Learning How To Learn December 14, 2025

Looking at the meaning of, "Learning how to learn".

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Transcript

Shaykh ibrahim: 0:47

Today we're going to be talking about learning how to learn and how important it is to stay open and what kind of learning we're looking for. But first, I would like to give a story about a teacup. A young man, eager to learn the secrets of life and spiritual wisdom, came to visit a renowned Sufi master. He spoke endlessly about his existing knowledge, that he'd read all the scriptures and all these books, and he'd already studied so many and studied with so many teachers. And the master listened silently, then calmly suggested they should have tea. He began pouring hot tea into the young man's cup. The cup started to fill up and it filled to the brim, but the master continued to pour. The tea overflowed onto the saucer, spilled onto the table, and eventually onto the visitor's robes. Stop! The cup's full, the young man cried out in irritation. It can't hold any more tea. The master stopped pouring, smiled gently, and replied, Exactly. You're like this cup, so full of your own opinions and knowledge that nothing more can be added. Until you empty yourself, how can I fill you with wisdom? The young man was humbled by the lesson, bowed his head and understanding, and from that day forward, he listened more than he spoke. So what are the takeaways from this? What's the first thing that comes to mind?

Ruqqaya: 2:56

Being conscious of what you're holding on to. Ooh. And like prioritizing that stuff.

Shaykh ibrahim: 3:02

Yeah, because that's getting in the way of actually allowing stuff to come in and to learn new things. So that would be the unlearning part before you can learn properly. Yeah, yeah. Cool. Very good.

Rosie: 3:23

Basically along the same line, the phrase clean slate.

Shaykh ibrahim: 3:36

Yeah, that's right. Sometimes though it takes a while to uh erase the slate and things keep coming back. Sometimes you have to apply a little more effort to completely clean it off. What about um being receptive to learning? How does that work, do you think, is for anybody here?

Alamin: 4:08

I think putting aside what um you one thinks that they should say or need to say in that specific moment, um, and be willing to listen or be receptive, as you say, with uh with an open heart and with your senses.

Shaykh ibrahim: 4:33

Good, okay. So receptivity. All right. Good. And what we were talking about just earlier before we started was uh about the unexpected to be prepared for the unexpected, to understand that that's probably where the good stuff comes from. And then what about let's call it automatic thinking where where things come in on knee-jerk reactive uh mode, where somebody says something and you you see this reaction coming in and you respond to it. Pre uh pre-made. Uh pre-made ideas, usually that come from family, school, friends, culture. These pre-made ideas uh are kind of like a um a scaffolding. We think it's the building, but it isn't the real building.

Ruqqaya: 5:48

Um, I was just thinking about the bit you said before, and the phrase that came to mind was being open to the openness, the receptivity stuff.

