As I continue to accumulate years upon this planet I truly feel like the only thing I know is that I know less and less. Maybe it’s really that I feel I need to know less and less. When I was growing up I came to believe that knowing meant surviving. Uncertainty left me feeling vulnerable and incapable of control. If I believed you knew something that I didn’t you had an edge. I gave you authority. Knowing meant dominion. Knowledge equaled power. So, I went in search of knowledge at any cost. It was currency. It was power. It was control.
And it was a complete illusion.
Today I absolutely love to learn new things and to explore new ideas. I savor knowledge for the expansion that its experience creates inside of me. I am boundlessly curious. There is a part of me that is always questioning. Google has become a dear and frequented friend.
And I do not confuse knowledge with power, control, or dominion. I do not base my worth or sense of self on what I think I know. For me information and knowledge are vastly different things. And when held up to the prism of wisdom they are both found to be grossly anemic.
I now find that uncertainty and vulnerability are prerequisites to true knowing. Accumulating data is entertaining, but it does not add to my sense of worth. Data and information, when integrated, can lead to a level of knowing. Knowing, when held loosely and with love, can lead to wisdom. And personally, wisdom is a cherished goal.
I know many who are well educated and yet not wise. I know many who are far too insecure to admit to what they do not know. Pretense becomes a shield that keeps integration, and so true knowing, at bay. Those who truly know don’t run around claiming that they know. They don’t have to. Those who fear that they are clueless about the most essential things of life make the most noise about what they claim to know. It mostly fools only themselves.
To say I don’t know creates a vacuum and an opening in me for something new to enter my awareness. To say I don’t know creates a bridge of connection onto which other’s ideas may enter and move within me. To say I don’t know is born of a space of increasing humility. And humility is a forerunner for wisdom. To say I don’t know is a foundation for faith. I have grown to trust life enough that not knowing is no longer scary.
I don’t know, and I don’t have to know. And Source God: show me what I don’t know I don’t know. And give me courage to stay with that opening.
My security is to be found in my tolerance of not having to know, in my comfortability with uncertainty. I do not have to pretend to know. I place no sense of self in what I think I know. I have no need to battle thought system to thought system. Self-image to self-image. Ideology to ideology.
And from a sea of humble unknowing I somehow discover a place within myself that Knows. That Knows and is Known. A deeper Knowing that is not data or information. That is not learned or acquired. It is essential and somehow primal. It is intimate, and it is intuitive. It is authentic and unchangeable.
In knowing less, I have somehow become more.
Who knew?
Thursday, October 11, 2018
Thursday, October 4, 2018
SUDDENLY ROGER
“It was sudden. He never knew what happened.”
Sudden death is such an intriguing term to me. Isn’t death always sudden? It certainly is immediate. I guess we term it that when someone passes without a journey through disease or as an effect or result of a prolonged process. It is sudden in that one moment a person is alive and responsive and the next they have left the human experience with no notice of an imminent departure.
My friend Roger died suddenly. One moment he was here, and then suddenly he was not. He put on his shoes and he went outside to do we do not know what. He went outside by himself, and with no notice or fanfare he suddenly left the planet. He suddenly left throngs of people who were then suddenly notified that he was no longer here. The impact of the suddenness was for me enormous. No time to prepare. No time to ready. No time to cushion or reason or soften. Just a sudden call of a sudden death leaving a sudden void.
It is said we die the way we have lived. I have witnessed evidence of that repeatedly. Yet perhaps never as clearly as with Roger.
I don’t recall the details of how Roger entered my life and heart. Suddenly, Roger was there.
There was something quite sudden about Roger. He was brilliant, caring, creative, funny, unfiltered, authentic. If Roger had not been so completely real, he would have been unnerving to me. I never knew what he was going to say. He seemed to have no pretense whatsoever. He would have a thought, a feeling, a response and he would share it. Suddenly there was Roger. Being Roger. It was never in my experience unkind. It was never mean or calculated. It was not premeditated. It was Roger being his glorious, perfectly imperfect sudden self. >br>
Others think about what they might do to help others, to help the world. While others were thinking Roger was doing. There was a need and then there was a sudden solution in the form of Roger. His spirituality had Nikes on. Roger put his whole sudden self into everything he did. His art. His music. His writing. His caring. His service. His environmental concerns. His loving.
His loving.
Roger loved suddenly and relentlessly. He loved his wife Linda. He loved his mother. He loved his daughter, his chosen-son, his family. He loved his dogs. Roger loved his community, his church, his friends. Golfing, cooking, serving, singing, creating something where there was nothing. Spaces became suddenly filled with Roger. With Roger’s love.
