People Who Don't Study Anything

[Chrissy j]

How often do you guys people grow on their own with no theory? The people that live without studying PD or enlightenment or science or epistomolgy or anything besides maybe their field or job. Do people contemplate often you think? And if you only contemplate no theory how far will you get? 

From what I observe in people it depends on the idea. Nobody is gonna be understanding enlightenment unless they've heard about it or taken a psychadelic. But maybe something like perfectionism could be understood by a person not studying theory. They could understand that perfectionism is just overly high standards that you make up in your head that you need to be happy just by thinking about it. But honestly how much deeper could it go on the understanding especially if you threw in theory? 

Personally, without theory I feel I would have been trapped and not able to grow. But that's just me. 

Anybody else's thoughts and insights?

[TJ Reeves]

My current girlfriend is a construction worker with a community college education, dyslexia, and very little experience with self-help books. That said, she's very smart, sweet, and easily one of the most awakened people I know. Every day she mentions some deep spiritual or psychological theory that took me years to grasp, despite my "elite" education. Only her life experiences and her tendency to contemplate while taking care of chores lead her to many insights. 

Examples of things she's come up with without ever having read books or attend seminars on the subject:

"When I date guys, the biggest question in my mind is how they talk to their mom and whether they love themselves enough to love me. I feel like when people grow up [and start dating], they're really just trying to replace their parents in a healthy manner before their parents die." - Attachment theory summarized in two sentences

"I mean, it only makes sense that I would be God. If he's everything and I'm something, then he must be me because I'm part of everything. *laughs* actually, I'm going to use her from now on... She must be me... and i'm her, then I must be everything too! Whenever I get super upset I think, 'wait a minute I'm God, what's there to be upset about?'" - Enlightenment  

"What I love most about going to the zoo is that I see parts of my self in every animal. I think thats the secret of zoos - the animal in the cage isn't in there, its in here *she points to her heart*" 

And I've asked her and no, she's never taken any psychedelics although she says hippy-shit all the time - Its the cutest thing ever. 

Edited July 29, 2017 by TJ Reeves

[WaterfallMachine]

It's possible to learn a lot from experience and discover things on the way like @TJ Reeves mentions, but I bet theory has more place than you think.

Imagine personal development where you just learn from experience. Really think about it. No Leo from Actualized.org. No Tony Robbin types. No theory from the ideas of your parents. Your friends. Your culture. Your community. From internet blogs. From books. Your ideas on happiness. On wisdom. On love. On humor. On humility. On strength. Everything. Of course you didn't experience these ideas at all so even those are theories.

How do you define what happiness is? How do you define how successful someone is? How do you define what is love? Even with small things like how you define how well made a movie is or what you think is the appropriate outfit. We all live our lives with theories. You can't not remove theories unless you have some kind of brain damage. Because to experience something we want, we have to have an idea of it in our minds.

Of course, just doing theory is a bad idea. But doing just experience is another extreme. 

You can learn from your experiences, but without the theories, you'll just be repeating other's mistakes and taking much longer to find insights you can find with other's ideas. There are of course geniuses in society that manage to make great discoveries without education. Like Michael Faraday who due to his poverty lacked education but had great contributions to our understanding of electricity. But gee, not everyone one of us has the inner privilege to be such a genius without such help. 

Sometimes the problem with people is that that when they have too much of something, they aim to find too much of the opposite when actually they need balance.

We have many examples of people from history that had to learn from their teachers for it to be even possible for them to be revolutionaries in their fields. The Buddha had to learn meditation from his teachers first. Einstein had to learn how to count as a child and do basic physics from his school. Shakespeare had to learn his alphabet and English somewhere. To revolutionize with the unconventional, often someone has to first acquire conventional ideas.

Edited July 29, 2017 by WaterfallMachine

[d0ornokey]

@TJ Reeves how did you pick your gf? im wary of picking a girl not into PD 

[Leo Gura]

You're not gonna get far in life without study and theory.

Human beings are learning animals.

[TJ Reeves]

9 hours ago, d0ornokey said:

@TJ Reeves how did you pick your gf? im wary of picking a girl not into PD 

She walked up to me on the set of American Ninja Warrior before we competed. We got along well, but I was more focused on the competition than her, so I didn't even ask for her number. After show was over, she added me on Facebook and messaged me about some of the things we'd talked about. From there we met up in real life.  

Why'd I pick her despite her not doing conventional PD?

• she's hot AF
• she's physically strong AF (we're talking about a girl who made it through to the end of the ANW qualifier course)
• she's spiritually strong AF as I mentioned earlier
• she's smart AF - specifically able to teach herself how to do things efficiently
• she treats me like a king but acts like she's a queen who deserves her own respect
• she keeps up conversation - we can talk for hours at a time about nothing and everything
• she's non needy and independent - she makes her own money and worked up the career ladder in a male-dominated field
• she's highly self aware - especially when it comes to personal psychology, potential conflicts and fixing up her own life
• We have strong chemistry - I don't have to try hard at all . Of course chemistry naturally cools off over time, but for now, the chemistry is high. This is a consistent aspect of all of my best, longest relationships. 
• We clicked sexually from the get go - It felt like I'd known her for years even when I first met her. She's not afraid to try anything.

