Some people learn through theory. Other people learn through practice. I went to a year of NYU for Computer Science, all theoretical classes. I hated it. I dozed off in classes. But when I sit down to program and practically try various computer science concepts and technologies - I love it, I get into a flow. But I need an actual application to work on. I can’t test ideas in a vacuum.
That’s what I noticed about my spiritual and emotional growth. When I read books about it, talking about theory “you should love yourself”, “we tell ourselves stories about reality”, “listen to what people are saying”, it just floats over my head. There’s a voice in my head “yeah yeah I get it. But how do I do it?”.
What actually helped me was not just intellectually understanding, but internalizing those lessons. Cuddle parties helped me understand loving myself, forming and respecting boundaries, being honest with myself. Circling/authentic relating taught me about listening to others. Yoga taught me feeling my body. Acro yoga taught me communication skills, connecting to others, feeling and empathizing with them. These are all practices with practical steps and exercises you can do to experience these lessons, not just intellectualize them.
It’s kind of crazy that these practices aren’t taught in school. We focus so much on material sciences - math, physics, biology reading. But the stuff that actually matters, the emotional and spiritual lessons, are completely avoided. To make matters worse, the resources that are available to the masses (self help books, self help shows, instagrammers talking about these ideas) are entirely intellectual. It would be ridiculous to teach the concept of addition and multiplication without doing practice problems, or teach what words mean without reading actual books. You wouldn’t teach the theory of how to play soccer or chess without actually getting out of the field. And theoretical physics would never get to this point without experimenting - testing hypotheses in the tea world. So how are we expected to learn these important spiritual and emotional lessons from pure theory and no practice?
There are practical resources, activities, communities, techniques, and groups available but they are scattered. There’s no directory. You just kind of learn about them through word of mouth through friends. And a lot of times you find one activity or group and stick to it. You learn the lessons that practice has to teach, but you miss out on all the other lessons, all the other angles that are out there.
Different activities apply for different situations. And some types of activities (ex: for me physics activities) are better teachers for certain people. But there’s no structure for finding which activity works for you and tracking your practical progress on your immediate problems in life. The masses are just taught in one style - theoretical knowledges.
I think that’s the direction of an app we can create. First and foremost a directory of these techniques and modalities. And second a system for finding and tracking the activities that best fit your situation over time, personalized to your learning style. It would be an app that learns about all the possible practical modalities, what lessons they teach, and what type of people they work for.