Do you learn through Imitation or through being Original?

In school I mostly learned through imitation. This is how many of us were/are educated, by reproducing series of tasks. But there is always a part of us that wants to express more. Our purpose is to express from our heart.

Of course, we can and do learn many things through imitation. Practical things, like sawing a piece of wood. We need to imitate first to learn it. Perhaps when we get good at it we add our own style. We might start to make specialized word-carvings and express ourself in a unique way.

Often though I have been in situations where I imitated others, or followed them, out of a need for security rather than necessity. This is how conditioning works: repeat and repeat more. I had to really break away from that, leave all my conditioned beliefs behind.

So the answer to the question in the title of this post might be Both. We can then question how much imitation we really need? If we want to have a good conversation we first need to learn to speak a language. But when are we really going to put our heart in it?

The same is true for posting on Steem. Of course we have to learn the basics, read the newby guides. But after that, we can do and say what everyone is already doing and saying, or we can follow our heart. Our heart always has a message. This is our message of Love and Light and it is our purpose to express it on Earth.

When we go through a deep experience, we can ask others what our life’s lesson is. If we get an answer and stop there then we don’t learn everything that we could learn. No-one can tell for us what our experiences mean, what they are in their depth. We can only use the information that we get from others as a tool. Then we can decide to use that tool to go to the depth of our experience, or not to use it. (We might not want to go into the depth at all).

The same is true for the art of loving. Many people simply repeat a certain conditioning when they have sex. They don’t learn to be spontaneous (I have heard many say this in open hearted conversation). We can’t learn the art of loving through focusing on imitation. We have to put our heart in it to find our true expression and our spontaneity.

hearts

We can learn anything, sometimes we follow others, sometimes others trigger a learning process within ourself. Practical skills are learned through following others first, but even if you are learning to do maths or to ride a bicycle it also triggers a learning process within. With life’s lessons and good conversation this inner learning process within gets more to the foreground. In good conversation you learn to bring out a part of yourself to communicate it to others. With the art of loving the inner learning is even more important, there are few direct instructions there.

When we evolve our inner learning process changes. We go from mostly learning things through following to an inner learning process where we bring out more and more of ourself. This is where we start to follow our heart more than we follow others.

In our process of evolution we might occasionally feel a pull to go back to our old way of learning. A part of us wants to hold on to our old beliefs, but now it is time to let go. In this way we become more of a Lion and less of a Sheep.

Lion

In my book, Verbal Dancing, I talk about the learning process in terms of the Basic Rhythm. This is our cycle of learning where we Expand, Breath and Land. When we learn something early on in our evolution, the circle that we make in the Basic Rhythm is still small, although it feels like a huge leap at the time. We are allowing our small world to get bigger. As we allow ourself to expand more and more, the circle of the Basic Rhythm also gets bigger and we can broaden our horizons.

Basic Rhythm

Now we are learning in a different way, not so much through direct instruction but more through our experience. In this way, we continually explore new Verbal Pathways and new territory. The Verbal Pathways are our new ideas that open doors to new experiences.