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?