Shaykh ibrahim: 5:59

To be aware of your own biases. So that you and you can probably see them, usually they come out when you're having a conversation with somebody that you feel open with, and all of a sudden your mouth is saying these things that you you don't believe. And it's kind of like, why am I saying this? This is and this also happens um with around children as well, where where the pre-formatted concepts come spewing out, and you go, I don't believe I'm saying that. Who what where's that coming from? So part of this is understanding that the parts that are limited inside of us are lies. There is there is no limit, really. When when you connect with Allah, when your heart is is open, it's like there's a flow going on where you and Allah or the universe, however you want to think of it, is flowing, and you're part of that. But when we get excited, when we get um distracted, when we're nervous or shy or have any kind of limitation, to me it seems like that's nafs. Or if you're like shaitan or however you want to think of that littleness, the smallity, patent pending on that word, of imagining that we're just this little little thing that has no right to be, and that's a lie all the way through. So the understanding that we need is that information is coming to us from every angle, from every kind of vibration in the universe. The limitation that we create is that we want to control it. And wherever our focus is, is the filter that will allow the information to dribble in in that way. Does that make sense? That was kind of a weird sentence. Um what I mean is however you're thinking is a frame that allows only a certain amount of information to come through of that color. Let's say you're thinking color, you're thinking blue. I don't deserve this or that, or I'm not worth that, I'm not worthy of this this filter allows only certain information to come through. That's also part of our bias, and learning what that is part of learning about ourselves. So there's learning us, there's and then there's learning Allah. But we need both to be able to have a uh coherent view of life and live it um the best we can. So this is about learning how to learn. There's another story our friend Lana Jalaladin Rumi gives in the Masnawi. So I'm gonna read a kind of uh I'm gonna retranslate it as I go through here. Uh it's called the The Grammarian and the Boatman. A grammarian sat down in a boat and he turned to the boatman as they're moving across the river, a very big river, and the grammarian, very full of himself, said, Hey, you studied grammar? And the boatman said, No. And the grammarian said, Well then your half your life has gone to nothing. The boatman became disturbed in his heart from sorrow and kept silent from answering. Well, wind started to pick up and a storm started coming in, and the boat began to swirl around in a whirlpool. And the boatman shouted to the grammarian, Quite a storm, huh? And the grammarian said, Yeah, yeah, yeah, holding on tightly to the side of the boat. And the boatman yelled out, Do you know anything about swimming? Tell me. And the grammarian said, No. And the boatman said, Then the whole of your life is nothing, O grammarian, because the boat's going to drown in these whirlpools. And then Rumi goes on to say, No that fanafalah, mystical obliteration, is required here, not grammar. If you are annihilated, ride into the water without danger. The ocean water puts the corpse on the surface, but if he is spiritually alive in Allah, he will never escape from the ocean. If you have died to human qualities, the ocean of divine secrets will put you on the topmost surface. Oh, you have called the people donkeys. This time you are stuck on this slippery ice like a donkey yourself. Even if you are the most learned person of the time in the entire world, look now at the perishing nature of this world and this time. We have sown into the story about the man of grammar so that we might teach you the grammar of the annihilation of yourself. O wonderful friend, in becoming less, you will find the law, the grammar of grammar, and the transformation of the parts of speech. Okay. I have uh something I want to read to you from Idris Shah's book called Learning How to Learn. So somebody asks, why is it that so many people read so much and yet are not changed by it? Can people not absorb Sufi information through the written word? And the answer, he says, is to learn something, you have to be exposed to it a lot of times, perhaps from different perspectives, and you also have to give it the kind of attention which will enable you to learn. In our experience, people fail to learn from Sufi materials for the same reason that they do not learn other things, they read selectively. The things that touch them emotionally or which they like or are thrilled by, they will remember or seek in greater quantity and depth. And this brought me to uh social media algorithms and clickbait. Since these are the last, often the last materials which they will probably need, and since such an unbalanced attitude towards anything makes the person in need of balance in their approach, we have the situation to which you refer. We may at once admit that cultures which seek to highlight crudities and things which immediately appeal and to project them in attractive forms and endorse and sustain them are unlikely to produce, on the whole, people with appetites for other than more of the same thing. But this behavior will merely perpetuate the same kind of personality and attitude which created it in the first place. I mean, are you thinking about like TikTok and uh Facebook and things like that? Because this is specifically applicable. If you have a chocolate cake decorated with 16 cherries, and you gobble up the cherries because you like them, and then want to know why you haven't eaten the cake, what does that make you? And if I tell you, would you like me? This is the barrier to surmount. It's crossed by observing it in action, deciding to surmount it, and taking action to study comprehensively, and not to pretend to be a student and then wonder why one has not learned. Reading does not change people unless they are ready to change. I think this also goes for YouTube. Rumi said, You've seen the mountain, but you have not seen the mine inside the mountain. Just because a book is available, even one of the very greatest books, does not mean that one can or perhaps should try to learn correctly from it at any given moment. The Sufi Sa'rudin said in his testament, quote, hereafter, let not every person seek to learn from the writings of Sheikh ibn al-Arabi or from mine, for that gate is barred to the majority of mankind. This is because the teachers may not need what is in books, but can use them for students, while students may not know, but might well not profit from studying them as arbitrarily as they ordinarily do. Even the self-styled specialists, some of them scholars, do not translate the various levels and implications of Sufi materials correctly. In fact, there are indications that many of these people do not see the extra dimensions and alternative readings in the classical literature at all. Some even admit that they have not been able to do this. Somewhat characteristically, they do not seem to stop translating or to enrich their perceptions of the material. I'll stop here and I'd like to get your uh reactions to this. The idea of when you're reading or you're getting some information from other supposed teaching sources, what is happening? Or what could happen, what do you see happen, and what do you think should happen?

