We would like to know how learning actually takes place for humans, especially how it can happen in a positive manner for a seeker of truth. Can it be aided by paying attention to it?

(Carla channeling)

We are those of the principle known to you as those of Q’uo. We greet you in the love and in the light of the one infinite Creator. As always, it is a great blessing to us to be called to your group, and we thank you for this kindness and for your desire to seek the truth, for in answering this call you give us a way to be of service and a way to learn, and we thank you for both of these as well as for the simple joy of blending our vibrations with your own and for enjoying through your senses that physical illusion that is so beautiful and dear.

Your question this day is a broad one and in order to speak words of sense we find we need to establish a concept first. That concept is the nature of your being, for the being who learns, by its very nature will require certain kinds of learning. Now, this being that you are is like a two-story building with many basements, shall we say. The top story is something we would call consciousness. The first floor is something we call mind or brain. The basements, and there are several of them, belong some to the brain and some to consciousness and all to the blending of consciousness with the living brain so that into the incarnational experience of that consciousness which is using the brain there may come material that is useful not only to the brain or mind but also to the consciousness that overarches and undergirds and permeates your Earthly mind.

Consciousness learns in a different way than the human mind. Let us look first at the way the mind learns. We ask you to remember that these are our opinions and to choose those thoughts that seem good to you and leave the rest behind. When a spirit or consciousness fragment chooses to come into incarnation, among the things that it chooses is the acuity and ability of the physical mind. For those who are within this circle that choice has been to use a very intelligent mind and to allow that mind its prerogative of enjoying its environment. So we shall look at those whose minds are normally capable or are more intelligent than normal and more capable than normal.

These choices are made always for good reasons. However, it cannot be known by each entity what these reasons are. For some the lesson lies in the use of the mind as a skillful and precise instrument. For others the lesson is quite the opposite, and that is experienced as the entity whose mind is excellent and whose decisions are logical but whose life is constantly being overset by those things which are illogical. For the one, the strong use of mind brings more balance to an entity who has great intuition. For others the lesson is in having an excellent mind but yielding that mind to the growing awareness that that which is to be learned in life is not to be learned through the brain. Therefore, each entity must decide for itself as to the lessons of an incarnation.

Now, the way this mind works is by accretion of detail. When the entity first touches the hot stove it learns before the recoil has finished not to touch a stove when it is hot. The mind learns by repetition. The same fact told over and over and over eventually becomes a part of muscle memory, shall we say. The mind learns by sequence. First one, then two, then three and so forth. These are logical, structural ways that the mind accretes and prioritizes that which it has learned.

As these logical processes go on, another type of learning takes place within the mind which is not particularly logical but which has to do with the emotional and emotionally related portions of the mind. The emotions experienced in the course of learning about any subject affect the way that this learning is seated in the mind. Further, the bias which is gained thusly predisposes the mind to giving that subject the same priority as has been assigned to it previously. Therefore, if one has a prejudice, one is predisposed to increasing the strength of that bias. Thusly are the priorities set up by the mind.

It avoids pain and seeks comfort. It attempts to create sense or order out of randomness or disorder and it attempts to assign importance or value to each thing that it learns. This process begins immediately as the incarnation begins and the infant comes mewling from its mother’s womb with prejudices in place, prejudices gained from the time within the womb. Thusly, that innocent child that breathed the air for the first time in the incarnation has already been removed from its paradise, even before that first breath.

The whole process of learning within incarnation is heavily biased, then, and is heavily subjective. Now, we speak not so much of the learning that is by memory and by rote as we are speaking of the mind’s ability to configure and assign meaning to experience as it occurs. The mind was made and has been honed to make choices. And thusly the mind tends to attempt to structure things in such a way that a choice can be made and movement can be felt. When there is no good choice, when there is no way of knowing enough to assign sense or assign priority to incoming data, the mind simply rebels much as a computer will stop all action when that which does not compute at all has been fed into it. And much of that which goes on under the threshold of consciousness as far as the physical brain is concerned has to do with the emotional reactions to being frustrated in the desire to be certain concerning choices and so forth.

This creates a kind of chatter betwixt subconscious and conscious mind, and a good deal of that which is not useful in the dreaming is the conversation which the physical vehicle’s mind is carrying on with itself concerning things that do not make sense, things which do not resolve into a clear choice, things that defy logic. Now, while all this activity is going on there is at the same time and using the same physical vehicle a consciousness which was not assigned the job of making choices but rather the job of being. This consciousness is an absolute. It is eternal. It is infinite. It is all that there is. And it resides and rests in all that is. Your consciousness is a microcosm of the creation. And a macrocosm in relation to love, that still point that defies all emotion and into which all that moves yearns to go.

This consciousness learns within incarnation through harvesting the net results of the processes that the mind moves through. Within consciousness there reside what can be called archetypes of meaning. Each is familiar with the concept of the archetypical mind. This archetypical mind has two levels for the benefit of this particular consideration, the two levels being that portion of the physical mind into which memories go and that portion of the unconscious to which the larger memories of universal value go, so that there is that deep resource of the mind which holds racial memory and that deep resource of consciousness which may be approximated dimly by consideration of archetypes.

This portion of consciousness learns through the harvest of emotion and insight which has become purified or refined by the fire of experience. Usually it takes a great deal of experience to affect consciousness. There are considerations which can be taken up, which can improve the mind’s use of the resources of consciousness. These techniques involve becoming aware that consciousness has a structure; that is, as the consciousness has interacted within the racial memory it has created archetypical programs, shall we say, considering the physical mind as a computer. It has created programs which when applied to conscious experience create new connections and promote the balancing and healing of distortion. These programs are archetypical. Shadows of these archetypical systems may be found within some religions, some mythologies, some philosophies.

