I have learned from it

Learning is a personality tool. From your early childhood on you have learned and taught yourself and through others all kinds of things. Learning as a process and the accompanying opening up to learning itself are great personality tools. They give you the chance to build knowledge, experience and insights, thus allowing yourself to use it to uphold a certain self image, sense of value, and your own way of dealing with people and situations. And it is likely that you will fail every now and then, but you are prepared to learn from it and change for the better. This willingness conveniently deals with the issue of resistance and failure which usually accompanies the idea of error.

Becoming aware is a different process. It does not have anything to do with learning, rather with knowing and un-learning. It is not about reasoning, arguing, or deducting. Inner Knowing is not about knowledge, so you cannot acquire it through learning. You can, by becoming aware of what it is that you have taught yourself and letting this go, stop trying to make it true by applying it over and over again, thus upholding and even strengthening it.

Learning assumes there is something beyond you that you do not know as yet, and that you have to do something in order to get it, or that there are insights beyond you that will make you approach a situation differently. Becoming aware implies that you already know with an inner Knowledge, and that you only have to let go of all the things that you have put in between your awareness and this Knowledge.

Other columns on this site tell you about the ingeniosity of your personality with which he can make everything in your life work for him, so be not surprised to find that he can do it here as well. Stating that a situation may have been unpleasant, or you may even have been wrong, however that you are willing to learn from it, is one of the very well known ones here. Your personality will not object against your letting go something. But be not surprised to find out that in the hands of your personality this process leads to adopting a new standard as well.

For example: 'I have learned that I can lead a more quiet life, and no longer have to want and will everything'. This may be the solution your personality supports for a period in your life which was so busy that he could not make it work for you anymore. Now this seems like you have let go here, but it is likely that you did not, since the new standard is: quietness is good. And this new standard will be projected with the same enthusiasm on all situations. So the only thing that you have done is change the content of the desired standard.

Become aware of the difference, and do not fool yourself: 'learning' as such is a personality tool, becoming aware and letting go will bring back the remembrance of your inner Self. The one is not good or bad in itself, neither is the other, what is important is what you are ready for at this stage in your life. A simple question that may help you here, is: what is it that this situation has made me aware of (= inner Self, usually something like: it is good the way it is, it does not matter, I have made it difficult myself but it turned out not to be, my inner Self knew what to do, etc.). Another question you may ask yourself is: what new standard have I adopted here. This question shows you the grip of your personality.