Free Your Mind
Reignite the Childlike Charm
“I have never let schooling interfere with my education.”
Do you remember the feeling you had as a kid when you learned something? When you were curious? When you wanted to know more? How it felt so youthful?
We were charmed by learning and spellbound by it. Because of this, each of us may sympathize when we see this almost idyllic quality in children. Seeing them in the present recalls to mind our experience in the past.
Right now you may be thinking of the times when you enjoyed learning something: how rewarding and invigorating it was. Every ounce of knowledge was a breath of fresh air. Something new would keep you entranced. But these may just be memories, long gone. Those days may seem as a thing of the past because learning isn’t what it used to be. You may say that it is the natural course of things, but never in the history of the world have we seen more mind-crippling diseases and disorders, and no one seems to question it.
In our modern sense of education the emphasis we place upon children is to please the teacher and the parents. Going to school, performing well, and getting accepted into a prestigious university in order to have a well-paying job, is ultimately to please authority figures. From an early age we associate learning with submission to those in authority, and that becomes the backdrop of the rest of our lives. Our minds enter into a rigidity, fixed on doing the right things so that we may earn favor with those over us. In other words, we perform well so that we are loved by those who we want to be loved by. The result is that our starvation is two-fold: in love and in understanding.
Our teachers and parents must view themselves not as in authority but rather as under authority. The dominion of education is the feeding of the minds and the souls of students. For this is the highest order and achievement in the sphere of learning. The raison d’être of the teacher is to nourish the student without encumbrance. They are not to trip up or confuse the preciousness of curiosity, for that is the fuel necessary for true learning.
The teacher must not threaten, as ones in authority for they are under the authority of the high end of satiating the minds and the souls of those that come after them. Their exercises of force to display their position flows from pride, and only achieves the next generation’s enslavement to man-pleasing and the opinions of others. Because of this the student is at war with himself for the sake of being at peace with the world. Their affections are razed and neutered; submission is honored more highly than they. This is the consequence, unless they are set free.
But what if you are not in school and want to feed yourself? What if you want to classically educate yourself? This was me. I write from experience not conjecture.
If you are educating yourself, you play two roles: teacher and student. So then, you are the one whose mind is hungry and the one whose task is to feed it with true, beautiful, and good things.
You must not enslave yourself. You must take up the mantle of responsibility and not trip yourself up. If you are well-seasoned in the years of life, then you may ask how do I become free?
This is a challenging task. There are no tricks. There are no hacks. There aren’t any steps to delude yourself into doing something difficult. If you are looking for that, then I can’t help you.
For your soul to be fed you must love learning more than pleasing those around you. Your desire to have a free mind must be greater than your fear of the opinions of others. A list of books and a place to start is easy to find, but doing it and being impervious at the same time is difficult. That is the real difficulty, but it is worth it. It is worth more than silver and gold to have the childlike fervor for knowledge so that you feed your soul. For that I say to you: free your mind.