Category Archives: Education

Subject Glossary (old)

July 31, 2020 – 6:53 PM

Please see Course on Subject Clearing

As you clear a subject, it is helpful to create your own glossary for that subject. You may have that Glossary arranged like a Key Word List or sequenced alphabetically. By putting that glossary on an Excel Worksheet, you can easily switch back and forth between these two arrangements. This will be your own glossary in which the key words are explained the way you understand them. This glossary is dynamic in the sense that you will be updating it continually as your understanding of the subject increases.

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Making the Glossary

The material for the glossary may be prepared during the general study as follows.

(1) Obtain the materials as an editable document on computer.
When you have the study material in an editable format on the computer, you can divide them into manageable paragraphs in each chapter.

(2) Check the paragraph for key words/ideas.
After studying and understanding a paragraph check it to see if contains a key word for that subject and defines it in some way.

(3) Note the key word/idea.
You may note that key word and idea in a different color right after that paragraph, along with any other comment you wish to record.

(4) Summarize all your notes and comments at the end of the chapter.
This keeps your data compact and to the point.

(5) Make a final summary at the end of the study of those materials.
Make this final summary in the form of a glossary on an Excel Worksheet.

(6) Build up the glossary on that subject.
As you study more materials on that subject, follow the procedure above to keep building up the glossary.

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Filling Holes

Set up a view of the glossary that arranges it from the earliest to the latest concepts in the subject. Review these concepts to see if they lead you logically from one to the next. The most important area is the fundamental concepts, where some starting postulates have to be made.

See if there are any gaping holes in the sequence of concepts.  Such a conceptual hole can hide behind an assumption. It can also be an “everybody knows” type consideration. If you find a hole, look for any research done in that area. If not, then there is an opportunity for you to make a discovery.

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Summary

A unique personal glossary is a valuable asset for life. It will grow as you grow. It will come handy in many different ways. It can even become a window into yourself.

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By vinaire | Comments (0)

General Study (old)

July 31, 2020 – 7:22 AM

Please see Course on Subject Clearing

When you are studying a subject from a textbook or any other material, it is very important that you do not go by any word or symbol that you do not understand the meaning of. The moment there is confusion look back for a misunderstood word. A word behaves as a misunderstood when the right definition is not being used for it. You may think that you know the word, but you may not have the right definition. This is specially true for small words like ‘of,’ ‘in’ and ‘on’ because they are used in many different ways.

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Common Words

Here is the recommended procedure for handling common words that are misunderstood.

1. Read one paragraph at a time.
If the paragraph is too long, you may break it down into sub-paragraphs of reasonable size.  If the paragraph is too small, and the thought continues to the next paragraph then read the two paragraphs together. 

2. Take a pause to see if the paragraph is fully understood.
Summarize the paragraph to its main thought. If you can do it easily then you have understood it fully. If you can’t, then find the sentence in that paragraph that is a bit troublesome. Then locate the word in that sentence that doesn’t seem to fit quite right.

3. Look up misunderstood word or symbol if there are any.
A misunderstood word does not always stand out. It may be a familiar word for which you may be using the wrong definition. So, you check the word out.

4. Determine the broad concept of the word from its etymology.
You may google the etymology or look it up in a simple dictionary.

5. Check its definition in the present context.
A common word has many different definitions. Apply each of them in the present context to see which one fits the best. To do so, visualize each definition. You may use “google image” to visualize something concrete like “oak”. Or, you may make some real-life examples from your experience to visualize something abstract like “love”.

6. Familiarize yourself with that particular usage of the word.
Make some sentences of your own using the word in the same sense as used in the given context to become comfortable with that meaning.

Hopefully the above will resolve the difficulty with the sentence and the paragraph. If there are more such words, handle them in the same manner.

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Word Chains

Sometimes the definition of a word may contain words that are not fully understood. So you look up that word. The same thing may happen again and you may get in a long word chain. This usually happens when you are using a dictionary that is using big words. So a simpler dictionary may be the solution. But a dictionary that is too simple, may get you into circular definitions without clearly explaining the word.

