Conditioning vs. Insight

There's two distinct ways of learning.

- We can learn by way of assimilation of information (conditioning);
- We can learn by way of experimentation, testing, experience, realising or witnessing (insight).

As kids we assumed that what our parents were saying was true because we loved and had faith in them. Attending school we would assume that what was being taught was true because we believed in our teachers. Later in adulthood we tend to believe in authorities such as governments because that's the way we've been taught to function: to believe in an external authority which dictates to us the rules of the game, what is right and wrong. And as long as we obey that authority and don't create problems, we'll be alright, no punishment, no problems, no worries, no suffering. So our whole understanding of reality is based almost exclusively on this type of learning: 2nd hand knowledge, information, concepts, conditioning. Our way of thinking and interpreting reality is based on this type of learning.

“The world as we have created it is a process of our thinking. It cannot be changed without changing our thinking.”
Albert Einstein

Insight provides us with an unshakable knowing of reality. Unshakable because it's not dependant upon faith, belief or fear, and it goes deeper, to the root of things, and provides direct knowledge. We gain insight when we get our hands dirty and check things out for ourselves.

It requires courage to follow the road of insight. Because often we'll be confronted with experiences and observations which tells us that what we've been trained to believe as being undeniable truths are often not true. This important initial insight might instill a sense of fear and discomfort, making us retract back to our comfort zones, forget all about it and move on with our lives as usual. Or we can choose to pursue this path of investigation and see "how deep the rabbit whole goes".

So getting our hands dirty means to have the guts to go to such forbidden places and check out for ourselves what is in fact real and true. It requires of us to lay aside our prejudices, judgements, assumptions, habits, expectations, and observe. Now this is hard because our egos, our pride, our sense of who we are, will offer resistance to this process.