What’s your style of learning? – Yang of knowledge and Eum of wisdom

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Image from www.wisewomencanada.com
Image from wisewomencanada.com

Do you know your style of learning? Better yet, what style of learning do you apply for solving problems and meeting challenges, be it professional or personal?

Applying the principles of harmony meditation I have come to a better understanding what my styles are and that in learning, just as in any other area of life, there are Eum and Yang (yin and yang) approaches to it.

For example, someone who excels in sciences may be struggling with humanities or languages. When I was in school, languages were taught mostly by brute repetition, and for a person with a Yang style of learning this won’t work as well as for a person with an Eum style of learning. One learns better by hearing, the other – by visualization, and these two functions are related to Eum and Yang.

Knowing yourself and your style of learning will save lots of hardship and disappointment. In some cases we need to apply the Yang style – think sharply and solve the problems quickly. More challenging problems require the Eum approach – thinking deeply for a prolonged period of time, getting immersed in the problem and having patience to endure the pressure.

Practice of meditation helps tremendously with the latter, especially for someone with a developed Yang style of learning. The Eum style may not bring fruits right away, but they are much sweeter and tastier.

When we grow patience and love towards ourselves, when we develop the ability to endure and observe our own thoughts and emotions, good or bad, new insights and wisdom emerges.

Most of all, proper practice of meditation should bring about tremendous benefits not only in stress release and personal well-being, but in learning and adopting valuable attitudes of consistent effort, openness, continuous improvement.

The question is – what is it I want to improve the most in your life? To me, the answer is clear. “Who am I?” is the only lifelong endeavor worthy of researching, developing, and sharing the fruits of with others.

The infamous gut feeling – can we trust it?

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Image from http://www.ipgcounseling.com/
Image from http://www.ipgcounseling.com/

In certain situations we may need to make decisions based on limited information. Some rely on a gut feeling consciously or subconsciously. But do we question how well our gut feeling does in retrospect? It’s hard to say because we can’t live our lives in parallel universes.

As a rationally inclined person, I use the gut feeling as the last resort in absence of all other information. After contemplating and reflecting on my past “gut decisions”, here is a few things I’ve been pondering on about trusting the gut feeling.

It’s now a common knowledge that “gut” has its own decision making process via the enteric nervous system, also known as “second brain”, which “can and does operate independently of the brain and spinal cord” [wiki]. So in a sense we resort to the second brain in the gut to make important life decisions.

The second brain takes care of many essential life functions, and produces a myriad of feelings and senses. What we eat and how well we absorb nutrients and eliminate toxins will surely affect our overall sense of well-being. To get a scientific perspective, read an article by Adam Hadhazy “Think Twice: How the Gut’s “Second Brain” Influences Mood and Well-Being”.

So then, can we trust our gut feelings? It depends. There are exceptional individuals who stuck to their gut feeling against all odds and became highly successful. For example, Steve Jobs. For a regular person like me, though, gut feelings tend to be much more banal – being afraid of the unknown and resisting the change.

From a statistical perspective, the second brain operations are largely based on past information and build-in mechanisms of dealing with new information, such as unfamiliar food, feelings, or ideas. If we have an unsettling reaction to the latter, we’ll try to avoid it at all costs. What if it is really good for us and can prove highly beneficial in the long term? What if we need to stick our gut and overcome the challenge? Most of the time following the gut feeling means sinking deeper in the old familiar self and missing a great opportunity.

Of course, we don’t need to challenge every decision our second brain makes. This will be an impossible task. Then how to tell when it’s time to override that decision? The first essential component is the ability to observe one’s own gut feelings and reactions.

With practice of harmony meditation the frequency of moments when a person is successful at recognizing himself or herself resisting new challenges and is able to question the second brain’s defensive reaction increases substantially.

When these precious moments of awakening happen, we can gently steer ourselves out of the rut and see new opportunities. We can take charge of the course of our day and ultimately, our lives. What else do we need? Direction. More on that later.

 

A curious case of evolving from within

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I find myself saying many positive things about my recent change in employment. My former colleagues say – wow, can this company be so wonderful? But I heard completely opposite things – people are hard to work with,  workload is not commensurable with rewards , and so on.

That made me think. Over the course of four years I’ve been practicing harmony meditation and changing myself inside out. The gradual change was not so much noticeable from day to day, month to month, but as I reflected on my journey, it became clear how different I am now.

Without further adieu, here is the list of areas in which I observed major shifts.

  • Collaboration –easy!

As I learned to accept my shortcomings in daily communications, I learned to be more tolerant to views and ideas different from mine. I stopped taking it so personally and became much more aware of the “wall building” process. Let’s face it, there are people we like and people we don’t like as much. As part of a team building exercise I recently took the Briggs-Myers personality test and I came out as a 90% introvert. So I know a lot about wall building and secluding myself to a safe comfortable place. Collaboration is not something that came naturally to me.

Wall building begins when we experience a negative emotion towards a person and we stop listening even though we hear everything that person says. As soon as I lay the first brick, the Bigger Self tells me – what are you doing? Put it down! I obey once, twice, many times, and everyday feels like a new day, every “old new” encounter is full of promise and opportunities for making it better. A new work environment is a perfect place to practice “open space” application within and around me.

  • Innovation – unleashed!

As I stopped wasting resources on emotions such as worrying, fear, feelings of inadequacy, I had more energy to invest in innovative problem solving. That energy did not just increase in quantity, but became purer and brighter, full of hopeful and empowering ideas. Sometimes I catch myself thinking – can I really do that? Am I smart enough to figure it out? Do I really have to tackle this big challenge? I pause and I breathe, and I watch the claws of the “smaller self” loosing its grip over me. Yes, I can if I decide to. Yes, I can choose to go forward into the unknown.

  • Having more fun – naturally

To me, one of the most rewarding experiences after years of practice and efforts was the ability to feel deep joy and happiness irrespective of external circumstances. That includes being joyful at work, as well as being happy on my own. Growing the power of savoring my true essence enables me with wiser choices at work, which does not go unnoticed by the management. Let’s see how much fun I have in the next six months or so. I promise to update you then.

Getting back on feet… by getting down on a cushion

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I have weathered what seemed to be a heavy cold with all the pleasantries – cough, voice loss, and an apathetic state with no desire to get up or even live. Thankfully, this is over, and it is time to get back on track with my meditation practice.

Even when I am perfectly healthy, there are days when it’s hard to bring myself to do it. “Just do it!” – a strong voice says, and the little voice replies – “But I am so tired, and I did so many great things today.” It does happen that a little voice wins and goes to bed smiling smugly. I learned to let it go once a while, as long as the frequency of these “victories” is sparse. Today the strong voice after a period of silence has decided restarting the practice, and the little voice had to oblige with the commander. I knew it would not be easy, and I knew to keep my expectations low after a longer-than-I-am-willing-to-admit-to break.

As soon as I sat on the cushion, I could feel the intense fire in the right side of my brain. It was the little voice making all sorts of noises and throwing tantrums – “you see, I told you can’t do it, you are still sick, why don’t you lay down and take it easy?” I waited patiently and the pain came down to the chest, then to the liver and stomach area with some cramping pains, and finally to the lower abdomen and out. After an occasional coughing bout the circle of pain would make rounds again from top to bottom. When I finished, I got up, walked around, and the veil of fog has lifted for me to see that I am ready to be who I am again. Thank you!

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