Some word chains are simply not avoidable. When that happens, note down the words on a separate paper as you look them up. The word chain may branch out in many directions. You simply continue noting down the words. At some point, the words will start clearing up. When that happens you cross the word out of the word chain and work your way back. It is okay to look up the same word as many times as necessary. Each time you look up a word you may pick up a new dimension of its meaning.

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Clarity of Understanding

You will be amazed at the clarity a proper understanding can bring. After using word clearing for some time, your general vocabulary will increase by leaps and bounds and you will start making much faster progress in your studies.

It is the tendency of the mind to fill the missing definitions by preconceived notions. This leads to contradictions and conflicts in the mind. Therefore, it is very important to examine the definitions of the words in the context at hand. Correct definitions bring continuity, harmony and consistency to the understanding of the materials.

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By vinaire | Comments (0)

Key Word Clearing

July 30, 2020 – 8:46 AM

Please see Course on Subject Clearing

In today’s world the understanding of a subject depends on the words and symbols used to express its basic ideas. When there is confusion in a subject, the first thing to do is to create a list of its key concepts from the earliest to latest in the form of words. You not only clear up those word but also relate them to each other until you have a clear picture of the subject. You will need a good dictionary, a thesaurus, and a basic textbook for this purpose.

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Key Word List

Every subject has its own vocabulary. Knowing the purpose of the subject, one may easily arrange its key concepts from the earliest to the latest in the form of words. We know that if it takes ‘concept 1’ to understand ‘concept 2’ then ‘concept 1’ must precede ‘concept 2’ on the list. For example, the purpose of Mathematics is to learn about quantities in a systematic manner. Knowing that, we may arrange its key words as follows: Counting, Number, Digit, Place Values, Unit, Tens, Hundreds, Groups (in reading and writing numbers) , Addition, Addend, Carry over, Sum, and so on. 

As you become more aware of the key words, you may sometimes find that a different sequence provides a more consistent picture. It may even reveal some holes in the sequence. Therefore, there is need for dynamic sequencing of the Key Word list. An Excel worksheet may fulfill this requirement nicely. 

Keep building up the Key Word List, and clearing the words, as you study the subject.

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Clearing the Words

As the Key Word List comes into existence, we start clearing these words. It is important to clear the most fundamental concepts first. The steps to clear up a word are as follows.

  1. Determine the broad concept of the word from its etymology.
  2. Determine the most appropriate definition of the word from dictionary.
  3. Visualize that definition by means of “google image” and/or real-life examples.
  4. Contemplate on the word in relation to nearby key words.
  5. Meditate on the concept underlying the word in the context of your experience.

These steps lead you to deepening awareness of the ideas associated with the subject.

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Self-Learning and Assimilation

July 27, 2020 – 9:36 PM

Reference: Course on Subject Clearing

As noted earlier, Self-Learning is the most vital part of one’s continuing education. It helps one clear any past conditioning of the mind and further develop the ability to think critically.

Self-learning involves the assimilation of the incoming perceptions and symbolic data into the mental matrix. A healthy mind naturally breaks the perceptions down into fine “mental pixels”, which are then absorbed into the mental matrix.

The symbolic data reaches one through spoken and written language. For proper assimilation one should be able to visualize the symbolic data in real time so it could be broken down into fine “mental pixels” and assimilated.

Assimilation mean absorbing incoming pixels in the “data matrix” of the mind. This requires arranging new pixels in existing patterns in the matrix, and, as necessary, modifying the patterns and extending them, removing duplicate pixels, and supplying the correct time stamp. Ideally, incoming pixels are continually assimilated.

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THE PROBLEM

Assimilation does not take place when incoming perceptions and symbolic data is too chaotic due to pain and confusion and cannot be broken down into pixels. The unassimilated perceptions and symbolic data get bunched up like a tumor in the mental matrix. They have only a few connections with rest of the matrix.

Obviously, a mental tumor is formed when there is physical injury or sickness in life. But a more insidious mental tumor grows out of sight as misunderstood words and symbols accumulate throughout a person’s life. 