Alamin: 17:43

Well, it it it sort of brings me the thing that comes up for me is the uh story about the teacup. Is that one where this information which you can be bombard oneself through, as you said, shake YouTube and etc. and all the stuff that's you can take on that information which can fill the cup, but not only that whether directly or indirectly get influence that can come over oneself and um it can get in the way of being with a heart or being with a low.

Shaykh ibrahim: 18:21

Okay, so what I get from that is information of itself, just data, and you have a full cup of it, doesn't mean it's useful or helpful.

Alamin: 18:32

That's right.

Shaykh ibrahim: 18:34

Okay. Yes, I agree. Here's a little philosophical puzzle. Can you just put new stuff in the cup or do you have to empty it first? What happens to it if you try and put it in with all the excuse me, with all the other stuff? It gets messy, Shake.

Ruqqaya: 19:01

Gets really, really messy. Especially if all the other stuff is just a host of random. And you're trying to put in uh focused things and stuff like that.

Shaykh ibrahim: 19:14

Yeah, they don't blend well. It's not a good smoothie.

Ruqqaya: 19:18

No, no, definitely not taste, Shake. Dirty water.

Shaykh ibrahim: 19:23

Yeah, yeah. Cloudy and particle stuff in it that not good, not nutritious, not tasty. Yeah, okay. Yeah, that makes sense.

Ruqqaya: 19:37

I was also thinking about um what you were saying before about like if when you're reading from different sources and stuff like that, um, related to especially translations, but some other things as well, like also thinking back to like unidays and textbooks and things like that. I think the beauty of the fact that there are so many different sources about a certain topic. Means that if you're willing and able to look into all aspects, then you can get more of a well-rounded kind of understanding of the thing and then personal opinions. But if you only look at one source, then you only look at what they think or how they translate something. Right. So it's a very niche sort of understanding, and it doesn't, and not in a good way. It's like I know a pinprick about this topic, not enough to kind of understand it properly in a well-rounded sort of way. Does that make sense?

Shaykh ibrahim: 20:39

Yeah, so a well-rounded kind of way to look at things. I'm interested in that. What do you know about critical thinking?

Ruqqaya: 20:52

Um I know things and my brain's just lost it all. Um it's it's not just focusing on the confirmation bias sort of element of things, is where my brain's going to right now. So when you're thinking critically about something, you're looking at different aspects, different elements of it, that sort of stuff. Rather than going, I know all about this topic because I learned it from one person. Mm-hmm. Okay. Um and and you're challenged to question things too.

Shaykh ibrahim: 21:31

Right. Yeah. As I understand it, one way that this is done, especially like in a classroom situation, is what's called forensics or rhetorical forensics, in the sense of you take on one side, you defend it from uh others who disagree, and then you take the other side and defend that from that side. That way you get a complete view, perhaps, maybe, or at least multi-dimensional, that rather than taking one side or the other. It it allows you to get a better perspective of all the different parameters of that specific situation or question.

Ruqqaya: 22:23

Yeah, that's a great description of it. My brain didn't have enough information before, sorry, Shane. But also that is then bringing in my head about like the concept of debating, like whether it's public speaking, debating sort of stuff at school, because some of the context, but you're in the debating side of things, you're only focused on one topic, and you kind of go, Oh, well, the other person's terrible ideas and I need to rebut things and all that. You're just focused on the this is my way of thinking. But what you were saying before about looking at both sides and arguing both sides means that you're not just focused on the narrowness of one side, which is really cool.

Shaykh ibrahim: 23:04

Okay. Rosie, something you wanted to say?