Roger loved loving.
Roger died suddenly of a too-large heart.
Of a too large heart.
Roger cried easily and shamelessly. His heart and tear ducts had a clear and unobstructed connection. I will always love and appreciate that about Roger. Unfiltered Roger would weep at beauty, transcendence, goodness, Truth. That big, open, glorious heart would spill forth streams of loving, caring, compassion. It startled some people. It only inspired me. Roger would often say what I didn’t dare to say. Roger would let the tears flow when I might try to hold them back. Roger would seize the opportunity while I was still looking for the possibility.
Suddenly Roger was in my life. And now suddenly he is gone.
Physically he is gone.
Roger’s heart, caring, love, tears, uniqueness, rawness live on in me. Traces of Roger will always be a part of my own heart. I know that I am different because suddenly Roger came into my life. And I am different because suddenly he died.
I am somehow more.
I memorialize Roger by being more unfiltered. By laughing fully and crying freely. By being even more engaged in life, in love, in giving, in creating. By loving with more abandon and less pretense. By being unabatingly real. Genuine. Sudden.
I remember my dear friend Roger by being more sudden.
Thanks, my Raja. You are forever a part of me.
Sudden death is such an intriguing term to me. Isn’t death always sudden? It certainly is immediate. I guess we term it that when someone passes without a journey through disease or as an effect or result of a prolonged process. It is sudden in that one moment a person is alive and responsive and the next they have left the human experience with no notice of an imminent departure.
My friend Roger died suddenly. One moment he was here, and then suddenly he was not. He put on his shoes and he went outside to do we do not know what. He went outside by himself, and with no notice or fanfare he suddenly left the planet. He suddenly left throngs of people who were then suddenly notified that he was no longer here. The impact of the suddenness was for me enormous. No time to prepare. No time to ready. No time to cushion or reason or soften. Just a sudden call of a sudden death leaving a sudden void.
It is said we die the way we have lived. I have witnessed evidence of that repeatedly. Yet perhaps never as clearly as with Roger.
I don’t recall the details of how Roger entered my life and heart. Suddenly, Roger was there.
There was something quite sudden about Roger. He was brilliant, caring, creative, funny, unfiltered, authentic. If Roger had not been so completely real, he would have been unnerving to me. I never knew what he was going to say. He seemed to have no pretense whatsoever. He would have a thought, a feeling, a response and he would share it. Suddenly there was Roger. Being Roger. It was never in my experience unkind. It was never mean or calculated. It was not premeditated. It was Roger being his glorious, perfectly imperfect sudden self. >br>
Others think about what they might do to help others, to help the world. While others were thinking Roger was doing. There was a need and then there was a sudden solution in the form of Roger. His spirituality had Nikes on. Roger put his whole sudden self into everything he did. His art. His music. His writing. His caring. His service. His environmental concerns. His loving.
His loving.
Roger loved suddenly and relentlessly. He loved his wife Linda. He loved his mother. He loved his daughter, his chosen-son, his family. He loved his dogs. Roger loved his community, his church, his friends. Golfing, cooking, serving, singing, creating something where there was nothing. Spaces became suddenly filled with Roger. With Roger’s love.
Roger loved loving.
Roger died suddenly of a too-large heart.
Of a too large heart.
Roger cried easily and shamelessly. His heart and tear ducts had a clear and unobstructed connection. I will always love and appreciate that about Roger. Unfiltered Roger would weep at beauty, transcendence, goodness, Truth. That big, open, glorious heart would spill forth streams of loving, caring, compassion. It startled some people. It only inspired me. Roger would often say what I didn’t dare to say. Roger would let the tears flow when I might try to hold them back. Roger would seize the opportunity while I was still looking for the possibility.
Suddenly Roger was in my life. And now suddenly he is gone.
Physically he is gone.
Roger’s heart, caring, love, tears, uniqueness, rawness live on in me. Traces of Roger will always be a part of my own heart. I know that I am different because suddenly Roger came into my life. And I am different because suddenly he died.
I am somehow more.
I memorialize Roger by being more unfiltered. By laughing fully and crying freely. By being even more engaged in life, in love, in giving, in creating. By loving with more abandon and less pretense. By being unabatingly real. Genuine. Sudden.
I remember my dear friend Roger by being more sudden.
Thanks, my Raja. You are forever a part of me.
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