Spontaneous Knowledge

Taking on learning projects has been integral to the sourcing of spontaneous knowledge required for pursuing self-education.  The cornerstone of learning projects which I've taken on in recent months has been of building my vocabulary.  As I am a writer, it would make sense that cultivating knowledge of the English language would be a means to further understanding and accomplishment.  Six vocabulary builders have been dispensed with and my command over the English language seems ostensibly close to that which came before this project.  After all, writing does not gain in appeal from big words as much as it does big ideas.

What I have gained from this leap forward in my vocabulary is a greater comprehension in reading.  And it is my belief that this development in skill will—overtime—show itself as manifest in my writing.  Good readers make good writers. 

While good readers make good writers good readers do not necessarily make great learners.  I read a book recently on self-education which was concise and well researched called Connecting the Dots.  The author of this book offered to his readership himself as an example of good scholarly practice.  He reads—as he says—100 books a year.  Please, before I go too far in this essay, do not allow me to purport an untruth—reading is fundamental to learning.  And reading 100 books a year is a great and disciplined way to attain understanding and foresight.  But what I want to say here is that reading cannot generate creativity without a base of skillfulness which allows for freedom from the knowledge obtained by immersing yourself in books.

Centermost to any self-directed learning path should be to have work which you've created to show something of your studies.  After all, as a self-directed learner, you will never have a degree and thus need something tangible which will further your cause.  A lot of knowledge will not get you anywhere unless you've used this knowledge as a venture into the creation of a body of work or carefully crafted skill.  It is here that my earliest attempts at self-education failed which is why here I address this argument in regards to reading.  There was a time when I myself would read well over 100 books in a year and ended up with very little to show for it.

Mind is a source of spontaneous knowledge which can be encumbered by too many facts and hypotheses.  Learning—if not done with the idea that we can co-create a foundation of spiritual emancipation from our relationship to our unique spontaneous knowledge—can be crippling.  Learning is a process of fleshing out spontaneous knowledge whereas reading by itself suppresses this knowledge.  Reading, can be, if not used as a means of transmission between inner and outer worlds, nothing more a means of bottling spontaneous knowledge—and this is injurious to the soul. 

Spontaneous knowledge is the ability of your mind to roam free.  Creating a learning practice should be purposed to create space for your mind to free itself unencumbered by external influences. 

How then does my studying vocabulary help me to better allow my mind to roam the cultural landscape?  Reading is to my learning practice, now, like the night sky would have been to settlers of the old west, and to early navigators of the open waters.  Reading is predictable.  It is a North Star or Big Dipper which can be seen everywhere on the horizon; reading grants my intellectual practice points from which to reference my spontaneous knowledge.  Reading grants me my bearings.  And reading on words, as I have been doing for several months now, has allowed the relationship to my spontaneous knowledge to be unfurled through my writing practice.

Writing is one of the very most expansive of places that my mind wanders.  Having knowledge of words gives my mind the ability to roam the landscape of language while staying a course which will be evidence of the insight that led to my desire to venture of in the first place.  Obtaining the tools to roam my own intellectual landscape without losing sight of the familiar night sky is how I cultivate my relationship to spontaneous knowledge.