Experience is the Best Teacher of All

[Starman]

Originally Posted by Flexi-Girl

Behavioral science seems like a fascinating subject.

I am sure I learned more from my students than my students learned from me.
It was the same when I worked in the medical field with patients; I learned more
from them, whether they were well or sick, or dying, they were my teachers.

I have had a great many experiences in my life related to the behavioral and social
sciences. What we go through in life, if we really learn from, becomes as acquired
skills which we can pass on to others if they are receptive.

But people learn in different ways, not everyone learns from their experiences,
and they keep repeating the same hurtful experiences over and over, and hopefully
eventually they do learn from them, but some never do.

simplyana, thank you for the kindness. I often feel like I am just talking to
myself when I post, and affirming my own perspective. Often I just meditate on
silence while posting here at SF. We each have a personal truth, which hopefully
serves us well. Welcome to Spiritual Forums.

Peace and Good Journey

[inavalan]

Originally Posted by Starman

I am sure I learned more from my students than my students learned from me.
It was the same when I worked in the medical field with patients; I learned more
from them, whether they were well or sick, or dying, they were my teachers.

I have had a great many experiences in my life related to the behavioral and social
sciences. What we go through in life, if we really learn from, becomes as acquired
skills which we can pass on to others if they are receptive.

But people learn in different ways, not everyone learns from their experiences,
and they keep repeating the same hurtful experiences over and over, and hopefully
eventually they do learn from them, but some never do.

simplyana, thank you for the kindness. I often feel like I am just talking to
myself when I post and affirming my own perspective. We each have a personal truth,
which hopefully serves us well. Welcome to Spiritual Forums.

Peace

Not to be picky ... in one statement you say the experience is the best teacher, then in another you complain that you can't pass on your knowledge.

[Starman]

Originally Posted by inavalan

Not to be picky ... in one statement you say the experience is the best teacher, then in another you complain that you can't pass on your knowledge.

Experience is the best teacher only if people are open to learning from their experience, or a person is open to learning from others. You can not teach a person who is not receptive nor can a person learn from their own experience if they ignore it and refuse to learn from it. But yes, we really do not know something until we have embraced our experience of it, and therefore experience is the best teacher, even though it is a proposition that requires active participation. Teaching and learning are a reciprocal exchange which does not automatically happen. You have to be open to the experience of it, and when you are, it is the best teacher.

Originally Posted by Flexi-Girl

How many times have you tried to teach someone a fundamental truth?

What is a fundamental truth? And where does it come from? While it may well be a fundamental truth from your perspective it may not be so fundamental from someone else's. In your mind it may be a fundamental truth but how aware are you of your own personal mind processes and how you perceive that as truth?

The other thing you have to take into account if you're going down this road is how people learn, and how their thought processes, backgrounds, etc may well be radically different from yours. Sometimes you have to learn how to teach them, which means understanding where they are coming from understanding where you are coming from and finding some common ground. And sometimes 'teaching' is the wrong word altogether.

If someone tried to teach me about a fundamental truth I wouldn't be interested, because to me truth is agenda and someone trying to teach me what they hold as truth is someone who thinks they know better trying to tell me something I most likely don't want to know. If you share your fundamental truth I may or may not agree with you, but I wouldn't appreciate you trying to teach me. You see, some don't know the difference between teaching and preaching when it comes to truths.

Your experience of chocolate is your experience of chocolate, and all you're doing is sharing your perceptions. You can't teach experience, you can only try to facilitate it and you can't do that by teaching. You can give someone their own experience of tasting chocolate by giving them a piece, and if they've already tasted it there's no need to teach them about it anyway.

Having the experience means that you know your perceptions of the experience, nothing more. Others may have similar perceptions of a similar experience as you so yes, they may not need the words or need to be taught. But are your perceptions the truth or the truth of yourself? Knowing your subject matter doesn't make you a teacher, learning how people learn, learning how to put your 'fundamental truth' across and learning about yourself makes you someone who can help others understand. Teaching and helping people understand are very different, as are recognising that both of those might be irrelevant.

