“Unlearning”—What Is It?

 

To unlearn one must first learn.

 

What we first learn, the formative core of our being, is the earliest imprinting that we undergo as infants and toddlers in order to apprehend the reality into which we are born. Learning is a type of conditioning, a way of coping, a groping of our way toward what we accept as real, i.e., toward whatever helps us to live and to thrive.

 

As babes we are helpless. We are at the sole mercy of our immediate surroundings. (Even while in our mothers’ wombs we begin a primitive, bio-psychic sort of learning.) At the outset, then, it can be said that humans have a “lust for life,” i.e., for self-preservation. We crave our mothers’ milk and the embrace of love, touch, human warmth and affection. This is our first lesson. And, repeatedly being bathed in these life-sustaining infusions reinforces our incarnated desire to preserve ourselves in this state.

 

From here, after this basic reinforcement training in self-preservation, learning is a process of inculcation; what we learn is a function of our immediate environment and, crucially, of those other human beings around us. These others are, themselves, creatures born and bred via generations of previous inculcations. And, if learning is a conditioning and a groping toward what we apprehend and accept as real, as having meaning and value to us, then from here we are conditioned in as many multiple and diverse ways as there are other human beings.

 

Humans have a natural tendency to band themselves together into communities according to commonalities  with which they then identify. They agree on certain values and meanings outside of their immediate family unit. This “enlargement of self-identification” is known as culture. Culture has practices, beliefs, rituals, and lifeways that expand upon the inculcation that individuals receive as simple family members. And so, once we are part of a society, we’re off to the races, learning (i.e., being conditioned to) all manner of things.

 

To unlearn, then, we must first have learned something. And to unlearn that something it must have proven, over time, that it was not of value—not real—in fact, either less meaningful than we initially thought it to be or just meaningless and useless altogether. Still, we do not usually reject something outright; instead there is a period, perhaps a long period, during which we question and hold certain things we had learned in abeyance. But what sort of something might have been learned that later led us to wanting to unlearn? When does learning end and unlearning begin?

 

We might take as a good example the questioning of moral and religious lessons inculcated in us early in life. Suppose we begin to get suspicious, wondering if these core values and beliefs are real (perhaps only metaphors?) and we lump morality and religion in with all of our normative, socio-cultural conditioning—as being an indistinguishable part of the consensual reality and culture trance that we have previously “bought into.” Suppose further that we are then assaulted by various false doctrines, scientific/secular/mental-rational materialism; modernist-corporate-consumerist-celebrity Tavistock/CIA/Mossad sex, drugs and rock ‘n’ roll propaganda; esoteric occultism; or possibly atheistic narcissism and/or the pure evil of Luciferian waywardness.  

 

Does unlearning mean to accept, even conditionally, whatever it was that came along to fill in the emptiness of what was initially learned and then unlearned (in the sense of being held in abeyance)? Perhaps.

 

And if so, does “unlearning” also mean to “question/condition, then recall, reclaim and re-learn” in a continuous loop pattern of “conditioning/ deconditioning/ reconditioning” oneself? In this particular example of morals and religion, that is how this author sees “unlearning”; as falling into sin, recognizing the error of one’s ways, and then resolving to rectify things: to have contrition, to make restitution, to purify oneself, to polish the mirror of the soul, and to relentlessly carry on, doing (as best we can figure it) what is right and just.

 

“Unlearning” then, is really a process of staying in a state of continual learning (or, more accurately: learning/ unlearning/ relearning); learning from error, from making mistakes; learning the hard way; testing our beliefs—experiencing life, communing with nature, paying attention to our feelings, listening to the intuitive murmurings of the heart and listening to others; seeing and using all of our other senses, thinking, reading, studying; often failing but occasionally succeeding.

In short, does unlearning mean to never give up searching for the real, for the truth? And, might one add as corollaries aspiring toward goodness and appreciating beauty along the way in this search for truth?

Because, as some people maintain, we can never fully know the Truth, does such a supposition necessarily render useless or nullify our search for the truth? It does not dampen this author’s desire to search for the truth, to seek out what is real. Such a search is driven not so much by the logic of the mind as it is by the soul, by an unquenchable thirst of the heart for communion with the Divine: the "I am" within myself and the "I am" as cosmic interconnection.

 

The True, the Good and the Beautiful are the classic Platonic forms. But is the search merely Platonic? Or is there an ever-present spiritual component inhering in our human nature that transcends even Platonic forms? What of love, grace, the inspiration of poetic moments—faith, hope, and charity—God the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost—the empathy of the Golden Rule: Do unto others as you would have done unto you? What of purity, sanctity, humor? Chastity, poverty, and obedience?

 

Why is suffering seen as so onerous? Can we not go beyond suffering by ignoring our suffering as a slight, irritating inconvenience that is none-the-less bearable? Can we not offer it up? Are we so frail we cannot humbly bear the load of our humanity?

 

Unlearning is remembering that we are more than bodies in need of self-preservation, in need of prepping against the End Times; that we are more than members of a culture, a community; that we are as fiercely independent and liberty-loving as our immortal souls—indeed, that we are souls, connected to God, intent upon Thy Will being done, on Earth as it is in Heaven.