This is as good a day as any to add to my list of Goddess words. Perhaps it is a better day than most, actually!
Learning. Phew. This will be my usual ramble. As huge of a topic as most of my previous ones, perhaps bigger, if, as I suspect, all of human history has been a learning process. I haven't been able to do most of these words justice, but I'll plow ahead.
Most of my life, I associated learning with "education". I am thankful that my lawyer grandmother insisted that her sons get the best educations of the day (1930's and 40's), and that my dad followed suit with us. This was perhaps his most positive gift to his children, and something I thanked him for the last time I saw him. Six years of private college preparatory school, Smith College, University of London, then -- after I completely gave up on the notion of ever being able to participate in the men and boys' choir tradition -- Parsons School of Design. I undertook all this education for the old fashioned reason of wanting to know, to learn. It never had anything to do with future employment, and may, ironically, have made my efforts to find employment much harder. In recent years, I have craved more education, and looked into PhD programs both traditional and nontraditional. I never found anything both intellectually top-notch and steeped in new paradigm values. The reason is probably simple: our educational system is fully based in, and a product of, the old paradigm. This is probably why so much of the learning I have done has been on my own.
So at this point, I think it is unlikely that I would ever pursue another college or university degree. The question becomes, what exactly do I want to learn now? I am surrounded by books, but I think I'm reaching the point where it's not about that kind of learning. It's about, how can I learn more about using my intuition? What can I learn from the natural world that is around me? What can I continue to learn (or intuit) about how the Goddess operates and what She is trying to tell the world? What can I learn from the events happening around us? Can I learn to trust myself more? Is there a new creative process or skill that I would like to learn? In short, without ignoring my strong left brain intelligence (in fact, possibly using it more rigorously, in new ways), can I learn more about how to trust my right brain, my spontaneous and instinctive side? Can I learn to see beauty in new ways?
For what it is worth, I am also finding that it helps to take the sting out of current events to focus on, what is the life lesson here? What are we learning, as a society and as individuals? It takes the focus somewhat off fear and ugliness, and provides a hopeful, if only thin, thread forward.
