The Six Most Important Lessons I Learned At MIT: #4/6

Hi,

I'm Brent Michael Phillips,

And welcome back for our series here on the six most important spiritual lessons I learned when I was at MIT.

And it's fascinating,

I look back at the time in my life.

Of course,

I went to MIT to get a technical education,

To make me smart,

To learn about computers,

To become a software engineer.

But I look back on it now and honestly,

The most valuable things I've learned,

The really life-changing stuff,

Had almost nothing to do with technology or engineering or math or computers.

In fact,

A lot of it,

I didn't even learn in the classroom or from a textbook or a professor.

But this one,

Lesson number four,

Is something I learned in a classroom from a professor.

And it's this,

You can't learn something until you already almost know it.

That's so critical.

You cannot learn something until you already almost know it.

And I know if you take a few minutes to think back in your life and take a serious,

Honest look at it,

So many of the tragedies,

The traumas,

The losses,

The frustrations,

The struggles,

Result directly from trying to do or learn something that you weren't ready for.

You tried to dive into something that you didn't already almost know.

Now,

The principle is pretty easy,

Right?

If we look,

For example,

At math,

If you're really smart,

I can teach you calculus.

But if you don't already have some foundation in arithmetic,

Geometry,

Trigonometry,

Algebra,

I cannot teach you calculus.

It doesn't matter how smart you are or what a good teacher I am,

It won't make sense to you.

It'll sound like I'm speaking in a foreign language.

Why?

If you don't have arithmetic under your belt and at least some level of algebra and basic geometry,

You cannot learn calculus.

It's impossible.

That's just how it is.

One of the things my late mentor would often say,

And there's so much value in this,

He would say,

We go through every stage of life for important reasons.

In other words,

There's important spiritual reasons why we're infants,

Why we're toddlers,

Why we're little kids,

Why we're teenagers,

Why we're young adults,

Middle-aged people,

Old people,

Really elderly,

Venerable people.

There's enormous spiritual value in every stage of life.

But so many of us are racing ahead trying to get to the part we like,

That we totally miss where we're at.

And the fact is,

There's nothing wrong with being at any stage of life.

And similarly,

There's nothing wrong with being at any particular stage of knowledge.

As an example,

You can have a toddler,

Say a three-year-old,

Who is incredibly brilliant.

But you take that three-year-old,

You throw them into an upper-division engineering class at a university,

And they will struggle.

Why?

It's not their fault.

They're three,

Right?

You can't do upper-division engineering when you're three.

I don't care how smart you are.

Similarly,

You can't take a six-year-old and stick him in the NBA or Major League Baseball,

Right?

It's nothing personal.

Maybe when the kid grows up,

He'll be the greatest athlete the world has ever seen.

But that's the point with our knowledge too.

So many of us have so many judgments about where we're at.

We're all trying to race forward.

We're all trying to get ahead of where we're at right now.

When really,

All you need to do is take an honest look at where you are and where you want to go,

And ask yourself,

Am I trying to learn something that I already don't almost know?

Am I trying to achieve something that I'm already not almost ready to achieve?

If you are,

It's likely to end in disaster and failure.

And spiritual work is no different.

If we look at the Hawkins Scale of Consciousness,

I'm a big fan.

I don't think it's perfect,

But I think it's a really good model,

Really powerful thinking tool.

It's a scale of consciousness that goes from zero to a thousand.

And he has a chart with different emotions and mindsets and moods and worldviews that are correlated to different levels of consciousness.

And on this human journey we're on,

You cannot skip steps.

You can't skip steps when you're learning math.

You can't skip steps when you're learning energy healing.

You can't skip steps when you're trying to raise your consciousness.

Same thing that,

Like I said earlier,

We go through every stage of life for an important reason.

You can't jump from being an infant to being a teenager.

No,

It does not work.

Similarly,

You cannot launch ahead 50 points on the scale of consciousness overnight as much as you want to.

Right?

Nobody goes straight from little league to major league baseball.

That's pretty much impossible.

We have to be okay with where we're at.

But here's what really trips us up.

This is why we struggle.

This is why we have so many setbacks and problems and so much pain.

We're all racing ahead to be more advanced.

No one wants to hear that we need fundamentals or basics.

It's kind of funny.

One of the things I heard once that there was the survey done and they found that over 90% of American men think that they're both above average drivers and above average lovers.

Now,

Of course,

That's hilarious,

Right?

You can't have 90% of men all being above average at anything,

Right?

That's mathematically impossible.

But over 90% of men think they're both above average drivers and above average lovers.

If you think you're really good at something,

You're not going to stop and learn what you actually need to learn to move ahead.

It keeps us stuck.

It's a sabotage mechanism.

