What is Beautiful Learning, anyway?

What is Beautiful Learning? For me, it is about self-development that is deep, practical, and effective and which leads to betterment of one’s life experience as well as the life experience of those affected by each of us, thereby rippling outward, making the world a slightly better place. This is a pretty broad definition and could apply to many things. However, this part of the definition mainly applies to the term “Learning”. Another aspect of what I think of as Beautiful Learning is a bit more magical/mystical/mysterious and applies to the bridge between (or the pathway through) “Beautiful” and “Learning”. It is the part that involves what I like to refer to as the ‘Otherworlds’. Otherworlds is, itself, a vague notion and might be summed up in a variety of ways, but for me it remains at once practical and magical/mystical/mysterious.

My definition of the ‘Otherworlds’ can be thought of as: that which we see with the eye of our imagination, or that which we feel in our soul and which abides in (and perhaps, beyond) our subconscious and/or the collective unconscious. For example, I would include all of the following: our dreamtime, our inner life, cultural and personal mythologies, the subconscious realms. fairy tales and folk tales, daydreams, intuitive insights, archetypal stories/imagery/patterns. Some might include more ‘imaginary’ creatures/spirits/allies (though I have little experience with such ‘entities’, myself, I wouldn’t discount them as a viable part of this type of learning, as many people DO have experiences with them!). Finally, the term “Beautiful” implies the beauty, art, and symbology of the imagery of these Otherworlds and our engagement with them - which often involves some sort of creative endeavor, thereby potentially reinforcing this concept of tactile or visual Beauty. To me, though, there is also a purely poetic notion to the Beauty of this learning, which is that it rings true, deep inside, and that it has meaning and a kind of ‘magic’ that remains mysterious. Even once we reach new understandings of self and circumstance and learn to alter our beliefs or behaviors and can experience a new way of relating in the world as a result of engaging with said symbolic imagery - all very tangible, practical things and, yet, the ‘magic’ of what has transpired remains, as I said, mysterious. I find this again and again in my practice. I often say that I don’t know how it works, I just know that it does!

The practices and schools of thought that have spoken to me in terms of this work of Beautiful Learning so far include: Astrology, Tarot, SoulCollage®, Altar-building, Tibetan Buddhist Wisdom Energies, dreamwork, study of mythologies, storytelling, ritual work, etc. Other creative and expressive practices also seem to touch the same place in the soul: meditation practices, expressive and creative arts of all kinds, authentic movement, crafting, contemplative dance, spontaneous poetry or other forms of ‘coming from nothing’. Almost anything that allows us to touch some deep, inner truth and bring it forth through our person (via dance, collage, voice, action, writing, practice, behavior, etc.) could apply. A further poetic beauty is that many of these modalities work very well together; working more than one in tandem (which is what I tend to do). It seems to lend both depth and breadth to our inquiries and thus, our understandings.

Do you have any experience with what I am talking about? I would dearly love to hear you recount one or two bright moments of Beautiful Learning (whatever your understanding of it is!) from your own experience. I invite you to share!

~Melanie