Each entity’s experiences and previous choices create an unique situation. There is no one way for minds to work. However, consciousness itself remains a constant value. However, each entity will access the great programs, or should we say, metaprograms of consciousness according to that way in which that entity alone has become used to doing. So the learning of how to make it more possible to invite these metaprograms and their wisdom is somewhat different for each person who seeks, even though the truth, the mystery of consciousness is single. One might consider consciousness itself the elephant which many people touch but cannot see. To one who touches the trunk it is a long and snaky thing. To one who touches the ear it is a big flapping thing. To one who touches the foot it is a tree trunk, and so forth. There is only one elephant, but there are many places to touch the elephant. So it is with these metaprograms.

Now, we always recommend meditation. Among the reasons that we recommend this practice is the fact that when the desire to remain silent has been potentiated by action and the effort is physically made to become silent within, a metaprogram immediately and automatically starts. A connection is made with a source outside the capabilities of the mind. There is a connection made with those archetypical metaprograms. This instrument has recently experienced the computer’s e-mail and internet and we would say that it is something like being able to access the internet from one’s own computer and thus be in instant touch with global resources. This is the kind of power and potential that consciousness has for that spark of consciousness that is within incarnation. The mind is local. Consciousness is universal.

Thusly, each time one goes into meditation or prayer or simply sits letting the silence be, one has automatically accessed universal mind, racial memory, archetypical structures. Suddenly there is no end to the resources available. We suggest daily meditation and we think that each entity shall, though always feeling that their meditations are no good, yet still experience that balancing and lengthening of the point of view which occurs when one has the universal perspective as opposed to the local perspective.

This entity was earlier pondering what the one known as N asked concerning passive learning. Meditation is passive learning. Tabernacling with the one infinite Creator is passive learning. It is the learning from listening to the voice one cannot hear which answers questions which one cannot ask. The process cannot be known and cannot come into consciousness in local sense, yet the learning is there. And the strength of spirit and will which comes from this learning is helpful.

We feel that we have given enough information for one lecture, shall we say, and would at this time open the meeting to further questions. We would, however, like to transfer this contact from this instrument to the one known as Jim that we may also exercise this instrument. Thusly, we transfer now to the one known as Jim, in love and light.

(Jim channeling)

I am Q’uo, and greet each again in the love and in the light of the one infinite Creator. We would at this time ask if we may speak to any further queries which may be offered to us?

I was a little puzzled by the picture I was getting of how the racial memory was partially of the mind and partially of the consciousness. Could you talk a little bit about that?

I am Q’uo, and am aware of your query, my sister. The mind is that portion of the complex of an entity which affects its evolution and adds to it through the process of learning and remembering; that is, to reconstruct from the memory experiences previously had. The consciousness of a race of beings has also within it the given, shall we say, that is from the Logos that makes a race of beings what it is to begin this third-density experience. For the case of most third-density plants, there is the graduation from second density of a group of entities that has learned to give and to receive love in sufficient degree to become enough individualized that the mind complex is able to take upon itself much of the weight of the responsibility for directing the continued evolution of this group of entities which shall become a race or a kind of being that inhabits the third-density experience. Thus, each racial mind has within it that which is given as its own kind of consciousness from the Logos and continues to develop as individualized portions of a grouping that which affects the evolution in a conscious and intelligent manner.

Is there a further query, my sister?

Yes, I’m grappling with this whole concept. When we pray, not asking for anything, just praying, are we learning? Are we accessing something about consciousness? Are we moving into an archetypical structure?

I am Q’uo, and am aware of your query, my sister. When entities engage in that process of petitioning which is called prayer there is the giving over of the self and its desire to that which is greater than the self and which has the ability to add to the knowledge of the self according to the repetition of the behavior which has associated with it certain components—the beginnings, the results.

We beg your pardon for the moment. This instrument has some difficulty. We would ask that we have a moment to work with this instrument.

We are those of Q’uo. We thank you for your efforts. This instrument was having difficulty concentrating.

I am Q’uo, and am again with this instrument. Is there a further query, my sister?

Yes, when a metaprogram kicks in is it that it makes you smarter, intensifies your intelligence, or is it that it offers alternate priorities, or is it that it offers different logical structures, or is it all three?

I am Q’uo, and am aware of your query, my sister, and suggest that each was a potential for the situation, and more as well.

Is there a further query, my sister?

Then is this a field in which we could learn more about how to use this resource skillfully?

I am Q’uo, and am aware of your query, my sister. Each of you as you seek in a conscious fashion do just this. There are layers of what you call metaprograms available according to the intensity of seeking and [that] shall be released as a kind of, shall we say, time release capsule, but more in the desired release nature.

Is there a further query, my sister?

Not at this time, thank you.

I am Q’uo, and we thank you, my sister. Is there another query?

No question, but I got this image of a blank piece of paper which I would begin to sketch upon and this would represent learning during the life.

I am Q’uo, and we would suggest that as you continue in your own seeking that the picture you have of your own journey, your own self, and the environment in which you move will continue to become more defined with color, with breadth of emotion, of potential, of inspiration, of joining with other pictures, so that the entire experience does become a richer experience, more filled with information and inspiration but [also] with the emotion and the passion that one feels in one’s heart for the process of seeking and of becoming, realizing the unity of self with all of creation. The colors become more life-filled rather than life-like and have within them a kind of glow and depth that continues to grow with the seeker.

Is there a final query at this time?

[Pause]

I am Q’uo, and we are most thankful as well to each in this circle of seeking. At this time we shall take our leave of this instrument and this group. We are known to you as those of Q’uo and we leave you in the love and in the light of the one infinite Creator. Adonai. Adonai, my friends.