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hey leo here for actualised org and in this episode I'm going to be talking about how learning equals observation [Music] you a while back I released an episode called learning equals behavior change a lot of you guys liked that episode it was a pretty important one it was a very practical one I think for many people opened a lot of people's eyes but in that episode I told you that that was just one perspective on learning and that I have other perspectives that I need to share with you perhaps as important if not more important than that one so here we are the reason we're talking about learning from multiple perspectives is because in a sense learning is what life is all about it's central to everything that you want in your life you want to construct a good life you want good relationships you want business success you want spiritual success you want person about whatever you're doing you're learning if you're not a lifelong learner you're not getting anywhere so if you want some Metta advice for your life learn how to learn become a rockstar learner and if you want to do that then it helps to look at learning from different perspectives because learning is a complex thing there's a lot of different stuff that you could learn in life so here's another perspective for you the deepest learning happens through observation that's it that's the whole lesson it's very simple but precisely because it is so simple it's easy to overlook and it's easy to not implement in your life and not to see the results of it so what is observation it's simple you just look at a thing for a very long period of time steadily diligently with focus that's it you look at a thing without an agenda that's it so for the purpose of this episode observation you can equate it with awareness if you want to think of it that way and with consciousness although I like using the word observation because once we start to use the word awareness or consciousness it becomes a little bit abstract and it becomes a little bit like far-fetched it's like Oh awarenesses some mystical thing out there somewhere whereas observation it's like observation is simple observation is what happens when you look through a telescope or you look through a microscope or you go and you look at some chimps in a zoo like maybe a research scientist would do that's observation very simply just look at the thing what isn't observation thinking reading listening to a lecture watching a video memorizing facts doing or action trying to fix a thing manipulation daydreaming trying to figure it out training and behavior change these are not observation these are something else and that's precisely why it's challenging is because we're very tempted by our culture and just by our innate inclinations to do all this other stuff instead of observing and one of the biggest challenge you're gonna have when you sit down to observe a thing is that all this other stuff will come up there you gonna try to do instead because your mind will rationalize it away and say well if I'm just sitting there observing something I'm wasting a lot of time I could be figuring something out I could be training I could be improving myself I could be reading a book or whatever or I could be thinking about this thing and that's exactly the thing you need to avoid in order to observe successfully which is why observation is such a rare thing let me ask you this when was the last time that you actually sat and looked at an object for five hours straight without an agenda ever probably never be honest with yourself when was last time you did that see so immediately this shows you that what I'm talking about here even though it's very simple is something that's actually foreign to you it's not something you ever do so be careful about prejudging what I'm talking about see the mistake you have to be very careful is that it sounds like I'm just talking about and making a very simple shallow point like a lob servation oh that's it leo what's next come on give me something more advanced give me some some mind-blowing abstract thing that I could use some techniques some some theory about something you know actually this right here is very profound but you're gonna have to you're gonna have to practice a little bit of doing this to see the profundity of it you know this reminds me of what I think is one of the most remarkable people in human history which is Leonardo da Vinci and when I think about Leonardo da Vinci if you ever study him study some of his work and some of the stuff he's accomplished he's really a remarkable guy because he was able to go both deep and also broad in life like he was able to study and develop military machines and also do art and painting and the Mona Lisa and sculpture and and anatomy and biology and pot and like oh there's all this all this stuff he was able to do everything how I was able to do that in many ways he's sort of the poster child of self-actualization but when I think about Leonardo da Vinci and I try to boil down his essence to like one thing what was it about him that made him so remarkable to me it all boils down to his remarkable ability to just observe that thread runs through all of his work and really I think it defines his entire life if you wanted to put one phrase on his tombstone it would be something like Nardo da Vinci the masterful observer because in everything he was just so meticulous in the way he observed it and I can almost imagine him sitting there just like with a little leaf or a bug or an insect er or a tree or something and just like looking at it as though looking at it through a microscope I don't think they had microscopes back then but he was just huge just look at it very steadily and I didn't get the sense that he was trying to do that in order to you know to push some agenda to accomplish something but just because he was innately curious about observing what the hell the thing was without taking it for granted without jumping to conclusions about it without just settling for a label like oh yeah let's just it's a maple leaf as though calling it a maple leaf really tells you anything about what it is or about the details of what's on it how is it that simply looking at a thing could change anything in your life what is this power that observation has over the last years it's been remarkable I've been observing myself observing and it's been like magic I've been noticing how observation just in and of itself is a superpower there's something about awareness or about consciousness that when aware soar consciousness just simply sits still and is focused on itself or some aspect of itself that it has an intelligence of its own and it has a creativity a very