LEARNING PROBLEMS

Some people seem to have a really difficult time learning. In the field and literature of learning, there are a great many items that are described as learning difficulties. Now one of the strangest is that people can “know” things, and yet not “live,” practice, or use that knowledge. They know but do not and cannot implement. So what’s wrong? They know and understand certain concepts and principles. They may even understand how it works, what to do, the processes by which to actualize it. And yet they cannot get themselves to experience that knowledge in how they live their lives. The “knowledge” is academic, intellectual, verbal, and not practical.

This can especially be quite confusing when someone can spend plenty of time presenting and answering detailed questions about a domain of knowledge, and yet unable to make it part of his or her life. They know, but cannot do. Consequently, such persons are incongruent. They are not able to walk the talk. In this regard, the person has a knowing—doing gap. For years in Neuro-Semantics we have addressed this question in terms of how to close the knowing—doing gap and have come up with numerous processes for that, the one that is most well known is the Mind-to-Muscle pattern.

More recently I have discovered yet another reason for this gap. Here it is—sometimes a person is able to academically learn something and know something, but within the dimension of self there’s a problem. The person himself or herself is unfinished.

He is unfinished regarding being okay enough to focus on living the knowledge or truths. Instead the person is still trying to be okay—perhaps by competing with others, perhaps by putting others down in order to lift oneself up or in one of many other ways. When a person has hidden agendas like that— even what they learn is usually tilted so that the person is using it to “be a someone,” to “show someone else up,” to compete and win the recognition of a group, and so on. There are selves who are unfinished in the most basic of human drives—to be okay, to be a somebody, to be esteem as a person.

Obviously, this creates a strange learning problem. That’s because what is learned (the content information) is view by such persons as a means for self-promotion, self-validation, and self- protection. Personal hidden agendas like these can powerfully interfere with being able to live a truth or principle. The underlying problem goes back to one’s intention in learning. When it is not clean—when one is not learning for the sake of understanding, then one begins using the learning as a psychological tool for self-validation. Here we might describe the situation as one where “the ego is in the way.” That is, the person’s sense of self (ego) is misusing the information. He is using it to prop up his falling sense of self, “Now I’m a somebody because I know this.”

The solution to this is easy to say and difficult to apply. The person as a self needs to grow up,

complete the developmental stages and tasks (Piaget, Erickson) and esteem oneself as a valid human being in an unconditional way. Then he will be free of the need to misuse knowledge in that way. And then he will be free from that learning disability.

In Neuro-Semantics we offer several meta-stating self patterns to complete this unfinished development. In the book Secrets of Personal Mastery (1999, Crown House Publications) you will find the pattern for applying acceptance to self, appreciation, and unconditional esteem. In the book, The Crucible and the Fires of Change (2010) you will find chapters on these subjects as well as how to build a crucible for making this level of transformation.

The best learning is ego-free. That is, you are learning for the sake of learning and discovery. You do not have hidden agendas and motives in learning. We come up against this in the Meta-Coach Training a lot— which is why on the first day we run two patterns— Releasing Judgment and De- contamination Chamber. Both are designed to release the agenda-filters that cover the learning. Here then is a fundamental fact of learning that is so often over-look. It is a self, a human being who is learning. So, who is that person who is learning? How solid a sense of self does that person have? Why is the person learning? How clean or unclean are the motives of that person?

Here is the next amazing thing— when you get that issue resolved and you are fully free to learn for learning’s sake— you will become an incredible learner! Your learning capacities will expand exponentially.