superliteracy.org

Gradients

Fact: It is impossible to learn a more complex subject before understanding basic principles upon which it is based.
Gradients are inherent in all universes. The term gradient constitutes an infinite-valued logic, as opposed to simple dichotomies yes/no, right/wrong etcetera.

Gradients are a SuperLiteracy tool of gentle instruction and timed relative accomplishments, most applicable to practical applications and skills. Gradients are defined as the inclination, or amount of a slope vertically along a horizontal plane and probably derives from the word salient, from the Latin salire ~ leap.

The term also implies a grade, degree or rank and is relative to all our goals as they generally extend horizontally from us into the world and the future.

It also connotes relative position of ascent, so even our spiritual evolution seems to be governed by it.

Gradation and grades are both qualities assigned by consciousness, and denote a transition or advancement as well as classification and categorization both of which contain elements of this. Of course we can be going in a direction other than advancing forward but even the slippery slope to ruin has a degree of gradient. No-one slides into obscurity or oblivion instantaneously.

In fact, there is good evidence that the very nature of life and consciousness prevent it for time rules all things.

In study and learning new skills and abilities gradients are especially important as all knowledge is founded on prior assumptions, beliefs and knowledge. Our stability and certainty is enhanced by the gradients of repetition, familiarity and practice. It is difficult for most of us to do brain surgery before having studied basics first and I have yet to meet the person who is excluded from this rule.

So, take your time. Look and then contemplate what you have understood. Is there more meaning or application available to it? Applying what you learn piece by piece is easier than jumping in the deep end of the pool. Take your time and ensure that you fully grasp and can apply, at least to the extent of your desire and reason for learning in it the first place before moving on to something else.

The feeling that comes with overstepping or missing a gradient is a sense of being overwhelmed. Try repeating some complicated motions such as doing several things at once in an exact sequence and you will get the picture.

Gradients also apply to both reading and communication skills and the phenomena of blankness that follows passing by misunderstood words without clarifying the correct definition and meaning of each word of and the whole meaning of the thought is in fact a form of skipped gradient. So in life, the same thing applies. Just remember a time when you had too many people demanding your attention and you have a practical example of the experience of a skipped gradient.

This barrier can appear very similar to the confusion caused by passing by a misunderstood word and is most pronounced in action i.e. doing, especially application sequences. It may be assumed that when a person has difficulty that they didn’t not fully understand and integrate a prior action step. This is too steep a gradient; the person hasn’t taken sufficient time and effort to assimilate the information in practice.

Remedy: This barrier is handled with a gradual approach and practice, building the confidence and certainty. Doing integrates understanding. The trick is that if you feel even slightly confused or overwhelmed, simply slow down and break the actions into smaller chunks, clarify and practice, practice, practice.

Tags: , application, first things first, gradients, overwhelm, sequences, skipped steps, tiny steps

Precise Meaning of Words

Fact: You cannot understand, learn or ever really effectively apply any data, information or knowledge unless you understand the exact, precise and specific meanings of the words and terminology being used as well as the precise meaning intended in each instance!

This phenomenon is the most prevalent and deadly and therefore the most important!

Here is how to recognize the symptoms.

• Have you ever thought something was one way only to discover that that was not how it worked at all?
• Have you ever been reading a book or materials and found you have no idea of what you have just read?
• Have you ever encountered a not-there feeling and sort of nervous hysteria while studying a subject?
• Have you ever felt washed-out while studying?
• Have you ever been confused while studying?
• Have you ever studied something and determined that it made no sense at all and was incomprehensible?
• Have you ever given up a study as far too hard and possibly even above your IQ level?
• Have you ever started a study and then began to feel that it was disinteresting, stupid, wrong?
• Have you ever left or just wanted to quit and leave a subject or study?

If you answer yes to any of these questions then you have encountered a very specific barrier to learning and understanding; it is called the Not Understood or Misunderstood Word phenomena.

Like all creations, language has a time-line (sometimes called time-track{s) as well as historical relevance, and is continually evolving year on year. As a general rule our understanding does not share these inner secrets unless we study the actual roots and development of the language as in the field of etymology.

Each and every word in our language/vocabulary has multiple meanings. Sometimes these are shades of a definitions or particular slants and viewpoints but often they are almost completely dissimilar or in some cases may be the same spelling for totally different words from different language roots.