deep creativity that's just like baked into awareness such that it doesn't need to concoct something it doesn't need to think it doesn't need to figure anything out it doesn't need to Train anything or do anything with somebody doesn't need to manipulate just by observing a situation you learn you spontaneously learn this just happens to be how the human mind is wired it's uh I think it's a very profound aspect of reality actually I think it goes way deeper than just a human mind or even the brain I think that really all intelligence is predicated upon this at a very deep level it's the fact that awareness has this capacity this magical capacity this almost supernatural capacity which which largely goes unrecognized in Western culture it's because of this that we are actually able to get all our creativity and all our higher-level thinking and all what we call human intelligence and rationale and all that logic all of that is ultimately predicated upon this very primordial quality of awareness of just making spontaneous insights and interconnections through simply observing something and this is difficult to convey to people because people think that well believe if I just look at a leaf or something I've seen it what more could there be it's like I've seen it okay I spent five minutes looking at it but then I've basically got it right and the answer is no if you want to experience the full magic of what I'm talking about the profundity of it you have to sit there and look at it for a very very long time very patiently without demanding anything of this process you don't just sit there looking at the leaf like okay how is this gonna make me richer how was just gonna self actualize me how is this gonna do anything for me how is this growing me not like that because when you're doing that that's ego getting in the way of this very primordial function of awareness of just see what awareness does it it picks up these distinctions I don't know if it picks them up or if it creates them or if it's it's a kind of a back-and-forth process but it's just incredible to me how this happens something magical happens when you just look at a thing for a very long period of time of course you're gonna contemplate as you look at it two questions will arise new insights will come to you you might sit there looking on a leaf for an hour and then you know bye-bye at one point in that hour it's just like something's gonna strike is like oh I could use maybe this leaf will be a logo for my business or it's like this leaf will will be a research project for for my biology class or this is a leaf I could draw I could put it on my music album or something like the veins in the leaf remind me of the the neurons in the brain and also remind me of the structure of a galaxy and remind me of the way that atoms work or something like that your mind is gonna make these interconnections simply by observing and also not just these interconnections and insights because that's like the creativity part but also you're gonna see the leaf in a different way what you're gonna get after a while of doing this you're gonna get unmediated access to reality which is a rare thing most of us assume that we have unmediated access to reality but we don't because we're so language and logic oriented as a culture as a species that everything we look at is really just an augmented reality we project a lot of stuff we project our ourself biases our emotions our desires our own meanings and significances we're looking at objects and even the fact that you're looking at an object the only reason you're looking at an object in the first place is because somewhere lately in the back of your mind your subconscious mind has figured out that hey this object would serve you in some way to look at otherwise you're not looking at it you're not noticing it 90% of stuff in your life you don't even notice you don't think twice about so when you actually get to look at an object for a long period of time and you can kind of break through all the concepts all the abstraction all the labels all the words all the stuff that comes from your culture that you think you know about this maple leaf for example then eventually you get to an unmediated access of this maple leaf and that's a thing that many people have never experienced in their life observation is also powerful because it's Unseld fiest a lot of your perceptions are very biased by the fact that yourself you're an ego and you're going about life doing stuff that you want to do pursuing your own goals avoiding fears and and perceived threats from the environment you're just constantly doing this with everything you're doing the social you're doing this in your business you're doing senior relationships you're doing this with your money with with your entire day and when you just observe if you do it right then you break past this self bias that we tend to have observation also allows us to transcend language logic and monkey mind a lot of very good scientists make the mistake of assuming that the only access they have to reality is through their senses and through language logic and the monkey mind they don't realize that there's actually something much deeper at work there's this primordial awareness which sits underneath language logic and monkey mind and that this gives you a much clearer picture of reality and how it works the greatest scientists actually tap into this people like Leonardo da Vinci he was a great scientist he was able to tap into it and the essence of science the reason science is so much applauded these days and a lot of skeptics hold up science as much superior it's a superstition and religion is precisely because science the one thing that it really got right is placing empiricism at the center of it and empiricism really is just about very accurate perception of the raw sense-data of which reality consists so that's a step in the right direction what I'm saying is that really you got to take empiricism to a whole deeper level so science is getting something right because it's it's it's based on empiricism but still a lot of science is still very conceptual model based simulation based language based logic based mind based and this is actually a mistake if you want to become a great scientist then you have to get really really good at transcending all that and just observing whatever you're talking about I mean of course in certain Sciences is easier than others like it's easier to do that in in anthropology maybe that it is to do it in quantum mechanics because it's hard to observe stuff in quantum mechanics although still the most tangible developments in quantum mechanics where do they come from they come from the had your Large Hadron colliders and particle