Thats about all you can ask for in a partner, really. 

How'd I do it?

The only way to become truly attractive is personal-development. And the only true personal development is unhooking from neediness of all kind. When girls see that you are non-needy, they can't help themselves.

By working on myself and my addictions so that I can be my self as authentically as possible every day, my girlfriend automatically took notice.

The reverse is true as well: my girlfriend does not do conventional personal development but she's worked her ass off to become non needy in all aspects of her life, so she's snatched herself a hot, smart, non-needy, self-aware boyfriend to hang out with. 

Edited July 29, 2017 by TJ Reeves

[Chrissy j]

These are all good points. Some people are probably more aware with themselves and contemplate more then others. I think adding theory is a must though for the highest results. You don't know what you don't know. @TJ Reeves Your girl sounds like a badass

Edited July 29, 2017 by Chrissy j
Added

[d0ornokey]

@TJ Reeves lol you just described my dream girl... great pointers, good to refresh myself with those ideas 

Edited July 29, 2017 by d0ornokey

[Virgo]

One example is Sadhguru. He never read the spiritual sanskrits. That's why they call him Sadhguru witch means "uneducated Guru". 

 

Sadhguru: When someone comes from their scholarship, they are referred to in different ways. If someone comes from an inner experience, they are referred to as Sadhguru. The word “Sadhguru” is not a title. It is a description. Sadhguru means “uneducated Guru.” I am almost hundred percent spiritually uneducated. I don’t know any scriptures, I have not read the Vedas and I didn’t bother to read the Bhagavad Gita.

[SOUL]

On 7/29/2017 at 1:41 AM, WaterfallMachine said:

No Leo from Actualized.org. No Tony Robbin types. No theory from the ideas of your parents. Your friends. Your culture. Your community. From internet blogs. From books. Your ideas on happiness. On wisdom. On love. On humor. On humility. On strength. Everything. Of course you didn't experience these ideas at all so even those are theories.

So you try to sterilize everything that comes with experience in life then wonder how can anyone learn from the experience of life? Interesting....

 

Edited July 31, 2017 by SOUL

[WaterfallMachine]

18 hours ago, SOUL said:

So you try to sterilize everything that comes with experience in life then wonder how can anyone learn from the experience of life? Interesting....

 

Good. I agree with you.

I didn't say experience was bad. Or that it was impossible to learn with just experience. Theory without experience is just some person procrastinating on life and playing with their minds, thinking they're doing something substantial when it's just blocking all their progress.

Things that come from experience from other people can be theories to you. Or if you mean these theories come from experience, that can be true. Theories and experience are connected after all. Theories come from experience. And with experience allows more theories on what else people can do.

[SOUL]

8 hours ago, WaterfallMachine said:

Good. I agree with you.

You agree with my question? That stripping all of the experience from experience then question how anyone can learn from experience is a flawed theory.... ironically.

Theory is just the product of ideas and concepts which contributes to a mind's paradigm but enlightenment is transcending all of those so it's useless in the exercising of our awareness to be it.

It's an addiction of the mind it can't give up and does everything in it's power to convince us to identify with it but the mind can be free of that vice if we seek to be free from it.

Edited July 31, 2017 by SOUL

[Arkandeus]

enlightenment is not an exterior activity...everyone is in touch with their feelings, it doesn't take a particular teaching to listen to your feelings and your intuition.
there are probably an immense amount of folks on the ''path of enlightenment'' without them having being in touch with enlightenment books or teachers, simply by honestly listening to their feelings and intuition. 
we all have our own inner guides, we have everything we need with us

[Joseph Maynor]

There's a dynamic balance between knowing and not-knowing that you must find in your life.   A dynamic balance between theory and practice.  It's all about having that right balance in the moment.  The harmonization of the Tao, the synergy and harmonization of Yin and Yang.  Where reasonable judgment and practicality merge.  Too much theory and you become a nut.  Too little theory and you become a brute.

Watch all of these if you want to learn about the big -picture standpoint in personal development regarding knowing versus not knowing.  A lot of people never get to this level of awareness, they remain controlled by their beliefs and ideologies.  The ego is very, very sneaky!  You gotta get to the point where you know how to treat beliefs in your life basically.  It's both complex and very simple paradoxically, and that's because once you see reality for what it is, the problem dissolves.  You will feel like 100 pounds were lifted from your shoulders.  Right idea, right time, right result, right feeling, right insight.  Balance that unicycle!  Show us what that thang can do.  Pop a wheelie!   Get to the point where you can pop a wheelie.  Right practice is key.  Right daily-routines.

 

Edited August 4, 2017 by Joseph Maynor