Conscious Action and Noble Purpose

What is the relationship between conscious action and noble purpose?

Why don’t we learn from our experiences?

Have you ever wondered why it is that history repeats? How could we as a country not recognize the signs of Viet Nam refrained in Iraq? How can people have alcoholic parents and witness horrible interpersonal behavior for years fueled by alcohol and then drink way too much making others and their life miserable?

Isn’t it just tragic that it takes so many generations to seemingly develop an ability to remember that hatred and greed only lead to more hatred and greed?

This entry explores the subject of learning and how it is possible to make best use of the brain’s plasticity to acquire new habits of heart and mind that can lead each of us individually towards noble intentions coupled with skillful actions.

To learn we have to be aware. If I am developing a new skill and only 10% of my attention is invested in learning and the rest is focused upon the future or the past day my ability to use what is going in is severely diminished. I am likely to have a fuller ability to make use of the tools, skills and knowledge if I am reflecting upon what I am hearing, seeing and sensing. Reflection and the tool of observation bring new ideas into the lens of objective observing. My observational skills can deepen, synthesize, and see patterns and themes while ingesting the ideas. In other words, my active participation in learning makes that which is being taken in something that is now partly mine.

I offer that there is a direct connection between the way we view learning and our ability to bring our highest self into our life. The best we are is consciousness-in-action. I define conscious as being an active, objective and observing self in your moment to moment experience. To be conscious is to engage with each interaction. To lead from a point of view of nobility self requires that we be conscious beings. All it takes to be a tiny bit more conscious is to consider as something is being felt, heard, and thought that there is an observer in you that also is looking on able to reflect on what it is experiencing. The moment of observation can turn this event into one in which insight is possible. Insight is to see into something with more depth. Leaders must bring insight into their lives to improve the quality of interaction and communication. Leaders turn the most mundane events and situations into a time of synthesis, insight, development and value.

We cannot learn from life experiences if we are not present at the time it is happening. If we are preoccupied by negative emotions: desire turned towards acquisition, trying to show up another person as less than we are or attempting to win at all costs then we are not looking into experience with observation, objectivity and compassion. We don’t benefit from what is being experienced. Noble leaders are conscious people who reflect upon their experience and look for meaning, value and opportunity to become a better person or to help another be happier and kinder.