I spent all of my life thinking about all the things that I knew, or thought that I knew. They impacted every choice that I made, every thought that came through my mind was directed by my "knowing". I took pride in what I knew and felt special that I knew things that others did not. From there I felt that my knowing gave me a special place in the world. Unconsciously, that place was above those that did not know, leaving me responsible for their knowing, as well as maintaining the life that one who knows lives. This unravelled for me little by little. There was such an immense pressure to perform, Holding so much, when others had so little. I fought inside and out to bring congruency and meaning to the outer actions, but wondered about the inner feelings of emptiness. The only hold on me was the knowing distributed by sources outside of myself and wanting so badly to be part of those who knew, and finding the knowing myself. The emotions were so deep, to compensate for the loss of knowing my own soul. I ached to be seen and ached to be know, but instead of the personal intimate peace that comes from hearing your own heart, I was left with the aching that comes when a person adopts what they surmise, or are told is so and then have all of the privileges of that externally given knowing. It is hard to pass up. Each person wants so deeply to belong and be part of a community, to have a place that belongs to them. That too, was fickle and determined by others. Were you able to outwardly personify the beliefs and hold others in such a way that they too felt the impressions and emotions of the system of thought? If so, you could be elevated in stature and position,or calling leaving you with a sense of belonging, and a sense of being valued, not for who you are/were, but for your ability to hold the space in the system. So, there was a drive to search the written words that told us what was inherent in the system to know. The nature of the knowing was based upon emotional responses in your searching, as well as the impressions of others upon the answers and external responses to the searching. It seemed as if the community was necessary to deliver the proper set of circumstances to experience and maintain a sense of "knowing". But if truth really does prevail, If God is truly greater the any other force in the universe, than should we not see his hand and truth above all else, alone or in a community? This is a difficult subject that many people have studied deeply and done much work on trying to understand the impact of communities on beliefs and the impact of leaving a community of belief. But, going back to knowing, I have experienced several sources of knowing and the most powerful of those is the experiences that truly combine all of the sources into one experience. But, the question is what can we really know? And how do we know it? To start with I always think of relationships, they seem to personify an archetypal experience that transfers to many other experiences, creating a type of knowing unique to seeing patterns. So, in relationships……If we are to develop a relationship with a person that we just met what might the criteria be for interest and safety as we invite another person into our soul. A few things come to mind, the first is trust. If I cannot open myself to you and fully disclose, neither can I receive you and there will be little purpose for the experience of being together. To develop trust, an ability to invite a person in and to receive another person the foundation is the ability to do that very thing with and for yourself. That sounds really easy, but can easily be manipulated away by cultural thinking. You think you need to act or operate in a certain way, due to the ideas around that action, not really by the real knowing of our soul on the course of action. So, if we think that we know, then we cannot hear what we do not know, leaving us in a feedback loop that we cannot break until we actually admit that we do not know and cannot know some things. So, why is this important? Knowing has three components, an emotional/spiritual component that is a resonant feeling of affirmation about the space we are holding and the direction we intend to move. The other part is experiential. The last is an intellect learning about the thing, experience, whatever it is we are trying to understand The experiential part is important to be able to translate the combination of our emotions/spirits and our reasoning. The experiential part is what breaks down the walls of belief that we set up predetermining what we think we know. It is through those experiences coupled with the resonant feelings and the learning that draw a complete picture of knowing. In talking about knowing, what I am really talking about is not "I know this fact." It is a overall impression of positiveness, hope, goodness, wholeness to ourselves and others, or conversely that there is a clear feeling of discord, loss of hope, fear, etc. This kind of knowing does not lead me to know what someone else is thinking on a factual basis or what a person in history may have intended in his actions, no what we are talking about is overall patterns and clarity about direction and resonance vs discord in your life and culture. So, when I say that I do not know, what I may mean is that I don't have the facts and I know that. And, I am ok with that, but what I do have is the underlying feelings and patterns that a certain course of action of thought process leaves me with. The important thing I have found in this is the real objectivity of what is there. I do not know, nor do I need to "know" to understand the patterns, not the facts, to see what life is behind the experience. Is it a life that has been built on honesty? Is it built on respect of persons? Does it hold one person above another, or are all of equal value and equally heard and cherished, in actions as well as word? Is there an inner representation of the outward action, or is there just fear permeating the inward, hoping that perhaps someday it will get better? Is there a sense of openness and allowance for each person's journey, or is there a specific way and order that if a person does not follow they do not have equal value or voice, and are perhaps reprimanded or shunned for their perspective? Is there a place for those who do not "know", that is sincere, honest and gentle, not contrived, the subject of gossip or assigned? Those are the things that I am looking for. Is the basis a sense or is there a sense of "it need it to be something specific" in order to be vindicated, or right. We can emotionally want to be somewhere and convince ourselves easily of what we see and what appears to us, but experience can bridge the gap left by emotion alone. How does that work? Over and over again we choose, we choose based on group think, sometimes, based on anger, sometimes based on fear, sometimes based on real desire and resonance , we swing around and around between all of those, and only through experience can we begin to interpret what the emotions around our actions mean. What this really means is that knowing is a process, not a one time event. So many times in life in our immaturity or the stage in our process that has a deep learning curve and we think we understand it all, only to move just a little further to find out that we really knew nothing that we thought we knew and find ourselves embarrassed at how we overlaid our beliefs upon others, not hearing, seeing or even knowing them at the same time as we were ardently declaring how much we knew and saw those same others. We had no idea of their feelings of aloneness, their feeling of despair and loneliness, as we sat vindicated in our belief, never hearing, never seeing, blind to ourselves and blind to others.
And so to know, we must admit our ignorance and have a beautiful peace in all that we do not know. That is the real faith. For if God really does guide his children, then the honest admission of not knowing would garner the greatest support from a loving God. In relationships, it does, honesty is the key and foundation, not pretending that you are something you are not, being something on the outside, empty on the inside. We must honestly admit the fact that we are children in the learning of things of the heart, things of the spirit and finding also in finding an opening to your heart. This is the first step in finding the space and voice in your own heart. The first honest step of knowing is your heart……………..the real test of faith and vulnerability is being with your own heart.
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