# Forget It, For the Sake of Learning There is a peculiar wisdom in forgetting. Not the forgetting that comes from negligence or the erosion of memory—that diminishment we all fear—but a deliberate unknowing, a clearing of the ground so that fresh growth might flourish. The scholar sits heavy with the weight of what he knows. His mind, a fortress of certainties, grows rigid. Each new thing he encounters must first battle its way through the garrison of the old. The child, unburdened, sees the world as it is. Not as it should be, not as it has been, but *as it is*—vivid, immediate, full of strangeness. We say "I must remember this," as though remembrance were virtue. But what if the truest learning requires us to forget our certainties, our accumulated judgments, the very scaffolding of our education? What if understanding waits in the space we have cleared? The river does not remember yesterday's water. It flows, and in flowing, it is always itself. The tree does not hold the dream of being a seed. It grows, and in growing, it becomes what it was always meant to be. Neither struggles under the burden of what has passed. This is not amnesia. This is the forgetting that clears the mind like dawn breaks the darkness—not by erasing the night, but by making it irrelevant. The moon was always there; we simply learn to see by the sun. Forget, then. Forget your opinions, your prestige, the rightness you have defended so long. In that forgetting lies the first moment of learning. In that emptiness blooms the possibility of becoming wise.

To transform the world, we must first transform ourselves; when we do, everyone around us will transform, society will transform, the country will transform, and in time, the world itself will transform. Awakening must begin with the self. When we awaken, our own world awakens with us. Every religion, at its core, performs this work of awakening. Through prayer, we establish a thread of connection between our outer being and the Creator—or our own heart's depths. Gradually, our thoughts and actions shift from their scattered state into a steady, linear rhythm. Religion guides us toward joy through beautiful thinking and righteous action. Religious philosophy becomes the ladder by which we climb toward these obscure, unknowable, mystery-veiled realms.

He who does not feel the Creator's presence in his own heart will wander every sacred place on earth and find not the slightest trace of divine grace. All our prayers, then, are nothing but methods for awakening ourselves. The shells in which we hide ourselves, the outer impulses that obscure our hearts from us—shedding these false skins and stepping forth is the death of worldly feeling. Such a death awakens us to the path of light, readies us to walk the road where peace and joy demand our steps, unburdened by earthly weight. There is no alternative to the death of all present circumstances for this kind of resurrection, this discovery of ourselves in a new life, freed from a hollow and meaningless existence. For rebirth or new birth, the death of our present self is essential.

We dream of seeing ourselves in a new form while remaining as we are. This cannot be. New birth begins only through death. This death is stepping out of old habits, hurling ourselves beyond the circle of comfortable experience, preparing ourselves to walk unfamiliar paths—embracing with bold daring that which was never mine, is not mine now, yet whose presence within me I desperately need, lifting ourselves to the highest reaches of our capacity, surrendering fleeting joy and pleasure to journey along the path of boundless peace, withdrawing ourselves from the seductive ocean of calamity and misfortune to walk the thorny road of truth and endure its rigorous trials.

When we pray, we imagine our unity with the Creator and prepare ourselves to receive divine grace. This preparation is the work of elevating our mind and heart to a higher plane. The first step of this preparation is the willing death of our present, mistaken self. To learn, we must unlearn. If we cannot fully empty what we have learned, we cannot grasp what truly matters. Unlearn to learn.