And it doesn't matter if you're learning math or you're practicing a sport or energy healing or raising your consciousness.

You can't skip steps.

Every stage,

Every phase is really important.

And one is not better than the other.

A teenager is not inherently better or worse than a toddler or a young adult.

No.

But we all want to think we're advanced.

No one wants to stop to learn the fundamentals.

Why?

It's boring.

It's not sexy.

It's not exciting.

If we look,

For example,

At the world of mixed martial arts,

I trained with an MMA fighter in my younger days in Brazilian jiu-jitsu.

And it was fascinating stuff.

And here's what he taught me.

He said,

Imagine this with a Brazilian accent,

Right?

He said,

Brent,

If you want to be a great fighter,

The way you get there is simple.

You practice the basics over and over and over for years and years.

And that's how you become a great fighter.

That's how he got invited to the Ultimate Fighting Championship.

And I kind of know about this because when I was studying martial arts,

There was a handful of times I had to answer the phone at the dojo.

And it's interesting.

Almost everyone calling,

They would ask two questions.

One,

How long will it take me to get a black belt?

And two,

How long will it take me to kick ass?

And I'd see it over and over.

People would come in and say,

No,

No,

No.

I don't want to learn a basic punch or a basic kick or a basic grapple.

I want to do a flying kick.

I want to break boards.

I want to get my black belt.

And so this is not about martial arts.

This is about everything in our lives.

You can't learn something until you already almost know it.

You can't skip steps.

But the ego blinds us.

Our personal mythology blinds us.

It convinces us that we're more advanced,

More skilled than we actually are.

Why?

The ego thrives on that.

Everyone loves being good at things,

Right?

And there's nothing wrong with that.

But there is a problem when we get blinded to the reality by the coloration,

The skewing,

The perspective that the ego gives because it wants to feel good about itself.

And here's a funny thing about the ego.

The ego loves to be the star of the show,

But it doesn't actually care if the attention is good or bad.

It just wants to be in the middle.

Another thing my late mentor would say along this point,

He would tell us that experts are the slowest learners.

In other words,

The more you think you know about something,

The harder it is for you to move forward.

Why is that?

It's pretty simple.

In order to learn something,

You must both have knowledge and a place for the knowledge to go.

Similar to the fact that you can't learn something until you already almost know it,

You also can't learn something you think you already know.

So many of us already think we know everything.

This is why men famously don't like to ask for directions.

Why?

We think it makes us look weak.

We think it makes us look less powerful.

We think we're supposed to have all the answers,

But the fact is that nobody does.

So if you really want to be successful,

If you really want to move your life ahead,

Stop and take an honest look at exactly where you're at.

What's it going to take for you to move forward?

If you don't,

You'll end up with a dangerous case of what I call green belt syndrome.

So what is green belt syndrome?

Well,

I learned this in martial arts,

Where in a lot of martial arts,

At least in America,

You get a white belt and you practice for a while,

Then you get a yellow belt and so on,

Right?

Usually you'll get your green belt,

Depending on the system and the teacher,

Maybe after a year or two of practice.

Here's why it's dangerous.

When you're a green belt,

You've learned something for sure.

You've learned how to do basic punches and kicks.

You've had some success with sparring.

You've broken a few boards.

And all of a sudden you think you're a badass.

That's why it's dangerous.

Someone that has never trained in martial arts,

They know they're not a badass,

Right?

So they're not going to get involved in a fight unless there's no other way out of it.

But green belts,

They say,

Are the most dangerous because they think they're badasses,

But they're not.

And it's great if you've practiced a year or two of karate or jiu-jitsu or taekwondo or whatever,

That's awesome.

But don't think it makes you a master fighter.

You get into a real fight with someone that actually knows how to fight.

You're going to get your butt handed to you more often than not.

And so it's interesting,

By the time you get to be a black belt,

That goes away because you realize how little you know and how dangerous real fights are.

So you tend not to do it.

And so again,

This has nothing to do with fighting or martial arts.

This is your life.

This is your career.

This is your spiritual practice.

This is how you're moving ahead in consciousness.

Watch out for the know-it-all syndrome.

Watch out for thinking you are more advanced than you are.

And if you really want to move your life ahead,

Get some feedback.

Tap into your intuition.

Get some training.

Work for someone who's been on that road before and actually knows what they are doing.

If you like me and my material,

I would love to work with you.

Wherever you go,

Whatever you're trying to do,

Don't try to learn things you don't already almost know.

Don't try to achieve things you haven't already become ready to achieve.

And if you do that,

I think you'll move a lot further in life,

A lot faster,

With a lot less pain and obstacles and struggle.

That's all I got to say for today,

And I'll be back very soon with more in the series.

Until then,

Take care and namaste.