Unlearning is not an easy task. How can we let go of all we have learnt in our lifetime? How can we let go of all the "hard work" we have put in to learn? Why would you want to unlearn something?
We have very clear (collectively and as individuals) the goals of learning. What about the goals of unlearning? Please do not say that the goal to unlearn is to learn something more!
Empty your cup so that it may be filled; become devoid to gain totality. Bruce Lee
Unlearning is unpleasant. It creates a sense of disequilibrium as we struggle to change our beliefs, values, or thinking about something that we once thought was true. Unlearning is an emotional and body experience before being a cognitive process.
For unlearning to happen and be integrated we need to “learn” to empty the cup of busy, of prestige, of worth… We need to rest as much as we need doing. We need our bodies, mind and hands to rest.
The antidote to exhaustion isn't rest. It's wholeheartedness. David Whyte
I find this quote revealing in its apparent contradiction of the lines I have just typed. I find there is a mystery hidden in the word “wholeheartedness” and more precisely in the root “whole”. What makes life whole is indeed life and death, light and darkness. Those apparent opposites that bring tension. The tensions that when explored make us reach higher (deeper). How can we rest if not whole? True rest is whole.
But we struggle with resting in a society constantly busy. As we struggle in letting go in a society that hustle endlessly. As we struggle with death in a society that looks for perennial growth. As we struggle failing while looking for superhuman and superhero. So we struggle unlearning.
Let me ask again, why would you unlearn something it costed your whole life to learn?
"The Whisper does not want constructs. It wants me to unlearn the story I have constructed and just be: alone, broken, silly, shy, fearless. It wants me to…be me."
These are few lines from The Whisper a poetic invitation to allow life to come in, to allow the exiled parts to join the whole .
I invite you not to find a reason why you (or anyone else) should unlearn something. I invite you to feel into the unlearning and remember what you are made of. Pushed at the edge of beliefs, habits, mindsets let the felt experience (desire?) to unlearn inform you about a deeper life to be comprehended, to be practiced despite the fear, the humiliation, the anxiety, the anger, the brokenness.
Can you unlearn the old stories and familiar language to be liberated? Can you hear a new story: the story of embracing the paradox and complexity of remaining wholehearted?
These are few inquiries, there are no answers in unlearning, adjusted from The Whisper. These are inquiries into the moral obligation to live and stand not only in the lights but in the shadows, the dark. What lies underneath the shadows needs to be sheltered and freed. It demands to create a relationship with all the parts of which we are made even if the risk is to become irrelevant.
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