Learning to see

To learn something by rote or to be able to describe something is not to understand it. When my teacher, Diane Long, is teaching she uses few words - although she uses more now than when I first started to work with her. This can be quite a challenge. People new to this way of working often ask for more instructions. When we follow instructions we are putting the mind over matter and intellectualising the process. Diane usually replies that you have to learn to see.

A few days ago some half forgotten piece of information came to mind. A trawl through the web and I found the figures I couldn't quite remember.

"We receive 83% of our information from seeing and 11% from hearing. After 5 days we retain 5% of what we are told, 15% of what we see, but 70% of what we gather from combined audio and visual stimuli." Wayne Turk in Common Sense Project Management.

It has often been said that you can't learn yoga from a book. And this is very true. Times have changed and we now have videos and DVDs. However what we can learn from these or from any teacher is limited from our inability to really see. We need to train ourselves to observe.

I had just written these words when I picked up 'The meaning of Happiness' by Alan Watts. In the introduction I read the following words by Tao-wu :
"If you want to see, see directly into it; but when you try to think about it, it is altogether missed."