Rosie: 23:08

What came to me earlier was uh from Taoism and the usefulness of an empty vessel. A full vessel, what are you gonna do with it? It's already fizzy. So you need an empty vessel for for something to come in. Uh so that had come up to me later, but Rukaia, I was following everything you were saying, so it didn't sound scattered or whatever at all.

Ruqqaya: 23:42

Shukran, because it felt scattered in my head. When I was hearing it come out, I'm like, there's a lot going on and it's been different ways, but sure, chikran.

Rosie: 23:50

What I was seeing in, and I've realized this for a long time. I tend to, especially when I hear about something new that I haven't already been exposed to or something, and and all just in my mind kind of systematically walk around it and look at it from different angles. Like, oh I guess that's curiosity and uh just wanting to see things from different perspectives and how something might fit or not fit with something. Sheik, you mentioned earlier about structure, and I've experienced that there are times when there's some kind of structure needed when I hear or read or learn about something that is completely new to me, and I feel like I don't have any place to put it where I'm trying to understand it, but it doesn't really fit anywhere. It's so new. And so then there's time to kind of build some sort of framework for understanding it. And that probably doesn't make sense either.

Shaykh ibrahim: 25:12

No, no, no. That's what what what that brings up is the idea of uh Sheikh talking about the backpack. Yes. There's some things that I don't know where this fits. I have no idea what the truth or lie of this is. I'll put it in the backpack, and when I get more information, I'll pull it out and see if it makes more sense. There's also a very important triad of things necessary for learning, especially from in the Sufi way. And that is time, place, and readiness. You may, it may be the right time to learn it, but you're not in the right place or in your head ready to receive it. I mean, even on a basic level, Rumi talks about the open secret. If you've never heard of Sufism or are not interested in it, it doesn't exist. It's a mystery that you have no connection with. But when you're ready, all of a sudden you find all these books and you've all there's tariqahs, there's teachers. I what this is fantastic. So the idea of readiness is a really important part, I think, of learning and knowing in learning how to learn that you need to know your own readiness for certain information, that when you're ready, you'll be able to see it and to trust your heart to guide you on this journey. I think very often people try to plow their way through by just jamming into their head all the YouTube videos and books on tape they can get into their head when it's not adding up to anything because it's just data without any kind of context, not a what I'm gonna call gnosis context. And by gnosis, I'm talking about a visceral understanding with your um being, that you very often people who want to start in Sufism, I ask them, what do you know? And by knowing, I'm asking them, what is not a fact, but is something that cannot be taken away from you and that will not change. And it comes to just maybe three or four things that I uh I can count. One, who you love, and who you honor or respect, and maybe um a couple virtues or uh care about or care about, uh, and that's about it. I mean, we don't uh when you think about it, we have heard very often that we're going to die, but that is not a Gnostic thing. That is not something that we know. We see evidence evidence of it all the time, but do you know it? Sometimes, yes, sometimes no. So again, there's things that we are take on faith until we believe it. That's my understanding of faith and belief. You uh you have faith in something until you actually have surety of it. And then it becomes belief because it can't be taken away from you. It's known, it's known. So being ready for something means trusting your heart that it's guiding you. You ask to be on the Sufi path, and Allah says, and the shaykh says, Yeah, let's go. So the education process is automatic. It it's happening. Whether we want to acknowledge it or not, that's up to us. And there's another part in there that can be confusing, and that is living in paradox. We are in constant paradox. I mean, here we are, these beings of light inside a meat pack. What the is this? Right? It becomes very paradoxical to go and wash the dishes, vacuum the floor, clean up, and have relationships because it's all very messy and very paradoxical to thinking, huh, I was just light just a little while ago. What's going on here? This this is confusing. And to just take it on as like, well, this is educational. I have much to learn, and that the why I'm here is to learn. I mean, why else would we be here? So when we approach it positively and go, I'm just here to observe and learn and and and learn what I need to learn and have fun learning it. And some things are not as much fun as others. However, that's part of the learning as well. Yeah, that's kind of how it is.

Rosie: 31:14

That's why we're we're told to appeal to yellow teeth.