Words, their definitions, meanings and significance hold great power and sway and misunderstandings of any of these, in study and in life, cause an unintended shift of consciousness and so we can be totally oblivious (innocent) to our own ignorance and involvement in why something appears as it does and functions seemingly independent of us, which explains why life doesn’t flow and work for us at times.

If you examine the components of understanding (Flow, Forms & Feelings which together compose our understanding of the experiences of our lives) as graphed in the Essence of Understanding on our The Art of Easy Joy site, you will discover that these factors have dual aspects (or more) and cross both planes of the physical universe and that of thought and consciousness.

All flows create forms. At an intellectual level these forms appear as agreements.

All words have agreed meanings although the particular significance experienced by anyone specifically vary due to gaps in their understanding and experience.

Language itself is an agreement or form of energetic creation. It flows, has movement and direction along a plane relative to the viewer.

Disagreement tends to occur only when personal agendas conflict or the terms are not uniformly understood.

This provides us with the most important barrier to understanding and competence commonly known as a misunderstood word.

Now, this is not the same as a not-understood word, for example the word schieren. Do you know what it means? Well, it is to do with apparatus etc. and means ‘producing light-patterns representing variations in physical properties of gas or other transparent medium.’

For most people this would be a not-understood word whereas a misunderstood word is a word that you think you know its meaning but you aren’t correct. There may be degrees of this and one’s understanding with be askew by the amount of variation from the agreed upon and meant definition. Generally this has little apparent effect on us (it does, but it is transparent i.e. invisible to us) as many words have numerous meanings and not all of them derive from the same root or are even related in concept.

The attendant phenomena of having gone by a word or words in your studies or communications is a feeling of blankness, a non-comprehension usually followed by an outflow of energetic feeling against the ideas expressed. In other words confusion often accompanied by disagreement and a feeling of wanting to give up.

Interestingly, in life this often equates to struggle, feeling helpless and/or not knowing what to do! Abilities we possess as human beings are dependant on our conscious understanding, generally received through close examination and study. Abilities are dependant on our knowing the correct definitions being used while studying materials and ensuring that we are using agreed-upon terms in our communications and dealings with others.

I have yet to meet anyone who has not been reading and suddenly got to some spot on the page and had no idea at all of what it said or meant - this is caused by going past a misunderstood word and not bothering to locate it and clear it up with a good dictionary or with the person you are talking to. Failure to do so can lead to some pretty extreme behaviour as the person feels it having nothing to with them will react if too much pressure is placed on them to understand it and they simply rebel and lash out. In a course room they take breaks, need to use the toilet or have a smoke. Their attention wanders all over the place and they lose sight of why they are studying this ‘dumb’ subject at all. However subjects cannot be stupid, that I am afraid is quality reserved for human beings who fail to recognize that all issues reside with only themselves.

Just as a side-note, when doing healing work I only ever heal within myself. I recognize the disease, illness, pain, situation or whatever the other person is experiencing unwillingly and bring it within and resolve it there. This may sound illogical but it works and is extremely effective for all conditions I have ever encountered and the few times when results have been not quite up to scratch I have always noted later that I either failed to perceive the energy, its nature and quality, and particularly this rule as regards healing or have simply mistaken that nothing happened and other factors were in play that caused events to unfold as they did. It seems space, time, presence and effort are requisites before many people are willing to receive the gift ~ whether of healing or of understanding.

So be alert to the state of your awareness and especially exactly where your attention is in time and space. This will become one of the most useful things I know of and applies in meditation as well, for where your attention is, is the centre of your mind and life and that area will flow its energy to you whether you want it to or not.

Now, you may think that this rule applies to only big or technical words and terms but nothing could be further from the truth. There is a difference between a not understood word and a misunderstood word. The first is easily recognizable, the later is often almost invisible as it is believed to mean something to the student however that definition is inappropriate and not the meaning intended.

Simple Words

Simple words and grammar, learned primarily through mimicry and copying in early childhood, words such as - a, an, be, exist, on, or, such, the, and others which ‘everybody knows’ have been found at the core of an inability to understand and learn and in some cases can affect behaviour so negatively that future prospects are rather limited and grim.

