what do you do? sit down, put on the music and create meaning - let your pen flow, your feet tap, your vision expand - just get out of the way except for raw need - if you don't need you won't get
We tend to focus on 'learning' as something we do from a book or a teacher. Schools indoctrinate us into believing that we have to have 'relevant information' packaged for us, chopped into modular bits, and spoon fed to us. But, as the poet says, "Ever and about us lie / Deserts of vast eternity." They are deserts only because people don't go into them!
In any moment, it is likely that we are permeated by vast amounts of information. Our bodies are transmitting and receiving on the cellular level, or even deeper. Because of the distractions of our minds, we mostly fail to notice this. Because we are occupied with our 'selves' there is not much room for taking in what is really going on. Most of it is going on at a great speed. Between two thoughts, the universe comes into creation and disappears again. So, we fail to notice the creative action which is sustaining us.
The great teachers are those who do not teach. They act from the creative process directly, in the moment. That is why they can appear inexplicable. Reasons come later.
There are also 'teachers' of this kind who are not people. Nature herself is one of the wisest and most loving. Amongst human things, works of art have this character, of being 'wise beyond purpose.' Every piece of music, every painting, every poem is a friend of the creative process. They are not just the results of someone's personal creativity. Once you connect with them, you are in the creative workshop: you participate in what you see or hear or touch as it is coming into being. You go into a different time.
You can participate simply by accepting to allow it to happen. The 'entrance fee' is a genuine need that you bear. You must have something to achieve, to make, to realise, to bring into form, to share, to resolve, to shape, to progress, to appreciate, to dwell close to... Your role is to provide the purpose, the aim, which is the human role. If you have that, then the 'active information' in music and painting and nature becomes available to you - and in a way that exactly corresponds to the need. It must be so.
Contact the need and give yourself over to the music and do what you have to do. You cannot know in advance what form the process will take. There is no space for considerations of self and its limited mind. When you listen to music in this way, you register every instant. The minutest fragment explodes into meaning. You find the treasures of eternity and the desert blooms.
What is required is neither agitation nor torpor but a naked recognition of need. If you like, write it down in words, or find a centre of quality inside where a question burns. Hold this need in one hand and the music in the other and let there be nothing in-between.
The way of listening to the music has to be immediate. It does not matter what music you like or dislike. Your aesthetic sensibilities have little to offer. Register every instant of sound as if you have never heard such a thing before. Don't get swept away by memories of tunes and moods, pleasant or unpleasant. There is no time for such!
Let every moment of sound be a discovery. Make it so!
It's useful to write what comes to you. Don't allow yourself time 'to think' in the ordinary way. Another kind of thinking will be at work. You can use writing as a way to occupy yourself so that you don't start 'thinking.' Move about if you have to, dance if that helps to keep you clean.
You may find yourself forgetting the music - or yourself - just proceed. No hesitation or evaluation: the need itself can do all that is required to select the most appropriate manifestation and it's not up to you.
Ask yourself at the end: What is the true need now? It will appear differently. The path continues in another time, another space, another creation.
1. ILM - immediate learning method - is associated with the neural education of Edward Matchett. See the articles by Matchett and Blake in the Unis journal, Vol. 5, No. 3, on "Neural Education" and the chapter on ILM in Structures of Meaning, by Anthony Blake. 'Ilm' means 'direct knowledge' in Sufism.
2. You can use Systematics. Start with the monad, gathering together. Move onto the dyad and experience the crucial force of need. Then slip into the triad mode, the dance always shifting, 1, 2, 3 ... and beyond.