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Huge learning today. In this article I’ll take you through two ways to see why you can’t learn, don’t learn, and won’t learn, unless… and I am not talking about information, learning about, I am talking about learning to do…
The world is changing rapidly… and unless YOU change, you’ll be a casualty.
To change when the world changes you need to learn a lot of new stuff… and unlearn just as many. So the fittest that will survive is the one who can and willing to learn.
So this morning I actually managed to stand to the side and see from there that the past hijacked my vision and masqueraded as the present. And I saw that this may be universal: it is not just for me, but for you too.
All my life I had the self-image that I can’t. I can’t figure it out. I can’t learn to do something from a book, because I can’t figure out even the user manual of a software I have bought.
It was never 100% true, but I kept on insisting that I needed someone to sit down with me and teach me, like my elementary school teacher taught me to write the letters, by holding my hand that held the pencil.
So my self-image got stuck in what was probably appropriate 69 years ago.
So yesterday I signed up to a course that I only need a small segment of it, but of course had to pay full price, on using ChatGPT, this new AI.
BECAUSE I didn’t think I could figure it out on my own.
I used to advertise for assistants who were willing to learn a software or a process and then teach it to me… unsuccessfully. Could not find one…
But ultimately I missed out on a lot of opportunities because of this already knowing. I already knew I could not. So I didn’t challenge it.
I have students who think they can’t… and don’t even try.
The fields
They are afraid to challenge the ‘status quo’… they live in mother-child, the field, where the mother sacrifices her time and her own ambitions to ‘wipe your ass’ for you.
Father-child is entirely different: the father may show it to you, but even after that, you need to figure out on your own. No handholding.
Some of my students live in admirer-admired… also not conducive to learning… it is not a good field to want to learn. Neither is playmate-sibling.
I thought that I lived in father-child, the field, but I am now hesitating.
In situations when I would be ‘the child’ I automatically switch to mother-child, expecting the other to ‘wipe my ass’. It seems that no-one wants to be that kind of teacher, service provider, and hasn’t. So my attempts at getting coaching, being taught have been bitter disappointments all my life.
Teaching, coaching, healing are all in father-child.
The father figure disseminates whatever they have, knowledge, instruction, energies… And the child figure does their better than best to actually act on what they are given: use it.
If there is a mismatch between what the two people consider the field, no learning, no growth, no healing can take place.
Father-child, the field, is an uneven field. The father is the giver by the nature of the field, and the child is the recipient.
The training principle I learned back in 1987, that to be trained you need to be willing and able to declare yourself incompetent in the topic-matter is the way the child needs to be in that field.
I’ve known about the distinction: fields for about 16 years now. But knowing about something does nothing, I haven’t known known the fields.
And that is exactly why it’s happened: I teach in father-child… but people, my clients, my students listen in a field that is not that.
If I want to be effective as a teacher I need students/clients in the father-child’s child mindset, or no learning will take place.
And it’s not just me. There is no chance to learn in the other fields.
So if you haven’t EVER learned anything, if you have no skills, no working knowledge, then the first thing that you need to learn is to move to another field, a field where you can learn.
Everyone has THE field which they consider their home field. When I measure your rigidity, ultimately what I measure is to what degree you insist on living in a field of your choice and expecting everything in that field to be given to you.
Unless you can willingly move to the father-child field with me, where you are willing to be the child who is instructed, who has declared themselves teachable because they don’t know… you are wasting your time and money ‘studying’ with me.
What can be in the way of you taking on the role of the one to be instructed?
Your self-image mainly. If you consider that the way to succeed with me is to trigger the mother in me: you’ll never learn from me.
If you consider that you are smarter than me, and learning from me permanently damages your Precious I… you’ll never learn from me.
No matter what is the case, if you are not effectively learning from me… struggling to do what I ask you to do, send me mile long reports on your progress, then you are in the wrong field. Not father-child… Or you are in father-child, but you’ve assumed the ‘not-child’ role, or relegated me to the ‘not father’ role.
Just consider that I am this person, only interested in dissemination of what I know. I am not interested in you admiring me. I am not interested in you being chatty with me, praising me, giving me gifts. And I am definitely not interested in hearing your entire thought process…
In the father-child field that is considered ABUSIVE behavior… abusing the father.
