Exploration and Unlearning

From Everything Belongs by  Richard Rohr:

“We Western people are goal-oriented consumers, and we can’t imagine doing anything that won’t get us something.  But with full deliberation we need to understand our exploration is not an effort to get us anywhere.”

That caught my attention, “our exploration is not an effort to get us anywhere.”  I mean, isn’t exploration exactly that.  But that thinking falls into the trap of which Rohr speaks.  That explains why there is a “find yourself industry” that is willing to sell us books, retreats, classes, and other tools to help us find ourselves.  When we are seeking to know ourselves, we can forget that we already ARE ourselves, or as Rohr puts it, there is no “there” to achieve because “we are already there.”  He writes:

“Little do we realize that God is maintaining us in existence with every breath we take.  As we take another it means that God is choosing us now, and now, and now.  We have nothing to attain or to learn.  We do, however, need to unlearn some things.”

And that unlearning can make learning look easy.