It’s a natural impulse to share what we learn. The inspired excitement of a new insight expands to connect–to reach out and teach. Like the effervescence of boiling water, new understanding bubbles and rises and pops and transforms. If we could see the energy that comes through us in the moment of a new realization, I believe we would see the shifts like steam rising from the roiling water, mingling with the steam of each other’s new awareness.
If we could see this, would it impact how we communicate? Would we be less focused on the sharing of our own wisdom and more interested in absorbing the wisdom of those around us? Would our focus shift more to experiencing the resonance between our insights and less on the wisdom of our personal insight?
Learning and teaching–I’ve heard it described as two sides of the same coin. When I was a practicing Jungian psychotherapist, I often acknowledged that my clients were my teachers–even as they came to learn from me. They taught me by engaging me in their story, and each client’s story became a parable from which I integrated new learning to share and teach.
A current “teaching” in the New Thought arena states: “Words don’t teach. Experience teaches.” True. Our own experience trumps the words of a teacher every time, right? Listening to the words of various teachers to see if “their wisdom” resonates with the truth of my experience, taught me another valuable lesson: Teachers may believe the teaching is in their words, but, indeed, the teaching is in their actions. In other words, I may have been listening to their words, but what I was watching was their behavior–on and off the podium. For me, it was the litmus test of any teaching.
No surprise then that, as a teacher, my first priority evolved to be authentically aligned between the words I choose and the choices I make. No surprise that any insight I share be shared as the offering of an opinion, to be of value as determined by the recipient. No surprise that, first and foremost, I strive to learn and integrate what I’ve learned into my behavior before teaching it. No surprise, right?
And then I evolved again.
In this dynamic evolution of perpetual awakening, I evolved again–and realized: teaching and learning are two words that describe the same experience. If I am learning, I am teaching. If you are learning, you are teaching. If we are learning, we are teaching. Teachers teach to influence. Learners learn to expand understanding. Inherent in the process of both, we integrate new levels of awareness that shift the fundamental state of our being. By the law of resonance (see: Vibrating the Vibration) the dynamic process of the learning evolution influences the environment around us, and we teach by example. We become the evolution of awakening that merges and mingles and shifts the air around it like steam.
Think about it. Think about that person who seems so wise. The wisdom she or he expresses is the example of being permeable to the wisdom “steaming” around them in the currents of life. They have evolved their capacity to “listen” and resonate with the subtle frequencies of understanding in such a way as to integrate and share that learning. Think about it. If being an excellent teacher means learning to be an excellent listener, then the best teachers are the best learners, right?
Let us be learner together. Let us be in appreciation of each other’s brilliant insights and let those pearls of wisdom mingle and merge within the power of our own wisdoms to erase the limitation of labels. Let us find glory in the humble and transform language into a resonance of being that gives honor to all life. Let us teach and be taught by the example of life.
No one needs a podium to teach. Just breathe. Breathe life. And the teaching is. Just breathe. Breathe love. And the learning does.
Thank you. I love you.
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It never occurred to me that being a life-long learner could mean that I’m a teacher as well — I’m really going to have to think about that one!
I know, right? A lot of us assume we sit only one side of the continuum. What an expansion it is to realize if we are one, then we are both. My mind is stretched, too!
Ahnalira