colliders around the world and what are those but just very again very meticulous and careful observation devices seen so the the foundation of science is really empiricism but then you can apply that to your personal life as well and then you'll see amazing results in your personal life if you throw in very good observer observation is a rare thing in our society here's why there's a host of reasons firstly because it's counterintuitive because when you first start to observe a thing you don't have a good skill in it so you suck at it and so unless you have the foresight to develop this skill you're not gonna get very far you're gonna quit you can start doing something else you can get distracted observation doesn't have an immediate short-term payoff the way that manipulation does why do people manipulate so much because it gives you an immediate payoff and of course we know that people love their immediate payoffs whereas if I tell you just sit there and observe a maple leaf for five hours you're gonna be like leo why the would I observe a maple leaf for five hours what is that gonna do for me and the answer is I don't know what it's gonna do for you and neither do you and maybe it won't do anything for you at least not right now maybe you observer 400 hours something magical will happen but for the first five hours maybe nothing will happen maybe you'll think you're wasting your time and that's what most people think it is it's just wasting their time and of course it's counterintuitive because people are addicted to manipulation we're just pressured into manipulating everything in our in our lives because of the society and culture we live in that we think that that's that's the appropriate way to interact with reality is just constant manipulation what's in it for me what's in it for my team what's in it for my country and this is the opposite of what you want to do if you want to really develop yourself to the highest levels as a human being observation is rare because it's just too simple when something is so simple and so obvious usually you find that nobody does it observation is rare because it requires lots of focus patience and overcoming boredom which today is is going to deter 99.999% of people because today if something requires focused patience and going through boredom no one's gonna do it basically that's what our culture has devolve down into speaking of culture another reason that observations rare's because our culture values knowing thinking and acting not unbiased observing our culture rewards and pays for people who claim to know experts thinkers people with solutions and ideas not simply observers and this is really a shame and this of course is reflected in our education system which is another reason why observation is so rare because it's not actually taught in school nobody taught you to observe what was your school about school was about memorizing stuff passing tests homework assignments getting grades reading books doing projects having answers in class knowing a bunch of stuff thinking maybe a little bit acting and that's about it but no one told you about observation well that's why you have actualized I don't worry so how do you develop observation it's simple you just sit and you closely look at an object you look at it for its own sake trying to drop all your agenda while you get very curious about the being the substance of the object or what it actually is the reality of it the truth of it whatever that happens to be and you try not to prejudge it or to have some imagined idea of what it should be or what it actually is you try to drop all those as much as you can you also try to drop all manipulation drop all your thoughts as much as you can and just sit there and be very still looking at it relax your mind relax your body and yet stay alert don't get sleepy and that's the whole process and then you just practice that every day for however many hours you want to practice that you just practice practice practice you can get so kind of good at it I guess that you just kind of walk through your day starting to be in that kind of observer mode rather than the other kind of modes that you're usually in and then it's not so much it's how hassle so I don't know that you need to actually sit down and create a one hour observation habit every single day I don't think that that's necessary although you could do that if you wanted to in a sense that's what meditation is supposed to be but a lot of times when we talk about meditation this whole word this label this idea of meditating it comes with all this baggage because it's not the spiritual baggage behind it and you're using it for enlightenment or you're using it to relax or you're using it to accomplish something and so in a sense meditation is just observation but it helps to think of observation as its own thing because you can kind of get in this mechanical mode of meditating maybe you have some technique that you're using and then actually the technique gets in the way of just observing the technique becomes a cell and self involved thing so if you do have a meditation habit definitely keep it but also double-check that you're not doing it mechanically and maybe the next week or two that you do it try to think of it in this different light try to think of it as observation and not so much meditation maybe sit there with a maple leaf that you find outside or a pen or a pencil and just sit there with it and look at it rather than doing your traditional meditation technique you see but mindfulness meditation with labeling or the paws on a-- these are very powerful techniques which are designed to train your observation abilities for a specific purpose but sometimes that purpose gets in the way so you have to be careful if you're a total newb actually I recommend my mindfulness meditation with labeling or doing of a Posten retreat that's really good that will that will kind of open your eyes to some stuff when it comes to observation but if you've been doing Vipassana now for for a few years straight you might be getting stuck in a rut then maybe shift a little bit and try to do some observation and rather than just sitting there and and labeling stuff take a pen or a pencil or maple leaf and just sit there and look at it for a few hours and see what that reveals for you what I find for me is that my meditation practice and also my self inquiry practice gets richer and deeper when I approach it from different angles now there's a downside to that in that if I'm experimenting dabbling in all these different meditation techniques and observation techniques and stuff acquires it all this it kind of gets messy and you're not really focusing enough and that can be a problem in its own right