I am interested in seeing that the knowledge went through, that you are able to do what I taught you to do. Not a drawn out demonstration, not adulation, not admiration, not relationship, none of that.
In every field every participant can be in either of the two positions: yes or no. yes father or not father. yes child or not child. yes admirer or not admirer. yes mother or not mother, etc.
I am not your mother!
In the instances where I wanted handholding, the other clearly refused… by acting out ‘not-mother’. Occasionally they even said it: I am not your mother! I was always flummoxed by that, WTF?! But I just got to see now that people instinctively know what field they are and that there is an expectation of them that doesn’t match the field.
People who can’t tolerate this mismatch won’t even try to teach. They write. Or speak. But don’t even want to hear the hollow or empty echo.
On webinars I hear and have always pondered what it is that some employees of famous teachers show condescension, contempt to their employer, the teacher.
I heard it many times and was always appalled.
But the answer to that is very simple, although is entirely in the invisible…
the answer is in the field…
The employee lives in the playmate-sibling field where giving respect is not possible. Neither is learning, of course. Only competition, bullying…
So I am going to do an experimental course
An experimental course where I am going to teach the fields. Recognizing what field you are in… recognizing what field the other is in… learn to see the mismatch.
Move to the field that makes the interaction useful and productive.
- One of my students is in admirer-admired with me. And in father-child with her husband. Neither work, and she is unhappy.
- Another one of my students is in mother-child with me. And in father-child with other people… disseminating mind-knowledge… but his life doesn’t work, it can’t. He has no real knowledge, all because of the field.
- A third student is like a psychopath with NLP… will pretend to move from role to role to field to field, hoping to please me. But NO LEARNING is taking place. He is soon to be ex-student.
Pretending to be a student
I can see that I should include a third position for all the participants: the pretending-to-be position. Pretending to be child… hiding contempt, superiority, and unwillingness to be dominated.
Yeah, the father-child field can be considered a field where
unless you are willing to be dominated by the child position, you won’t be willing to learn.
If you consider your ‘safety’ higher than learning, then you will at best pretend to be child, but pretense won’t cut it. Sorry.
You didn’t expect the article go to this dark place, did you?
But if we consider that most people don’t have any useful productive knowledge, skills, finding out why can be a positive thing.
Because when you know what has been rendering you hopeless, you can learn to overcome it.
It is just like that with illnesses: when an illness is accurately identified, then it can be dealt with. But until then you’ll do all kinds of things… take doses of antibiotics meant for a horse, change your diet, do purging, detox, superfoods… what have you, but won’t get well.
Or in the learning environment, you won’t get any useful knowledge. And then you die. Lol. I know it’s not funny, but it is!
Maybe this is the real undertow of ‘the mass of men live in quiet desperation’.
The format for this experimental course on the fields will be a 90% practice, and only 10% instruction. What is the practice? It is documenting, every day, what field you have your interactions in. Until and unless you develop the feel for it, all the rest will be just talking.
I have no idea how long it would take… that is why it’s an experimental course with 2-3 participants.
Learn the fields so you can become effectivePS: You relate to everything inside a field. A book, a course, an assignment. Sex. Food. Entertainment.
So if you are in any of my challenges AND opt to be in this new experimental course, one of your reports will be: in what field are you doing that other challenge? And you’ll see why it, maybe, isn’t effective… not as you hoped it would be.
PPS: Another way to say this thing is: every field has four (six?) ROLES, A, not-A, pretending to be A, B, not-B, pretending to be B.
The hallmark of a 1000, as opposed to an eight billion is that a 1000 has no problem being child in the father-child field… while the eight billion will refuse to.
It’s cultural. Has to do with religion more than anything else.
- Christianity is either mother-child or admirer-admired
- Judaism is all father-child. the synagogue is called: Beit Knesset: the house where assemble to debate, not to worship. No worship in Judaism.
- Islam is admirer-admired as is Hinduism
- Spirit religions are mother-child
Let me know if you disagree with my assessments about the fields that religion happens.
In my relationship with Source, occasionally I want to switch to mother-child… but Source is not interested. So I return to father-child where we debate.
PPPS: there is a fourth field called partnership. You cannot get there without the four other fields’ intimate knowledge… you can pretend, but pretense will kill the relationship and kill YOU.
