These three words — I can learn — are the most powerful three words in any language. Nothing in the universe can hold down that rare individual who clearly realizes that he or she doesn’t know what’s in the way of his or her happiness, but who is willing to find out. If painful patterns are prisons without walls, then a willingness to learn the new and the true is the same as a gateway to freedom.

Our present mind knows of only two possible ways to turn when faced with a personal crisis. But neither of the directions it knows to look in ever resolve anything. Whenever painful events happen, they tend to fall on only one of two sides of a person. The first side is the denial side. When turning this way, refusal rules. Regret, self-pity and endless explanations generally follow. Or, the life blow falls on the angry side where the turning is to burning. Resentment rages. Hatred and feelings of betrayal mushroom into self-righteous plans for avenging the wrong. But what both these sad sides have in common is that they keep the person between them a victim — turning in vain from one side to the other — only to find nothing changes except for the kind of pain found there.

But there exists a third way to turn, a superior choice that leads to a higher life level where neither confusion, conflict, nor crisis is found. I call this higher direction “Turning To Learning”… [to be continued]