill alone.

Like maybe day and night aren't the only extremes... in terms of conditions that elicit activity or rest.  Perhaps we develop day-seasons and night-seasons.  Or perhaps the two become so intertwined, that I can take the dog for a walk, and then come back and have a catnap.