It is a common observation in schooling that a child’s eagerness to learn declines as he moves up the grades. Very soon, he is no longer motivated to learn. By the time a child reaches middle school, he is studying only because he is afraid of being punished for low attendance, low marks, or for failing the exam; and not because he wants to learn. The cause of this declining motivation is the accumulation of misunderstood words and symbols entirely.

The mental tumor of accumulated “misunderstoods” is the most destructive of all, as it is spread throughout the mental matrix without being assimilated. It robs the incredible potential of a person, and makes his life full of confused struggle.

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THE SOLUTION

An interesting phenomenon occurs when you start handling the mental tumor of accumulated misunderstood words and symbols. All other mental tumors also start to come up by themselves exactly when they are ready to be resolved. This is because the common denominator of handling is,

(1) Finding that which doesn’t make sense.
(2) Studying up on data relating to that subject.
(3) Not going by any word or symbol that you do not understand the meaning of.
(4) Finding the meaning of the word or symbol and contemplating on it within the context it is used.
(5) Clearing up all thoughts, emotions and effort related to that concept in meditation.
(6) Following up on what is not clear. This may require repetition of these steps.
(7) Keep at it until the doubt, confusion, perplexity and difficulty is fully cleared up. 

This may sound like a lot of work but as you follow these steps, you soon start to have little wins. These wins soon start to add up to make the journey worthwhile. Finally, the major win occurs in terms of the difficulty fully handled. And that is always a life changer.

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SUMMARY

The above steps lead to increasing assimilation of past and present perceptions and education. The progress may appear to require effort at first but soon it becomes rewarding. It leads not only to self-learning but also to self-healing to some degree. Each of these steps are taken up in greater detail in subsequent issues.

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Education and the Mind

July 26, 2020 – 8:40 AM

From my personal experience, and from my long term experience as a tutor, I find that education itself can be a forgotten trauma in every person’s life. It is rarely that school and college education has been uniformly a pleasant experience. Normally, many other things are going on in adult life to think about one’s education. But past education has been the source of most of a person’s conditioning. It may, therefore, be necessary to run out the trauma of education at some point in one’s life.

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Levels of Education

The most basic level of education is through direct perception. We perceive through the physical senses of seeing, hearing, touching, smelling and tasting. These perceptions then get absorbed or assimilated in our mind and become a part of our being.

The second level of education is learning of a common language through which one can express and communicate to another what one is observing and feeling. It is the means through which one may flow out one’s beingness.

The third level of education is inflowing through that same language the beingness and experience of another. That experience then gets absorbed or assimilated in our mind to become part of our beingness. At this level beingness and experience are almost synonymous. Beingness builds up through layers of experience from the environment and others.

Higher levels of education are simply an expansion of these three basic levels in other dimensions. Education expands from the  dimension of speech to the dimensions of reading and writing. Most education starts to become indirect through the medium of language and its symbols. This indirect education, however, requires translation into “direct perceptions” through the faculty of visualization for proper absorption and assimilation in the mind.

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The Deeper Level of Abstraction

Another interesting dimension that starts to enter into picture at this stage is ABSTRACTION. It sort of develops as an intuitive sense because it is mostly “under the radar”. Abstraction requires physical perceptions to be broken down into finer “pixels” for  deeper assimilation in the mind.

Abstraction is a dimension most peculiar to the human mind. It puts the human mind in a class of its own, way above the minds found in other species. The human mind starts to appear like an incredible matrix of “mental pixels” that are interconnected with each other in an extremely large number of intricate ways. The total number of “mental pixels” may be quite large and the relations among them may easily be infinite.

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Self-Learning

A person has control over his mind to the degree it is assimilated to the deepest level. To the degree the mind is not assimilated, the effect appears in the form of conditioning. It is the conditioned part of mind that is out of one’s control.

We shall be introducing the concept of Self-learning in the next issue. Self-learning is the process of assimilating perceptions and symbolic data in one’s mind. It helps one overcome past conditioning by fully assimilating the past experience one has been exposed to. Self-learning is the most vital part of one’s continuing education.

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