I have been learning about learning in a larger sense for a number of years, trying to figure out what happened to my brain and how to fix it. The Way of Love is a formation process for the mind. It changes the way the mind works, forming it after the mind of Christ.
One thing I have come to understand is how the brain and the mind are connected. The mind is the brain transcending itself, but not separate from it. The brain is the mind incarnate.
It's not that either precedes or dictates to the other. What happens in one happens in the other, on its own terms.
How does the mind learn? It makes connections among previous knowledge, bits of new information, experience, and emotions. At the same time, the brain is physically doing the same thing, making connections.
See that drawing of a brain cell at the top of this post? (It always reminds me of a reggae dancer.) Two cells connect when a strand of "hair," or dendrite, on one dancer approaches a "foot," or nerve ending on another. An electrical charge passes between them. What fires together wires together, as they say in neuroscience. You repeat a connection, the electrical charge, often enough, it becomes a habit of the brain. When a charge is looking for a direction to follow, it goes in the direction it already knows.
You repeat a connection often enough, it also becomes a habit of the mind. Say An eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth often enough and you become a certain kind of person. Say But Jesus said, Turn the other cheek or Forgive us our sins as we forgive each other often enough and you become a different kind of person. The brain and the mind learn together.
Choose what kind of person you want to be. Then practice it. Repeat the things that will form your brain and your mind into that kind of person.
Christianity is not about a one-time declaration of faith. It is a way, the Way of Love.
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