Shaykh ibrahim: 31:22

Yeah. Oh, please. Please. I've had it the hard way. I prefer the easy way. Let's give me subtlety anytime.

Ruqqaya: 31:38

I've had the hard way. I don't vibe with that. Can we do something different? Something, yes. Yes. Can we like let's let's bear it back a little bit. Let's go like simple, simple. When you were talking about the the light inside the meat sack, and my brain went, yeah, the meat sack is literally all encompassing. Physically and and like not emotionally, but like everything elsely. Um, because we're we're very much like we get stuck in the the meat sack life world and forget that we have the light spits, and that that's where we actually have to focus. It's very easy to forget that.

Shaykh ibrahim: 32:17

Yes, many distractions. So that's part of learning, is being open to it. It also means open to the unlearning and trusting that whatever's coming to you is what you need now. That way you're part of the surrendering. And the surrendering is a much easier way rather than trying to be in control. Think about uh what's that? Allah laughs when you try to plan something. Uh same thing here. Allah laughs when you try and control something. Oh, really? Yeah. Go right ahead. This will be amusing. I get a great laugh out of this. So learning surrender is an ongoing thing. It's not someplace you finally get to, it's ongoing, and it has each each step of the way is even deeper. All I can do is I just have all of these uh flashbacks to when uh Sheikh's talking to me and he says, Oh, learning, learning. Let me tell you about learning. He draws a picture, a big circle. He says, This is what Allah learns. This is a lot what Allah knows. And he takes a very sharp pencil and he goes like that. This is human learning, and it goes, let's see, where's yours? Um sorry, I I can't find a point in here. It's kind of like, got it, Shaykh, thank you. So I think it's easier to surrender and just go, look, I don't know anything. But I'm here to learn, and I want to try and stay positive about it. So please help me understand what I need to. And may the rest of it just dribble away because I don't need that other stuff. Alamine, you had a question.

Alamin: 34:30

Yeah, um, I think in a way that you may have answered it really with what you've just been talking about, Show. Um it was just it's just about how does one well this one, what I've been confronting recently is that trying to uh have more of an open relationship with my heart, and I've been confronted with my own biases where, yeah, basically sort of cultural and family stuff that gets in the way, and what I mean by that specifically is that there was always a tendency to think of the worst, to be prepared for the worst. This is almost like catastrophizing. So what I and what I've been noticing is that sometimes when wanting to be with my heart and trying to be open, there's a tendency for this part of me to come in and act like it's coming from my heart, but it's really a a nafs part of me. So I suppose the question is was that you know, is it how do you is it just setting the intention and the practice of being open as possible and trying to hold that naff's part at bay, or yeah, is there something else that you can suggest?

Shaykh ibrahim: 36:02

If I may, parenthetically, (it sounds very Catholic).

Alamin: 36:10

Well, I knew you were gonna go there.