These phenomena (feeling blank, confused, washed out…) are the result of the student going past a word or words which they did not fully understand.
Fact: Stupidity is the resultant effect of accumulated misunderstood words; an earlier misunderstood word in a subject is the key to later misunderstood words in that subject-field.
Remedy: Stop studying whenever your attention begins to wander or you feel a blank state or ‘huh?’ feeling. Look back before this point for a word (or words) which you do not fully understand. It is important to note here that it is often the small words that can trip us up. Words like ‘as’, pronouns, prepositions, and other grammatical terms can and often are incompletely and erroneously understood.

(Whole subject fields can be cleaned up, revitalizing interest and the change in a person can be quite remarkable. It is also possible to even know a great deal about a subject or thing just by understanding the terminology surrounding it.)

Be sure to have a good dictionary; I use the Concise Oxford. However be careful to not to go too far above you personal head as you can end up with a chain of words you have to then look up in order to clarify the one you were looking up. Do not leave misunderstood words or not understood terms that may be in the definition you are clearing up. It is a good idea to get a dictionary that also shows the roots and evolution of words as this can sometimes shift consciousness as much as clarifying what you plan to understand, know about and use in your life.

Go back to where you were doing well and feel good about the material and completely certain you understand that section (demonstrate as needed) Find the word you do not fully comprehend. It (misunderstood word(s) are around the tail-end of that section to the beginning of the section/area causing difficulty and before the symptoms appeared.

Step 2: Always have good dictionaries available (ensure it has root/origins). Clear the first definition, using it in sentences with appropriate usage for that definition. Go to the second definition and clear it, using it in sentences and demonstrating it as necessary to clarify it. Go to the next etc.

Be certain that you do not go by words in the definition you are clearing before clearing them first. This may result in a tail of misunderstood words that may take some time to clarify. Do not despair as (along with a few additional steps) it leads to Super Literacy.

Super literacy is an effortless fluency, the consequence of the clarification of all the words in a (any) subject field. The result of applied SuperLiteracy and Dictionary Magic; it is the learning stage above unconscious competence. When you have achieved Super Literacy you will possess the ability to comfortably, easily and quickly grasp data and be able to immediately apply it.

A form of accelerated learning, Super Literacy leads to full conceptual understanding of any field examined; from Latin super ~ meaning superior in quality or degree, and literacy ~ the ability to read and write from the Latin litterarius, as letter from littera ~ letter of the alphabet, epistle, literature.

Tags: clarification, meaning, multiple definitions, words

Lack of Form and Mass

Fact: Studying a subject in the absence of its mass can produce uncomfortable and distracting physical reactions.

Conscious recognizes three basic elements which comprise understanding; these are Form, Flows and Feelings. In linguistic and grammatical terms this is subject, verb and object (goal).

The first of these: Form is the essential nature, shape, arrangement of parts or mode in which a thing exists or manifests itself; from Latin forma - mould, shape, beauty, and equates roughly to the mass of an object.

Studying about radiology machines and never being allowed to see or touch a radiology machine is enough to drive just about anyone around the bend. It can leave you feeling dizzy, disoriented, bored and exasperated and a sort of sunken collapse or dead inside as if hope had been withdrawn or drained away from you.

This applies even to grade school level students, for example grade two kids being taught simple arithmetic. The student may be being taught by using an example: ‘If Johnny has ten apples, Jane takes three and Harry takes two, however Bob gives him back another one… how many apples does Johnny have now? Yet never give the student any apples creates an imbalance between mass and significance and just makes life as a student tough, if not impossible without adequate reason. You no longer have an excuse.

The key areas to be especially alert for these symptoms is in studying subjective fields which are often proprietary, philosophical or authority-based in nature. These to can be sorted out using demonstration which will reveal and distinguish the practical and workable from those fields founded on ‘beliefs and believing!

Fortunately most of us are capable of a good deal of what is called higher function. This is your ability to understand complex and even vague thoughts which have little to do with the world we commonly experience in our day to day lives.

All considerations of love involve personal twists and turns, tweaks of conscious understanding that have more to do with our inner universe than practical matter of survival. All art, music, higher mathematics and a good deal of science falls into this category. Life would be pretty plain and at least for me utterly boring if this were not so and therefore I am grateful that this is so.

However this is exactly why we have diversity, not only of life forms but of opinions of truth which is exactly why we have disagreements, upsets, arguments and a whole plethora of human weaknesses.