[Flexi-Girl]

Originally Posted by Greenslade

What is a fundamental truth? And where does it come from? While it may well be a fundamental truth from your perspective it may not be so fundamental from someone else's. In your mind it may be a fundamental truth but how aware are you of your own personal mind processes and how you perceive that as truth?

The other thing you have to take into account if you're going down this road is how people learn, and how their thought processes, backgrounds, etc may well be radically different from yours. Sometimes you have to learn how to teach them, which means understanding where they are coming from understanding where you are coming from and finding some common ground. And sometimes 'teaching' is the wrong word altogether.

If someone tried to teach me about a fundamental truth I wouldn't be interested, because to me truth is agenda and someone trying to teach me what they hold as truth is someone who thinks they know better trying to tell me something I most likely don't want to know. If you share your fundamental truth I may or may not agree with you, but I wouldn't appreciate you trying to teach me. You see, some don't know the difference between teaching and preaching when it comes to truths.

I am not sure I have an, 'agenda', but I get your meaning.

[Jyotir]

Experience is the practical test of theory.
Realization is the awareness of truth from experience.

What is theoretical by definition hasn’t been realized as truth and therefore isn’t embodied.
Therefore, this process - “experience is the best teacher” - may often occur haphazardly, randomly, even chaotically.

Or, that same principle can be concentrated in any one who has realized truth and therefore embodies truth, who may guide and expedite experience in others for accelerating realization. This is also experience as the best teacher, but in a concentrated embodied form, and as such, significant realizations of fundamental truth(s) which are self-existent, incontrovertible and unconditional in nature, have historically been codified for the benefit of other human beings. This is common established precedent, standard social practice, understandable, and not a controversy.

The key is whether such fundamental truth is recognized and utilized, and if not, this doesn’t change the status of embodiment in the teacher or teaching, just the potential availability to others by their own choice, e.g., acceptance or rejection.

The difference in whether any embodiment of truth constitutes “teaching” (valuable, I need this) vs. “preaching” (you’re disturbing my status-quo complacent autonomy) as an agenda, has more to do with the agenda percipient of those teachings and subsequent reaction relative to said agenda.

Like the fundamental truth that ego-mind by nature is a false identity and persists in resisting or defying fundamental (vs. limited partial) truth for its agenda of self-preservation; its limited sense of autonomy; a circular confusion of self-equivocation (vs. a progressive surrender to higher fundamental truth).



~ J

[ocean breeze]

Television is the best teacher of all. If you are dead serious about learning about life its far wiser to stay home all day and watch t.v. and play video games.

[Flexi-Girl]

Originally Posted by ocean breeze

Television is the best teacher of all. If you are dead serious about learning about life its far wiser to stay home all day and watch t.v. and play video games.

Yes. Very true. Thanks.

Experience is a good teacher. Of course the student must be motivated to learn so wonder and curiosity are the best teachers aids. However, I do think there are many things that can be taught without direct experience of them. Mathematics comes to mind. Although in some sense one might say the one doing the math experiences it....? It is amazing to me how the great scientists of the past (and still going on in the present) were able to predict scientific truths about the nature of our shared reality that were completely contrary to common sense and intuition, yet they were able to see them in the mathematics years before they could be proven by experiment. Had the mathematics taught them deep truths about the nature of the universe? Does that count as experience?

Would a though experiment be considered learning by experience?

Could a novel or a movie be considered an experience that one learns from?

Well, whatever we decide to call experience, there are some things that cannot be taught and must be learned directly by the student, wisdom comes to mind.

“Wisdom cannot be imparted. Wisdom that a wise man attempts to impart always sounds like foolishness to someone else ... Knowledge can be communicated, but not wisdom. One can find it, live it, do wonders through it, but one cannot communicate and teach it.”
― Hermann Hesse, Siddhartha

The most beautiful thing we can experience is the mysterious. It is the source of all true art and science. He to whom the emotion is a stranger, who can no longer pause to wonder and stand wrapped in awe, is as good as dead —his eyes are closed.
Albert Einstein, Living Philosophies

Originally Posted by ocean breeze

Television is the best teacher of all. If you are dead serious about learning about life its far wiser to stay home all day and watch t.v. and play video games.

Everything one needs to know about life can be learned from Homer Simpson and Al Bundy.