Shaykh ibrahim: 36:14

But I think we all have places in our heart that I'm going to call, for lack of something better, spiritual astigmatism. Little black boxes, uh big dots that you go to a certain place in your heart, and it's kind of like can't find it. I don't see it. Where's that connection that I need? And you see, oh, it's been replaced by this fear or this guilt or this regret or this uh I should have business or some kind of cultural paradigm. Uh girls should be nice kind of thing, that you go, you start to go somewhere, and this logo comes up. I'm supposed to be nice. And you go, what? What but I don't, that's not true, but the thing is kind of like like burned in, and you go, what am I supposed to do with this? I want to connect with my heart, and I get this. This is part of the learning and accepting it and not getting hung up on going, uh, but but it's not right. This is un this is where the unlearning process has to come into play. And you have to look at it and go, well, where did this come from? And to approach it as you would any like like a scientist. You want to, or or a doctor. You want to you want to extract the tumor. And uh it's a very delicate operation because if you do it wrong, you'll have to start over again, or or blotch the operation and make it worse. So this is where trusting your heart that it knows how to do this, and you accept the lessons that come to help you undo it, to unlearn it. It requires just as much time as it came to be, or maybe half the time, but it requires full intention. And what this does is it allows you to learn how you learn. This is part of learning. You're you're learning how to remove things that don't belong. They're not you. Part of it is identifying what those are, and then going, so what's a good way to remove this? And this is where the scientific kind of mind comes into play, or if you like art of war, uh, the Sun Tzu form of it, going, so where did this come from? What's the source? You source it and you go, okay, well, it came from being told this many, many times. And since I was so young, I just accepted it as truth. And now you look at it and you go, well, that's not true. That's as a matter of fact, that's a lie. It has nothing to do with me or being a human being. But it's a cultural manifestation, it's a cultural tumor. And so, how do you get rid of that? Is your suluk. This is your path, and what you need to learn is what you need to do to make it go away. First, the very first thing is to accept it for what it is. This is true. Yes, and I do think like that. I don't like it, but it's there. Two, the source comes from the culture or the family or the mother or the daughter or the father or wherever it came from. So that's the source. Three, what do I need to do to remove it before you get your intention together? This is inya. You have to know that you by setting your intention, you can then follow with the proper action. But you can't follow the proper action unless you have your intention set correctly. The intention is I would like to remove this from my life. Good. That intention will then initiate some heart and your educational uh program to come into play, going, well, what do I need to do next? Next, for somebody, it might need to be getting angry about it. Maybe that's a good motivation because this gets some energy going that needs to be uh heated up in you to get some energy happening. I don't like this. This is a motivation. That energy creates a motivation to go, I and it sets it up so that you will not fail because you're setting this up. I'm going to do this no matter what. I want to get rid of this without any doubt. This and then it becomes, for a while, your prime mover. Your prime energy is focused on this. Sheikh says, you make, when you're fighting your nafs, you put this in the forefront of your consciousness, that is, in your frontal lobe, and you go, everything I do is going to be about this, and nothing's going to escape me about this. I'm going to learn everything I can about why this is there. And then once that is set in motion, you will begin to see, like, and you can use uh the zikr of Yahawk. I found is very helpful to get into the truth of what the reality of this construction of this little tumor is about. So and then as you open it up, it'll start to reveal itself and show you its vulnerabilities and its weaknesses. And you keep at it, you don't stop, you keep your focus on this because your intention now is set. The actions then will follow as appropriate, a zikr of Yahawk and a clear thing of like, I don't care about being good or nice or bad or anything. I just want to know who I really am, not what other people tell me I am. This will take two to three or four months to overcome. Because what you're doing neurophysiologically is you're rewiring your brain. The brain is plastic and is able to do this. However, it can't do it without intention, motivation, focus, time, and thank you. Because if you take it seriously, it then backfires and becomes a NAFSIS self. Why can't I get this? I'm so stupid. And you go, oh there I did. I just got in the way of my own self of trying to get something done. So you stay positive about it, you go, we can do this, I can do this. And every the more that you do this, the better and easier it gets because you understand yourself better. You're knowing yourself, you're learning you. So this applies to what you were asking as well, Amin, about how do I get rid of this whatever you want to call it, guilt or fear or or you have to set the intention clearly. I want to do this for Allah's sake to be to know my heart and to be able to trust Allah, to surrender. Whatever you need to say, to set that clearly. Does that help? Any other questions about that? I'm happy to talk about this. The art of war against the deaths. You can also, in your action, besides the zikr, is call on your peers, that is Abu Qatar Rajalani, Ahmed Rafai, Sheikh Tanar, Ansari, Sheikh Muzain, Ansari, Muhammad Ansari, anybody that you feel is close to who you have rabbit with. And that's one of the purposes also of learning about the prophets. They lived their lives in service to Allah as examples for us to be able to see this is humanly possible. They are examples of what that looks like. They are examples of insani Kamil. That is a completed human being. It doesn't mean that they live perfect lives. It means that they're in surrender to Allah and understand that this is Allah's world, Allah's time, and Allah's game plan. There's reasons for everything, and we may not understand them for a while. But if we keep working towards connecting with Allah, He will provide everything you need.