This barrier lies behind the “I’m (or we’re) only human” plight that spouts from so many mouths. It is simply an invisible or transparent factor which few have actually understood. That factor: lack of mass and /or agreement of viewpoints on what is being studied.

Whenever we are dealing with these barriers to learning, understanding and competence, one or another barrier can often assert it. In a worse case scenario, the person asserts their beliefs (personally created or recreated in the moment) against that of another or to others or we end up going around and around feeling rather fuzzy as to the actuality and truth of what we are looking at, talking about or studying.

This is the major reason why the belief persists that nobody really knows what he mind, consciousness and life really are. Somehow opinion is traded for facts and we end up on a downward spiral and feel the mass in our heads.

You can spot a student who is experiencing this lack of mass phenomena (conflict of know/unknown) as they will undoubtedly end up with their head in their hands and look as if they are actually carrying a weight around with them. The physical body will sag and slump along with their emotional tone.

The reason for this is that the mind is not significance. It is not just beliefs and thoughts combined in the flow of thinking and believing. The mind is a real thing created out of whole cloth by all spiritual beings. It is their link with the world of illusions, the here and now. It is the mechanism of estimating survival values and it has actual mass (though tiny) as well as significance.

The connection to experience of this mass is regulated and increases via a number of factors the two primary one’s being where your attention is and how fixedly it is stuck to its beliefs rather than recognizing that you are the origin and source of all beliefs. This gap in accurate understanding of life causes what is traditionally known as Maya or the Illusion of Reality.

The other primary factor is the serious with which you hold any experience or belief and whether or not it is unwanted and resisted.

Fields and disciplines that are most affected by this phenomena are those where there is an absence of mass in the study of a subject, such as learning about the electronics of TV’s and never seeing one or when there is an lack of perceptible mass is or its for one reason or another is outside the individuals perceptual range. There can be many reasons for this and fixed beliefs are on top of the pile but the remedy is always to get your hands on it, touch it, look at it, feel it, study it, and understand it even more than you may already. Kick it about; discuss it and get some agreement and the tired, heavy feelings disappear.

This barrier is one of the most ignored one’s in schools and universities and is in part why there is an emphasis on repeating what others thought and so little new insights by students into fields they are studying until they have put it all into practice as some other exercise than studying a subject field.

The key is demonstration. Anything that can be thought of can be demonstrated and the principles clarified and expanded upon which almost always reveals practical uses of the data which is the very definition of wisdom, i.e. making life better for all of us thorough intelligent consideration.

An excellent tool for this purpose and one that should be right next to your dictionary is a demonstration kit or demo kit. This consists of any small objects that can be used to represent the different things that make up something or any action. I myself have collected a number of small figurines, miniature toy model cars, buses, trucks, buildings and pieces of string and elastics, paper clips, marbles and blocks of wood that have some weigh (i.e. mass) to them to represent the ideas (Flows, Forms, Feel and Experience) I wish to show and reveal to self or demonstrate to another.

Mind-maps are another excellent way to familiarize yourself and expand your personal awareness and understanding of whatever you are studying and learning. While they are generally not as good as a demo kit to reveal function and operation of principles they can easily be jotted down with little interruption to the flow of study and of course you can make each drawing represent the way its actually looks in real life. While this isn’t crucial, it is helpful whereas if you are using a piece of string to denote an area such as a room you must keep that (what it is) in mind.

Remedy: Watch for the symptoms and frequently and regularly use demonstration to make the materials more real, give a proper balance to significance and mass as well as discover what’s important or not in the materials. Use demonstration as the Key to Competence! Use objects with mass to show how the factors being studied work together. Sensory-based mind-maps, diagrams, drawings, pictures and images, videos can all represent the promise of the missing mass.

The word demonstration comes from the Latin term demonstrat- demonstrare ~ to point out, show, prove and thus this barrier also manifests as a lack of certainty and an inability to recall and apply the information effectively.

However there is another Form which our understanding of anything takes and that is the labels, grammar and linguistic elements we endow each thing with by consideration. Usually this is done below the level of waking consciousness and so we make little or no distinction between an object and its label. However labels are always superficial, and with such a low level of perceptual penetration hardly constitute study; do not confuse the two.