but also a one of the advantages of that approach is that you do get multiple angles and you see how all this stuff interconnection converges in a rich and very fascinating way and so I recommend kind of a hybrid approach where you do it in a broad way but then also at the end if you really want to have some deep deep insights and enlightenment insights whatever then you go laser focused maybe on one technique for a hall retreat or for a whole month or whatever for a whole year if you need to but for the purposes of this episode I don't want you to think of it as meditation I'm not talking about meditation here I'm talking about observation and if you've never meditated before that's fine just think this is observation start to practice it a little bit here and there until you start to notice what I'm talking about the most important thing I'm talking about here is that I want you to notice that just by observing a thing something magical will start to happen there's a secret power there and if you remember my other very popular episode called awareness alone is curative I think that's one of the most important episodes for folks to watch of mine because in that episode I also sort of talked about this issue how a lot of your problems in life they actually autocorrect when you just apply the light of awareness to those problems it's a little hard to believe until you start to really get into building up your awareness and practicing this observation stuff so you might want to check out that episode along with this one so what are the key things for you to observe in your life self-deception self bias self justification the self in general all the you do all your shenanigans all your dirty secrets emotions of course physical objects like I was talking about the maple leaf the pen the pencil that's all good stuff just sitting with a physical object and really observing it can be a powerful a powerful practice and it's actually a really good one to start with because when you're observing the mind the mind is very tricky and it's very difficult to observe the mind it's a lot easier to start with observing physical objects observe also nature observe other people observe observing other people is difficult you think you're observing other people but actually you're judging them you're criticizing them you're arguing with them you're manipulating them you're using them for whatever needs you have that you need field that is not observation it's really tricky with people you got to just sit there and observe people and observe how do you relate to people that's tricky maybe you can go sit on a park bench and just watch people but that's not enough you also need to observe people that you're actually interacting with in your everyday life observe your spouse observe your girlfriend your boyfriend your kids your your co-workers so forth observe people in the news without judging them that's really hard it's really hard especially these days well hold on nonsense is going on in politics and news observe society observe culture again without judging it that's not easy to do observe ideology observe tribalism observe belief systems both in yourself and in others and again that's not easy to do without judging it observe evil without judging it that's really hard to do for a lot of people so you got your work cut out for you there's a lot of areas that you can apply this technique to now you might wonder well Leo does this contradict your prior episode about learning equals behavior change because there you said that hey I didn't learn a jack until I changed my behavior now you're telling me that I just got to sit there and observe something a stupid leaf that doesn't change my behavior so what's the deal here right these are different perspectives and there might be paradox and contradiction here that you have to reconcile and cope with that's fine I think that they actually dovetail nicely together they synergy so learning equals behavior change is a great way to kind of force yourself to actually learn the lessons that you haven't been learning whereas learning equals observation he's a different angle to come at it from but ultimately it sort of leads to the same place because like I said in my awarenesses curative episode when you just observe a thing for a very long time very patiently you'll discover that in the end your behavior will start to change that's what's so remarkable about it but that's like in the long run in the short run that might not happen and that's okay so practice learning equals behavior change for a month then practice learning equals observation for a month and see the pros and cons and then see the differences the paradoxes and also the similarities and the synergies there you want to be an amazing human being cultivate the ability to observe most people don't do this on the other hand the sages the Saints the Yogi's the Mystics the geniuses the ancients throughout history they were all masters masters of observation that's where a lot of their power came from and you know what the ultimate test of your observation power is it's whether you can see the most subtle thing of all can you see nothingness that's the ultimate test nothing this is right here right now you're inside of it you are it but you don't see it because your observation ability is so weak it's too subtle for you to pick it up even though it's right here as I'm speaking to you and what I want to end on is returning to Leonardo da Vinci because I said that Leonardo da Vinci was a masterful observer so let's put him to the test do you think he was masterful enough to pass the ultimate test could he see nothingness let me give you his answer to that he writes quote among the great things which are found among us the existence of nothing is the greatest its essence dwells between the past and the future and possesses nothing of the present nothingness has no center and its boundaries are nothingness this nothingness has the part equal to the whole and the whole to the part the divisible to the indivisible and it comes to the same amount whether we divide it or multiply it or add to it or subtract from it everything isn't folded into everything everything comes from everything and everything is made out of everything and everything returns into everything and quote that is from zen master da vinci he took his observation abilities to the highest levels and i recommend that you follow his lead that's it I'm done here remember to click that like button for me don't forget come check out actualize that org my website I got a blog I keep posting a lot of cool insights on the blog the forum the life purpose course my book lists other stuff coming in the future and stick with me for more next week you