Wisdom Quote: Sit And Be Taught

The secret is to learn to sit at the feet of your life and be taught. --Polly Berrien

Are you willing to continually learn and grow? If so, you will find important and imminently useful lessons all around you, even in the most mundane things. Virtues such as gratitude, patience, compassion and wisdom develop when we are willing to learn about ourselves at any moment and from any source.

It's neither possible nor necessary to always be learning some big life lesson. A more realistic goal is to just get better at noticing what you can about yourself as you go about your day. Sometimes it's all you can do to go with the flow (a lesson in and of itself) while at other times you can wake up to the many precious teachings surrounding us like fruit on the vine.

Here are some related quotes about learning that I find helpful:

Sell your cleverness and buy bewilderment. -- Rumi

It's hard to be teachable when you think you know it all. Although you've been around the block a few times there's a whole lot more to learn if you are open to the possibility. Remember this Serbian proverb:

Be humble for you are made of dung. Be noble for you are made of stars.

This mixture of nobility and humility is also expressed in this lovely quote by Chogyam Trungpa:

You are living in a rich world, one that never runs out of messages. If you are being too arrogant, you will find yourself being pushed down by heaven, and if you are being too timid, you will find yourself being raised up by earth.

This suggests that life itself is capable, even willing, to guide you on your path of learning and growth. Your only requirement is to be alert and receptive. When we are open to learning from this moment, all the messages and lessons we can use will be available to us. We will both evoke and invoke much richer meaning in our lives. As Pema Chodron teaches:

This very moment is the perfect teacher and, lucky for us, it’s with us wherever we are.....The source of wisdom is whatever is happening to us right at this very moment.....Our teacher is not separate from our experience.

I feel like I could go on and on, but that's enough for today. Know when to start, know when to stop....that's a lesson I recognize for myself in this moment!
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