This leads us to… Precision Distinction & Discrimination

Tags: , Discrimination, Distinction, lack of form & mass, precision

Purposeful Will

Fact: There must be a willingness to learn and know as well as a goal and purpose to apply the data at some point in the future!

No one can make an intelligent activity of any study or education in the absence of purpose and in studying a subject or field that purpose can be no higher than the appropriate application of knowledge to the betterment of our fellow man and society. Our reasons and reasoning are so intricately tied to our goals for doing things that a study for curiosities sake hardly qualifies as studying at all. I suppose I can imagine some merit in it, but those are fluffy and meaningless without purpose that I wonder if there is not at least an unconscious element of this in everything we do. the trick is to make it conscious and deliberate.

Instead, in far too many educational system we substitute schooling technology (not the same as study) memorization and word for word systems of education which leave no room for the gain of any knowledge and leads to graduates who can parrot back answers with no real understanding or ability to apply and implement the information being studied.

Remedy: A deliberate intention to learn and apply knowledge in a wise and timely fashion stated each time you start to study refocuses consciousness and establishes these priorities.

Tags: purpose, will

Being Interested: Suspending Judgement ~ Not Knowing

Fact: You cannot study a subject if you believe you know all about it!

Understanding is composed of awareness of forms, flows and feeling, of memories, considerations, beliefs and believing, but access to these mental attributes and abilities is often impeded by natural barriers created from the mind’s filtering mechanisms and the ego’s limited viewpoint and objectives.

The primary portal to learning anything begins with a desire and intention to do so. Like a request for healing, learning and growth work best if we start with an appropriate approach.

Start from a viewpoint of curiosity about the secrets, mysteries and unknown aspects of creation and move into insights, enlightenment and beyond. Along the way you will find that perspective, experience (or lack of), knowledge, ideas exposure and other variables such as personal relevance and importance, influence and often bias our choices and decisions and we must remain aware of and take this into account.

First and foremost hold the thought in recognition that ‘I do not know but I want to.’ This doesn’t mean you go into denial of what is known but that even these can have other aspects and viewpoints from which to be viewed.

All consciousness is seriously limited; all of us are, by the very fact of our limited identities, experience and interests. Once you are over this barrier you can start to actually be interested and this cannot be overstated as a quality characteristic of consciousness.

To succeed in life you must be very INTERESTED - not interesting! Who really cares who you are or what you think or believe? Well I’ll tell you, and please don’t take this personally - absolutely no one! So the caring is all down to you… do you?

This is your motivation for change, what do you really want from life and how are you planning to get it? My reasons for telling you this is that these ideas will provide you with a spotlight toward workable methodologies we can use to dramatically increase intelligence, awareness, understanding and the very quality of our lives.

Remedy: The gateway to knowing is through the door of unknowing, in other words you must be able to set aside what you believe you know about something before you can ever really study it.

Tags: curiosity, intention, interest, knowing, not knowing, suspend judgment

Tony Buzan

Tony Buzan (1942- present) is the originator of mind mapping and coined the term mental literacy. He was born in London and received double honours in Psychology, English, Mathematics and the General Sciences from the University of British Columbia in 1964.

He is probably best known for his book, Make the Most of Your Mind, his promotion of mnemonic systems and his mind-mapping techniques.Following his 1970s series for the BBC, many of his ideas have been set into his series of five books: Use Your Memory, Master Your Memory, Use Your Head, The Speed Reading Book and The Mind Map Book.

He has gained somewhat of a cult following due to his evangelical and promotional vision of world mental literacy, spiritual intelligence, and sensual intelligence, among other controversial topics such as mental stimulation through sensuality, synchronization of left and right brain, and the belief in intellectual abundance. As such, he is often known as the “mind map guru”, although the mind map has been used for centuries and the modern mind map was developed by Dr. Allan Collins during his research on semantic networks during the early 1960s. Tony Buzan claims that mind map was inspired by the works of A. E. van Vogt, the Scientology advocate and science fiction writer.

As a popular psychology author, Tony Buzan has written on subjects relating to the brain, genius quotient (GQ), memory, creativity and speed reading. He is President of the Brain Foundation, the founder of the Brain Trust Charity, the World Memory Championships and the World Championships of the Brain. He has been involved with the running of the Mind Sports Olympiad.

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Tags: mind-maps