On embracing not knowing...
Insights that landed and expanded through meditation.
Below are words on an insight that landed and expanded through the stillness of meditation.
I have since fleshed out the original insight to ensure context is present as I feel this topic talks to a nuance that often gets overlooked or misunderstood.
These words continue to remain useful for me and I share them trusting they will find the ears that need to hear them.
Life is constantly providing us with the information we need to grow.
All too often we fixate on the situation and ignore the information. We foolishly think that if we chop, change or ignore the situation, the sensation (the goad for growth) from the information behind the situation will disappear.
In its pure form, the situation is the lived experience of the information. Unfortunately, we often overlay our judgment upon the situation due to our personal ‘problems’ and engage in the dramatisation of the information.
On top of our individual overlays, society has many collective agreements about good and bad, right and wrong, which deem some situations okay to experience and others not. Blindly abiding by these often unexamined beliefs can limit our ability to grow from unfortunate events. In these overlays we declare to life that here is safe to grow but over there is not.
If we identify our beliefs as they arise and drop our preconceived ideas about existence to meet the moment, we then have the opportunity to receive the information from the situation (whatever it may be) with an open heart, unbiased ears and sight aligned with love. In this slip stream of allowing, embracing and loving life, we offer the healing of wholeness.
If the situation is tough to digest, not useful to the felt harmony of humanity or harmful unto another, we can be completely sure that the actions within the situation arose from fear. Responding with a closed heart, judgment or actions that bring further fear is hypocritical. Showing up with a compassionate and an open heart is the only sensible answer, always.
It is important to note that when we talk about learning from all situations delivered by life, this does not mean we just let anything happen, that we never take action because ‘it’s all good’, or that we fall into the wasteland of false oneness. It also does not mean avoid feeling the depth of suffering that may have taken place.
To be in the moment means we are the moment. And as an embodied, integrated and integral aspect of the moment, we may be led to feel deeper than we've ever felt before or guided into appropriate action within the situation. This is where we meet life beyond the ideas of how it should be. And, when we move beyond the ideas of the mind, we live from the heart. The heart is in direct relationship with life and is enacting as it is informed. There is no pre-planning in presence, just unforeseen responding from the knowing that life is learning to love itself whole through the human experience. This is the birth pool of spontaneity and true north of authenticity. In understanding this, we realise that the only ‘value’ that matters is presence.
An elder, Don Rosenthal, once offered me these words…
“To not know is deeply spiritual. To resist not knowing is confusion.”
This is why the path is pathless and the pavers reveal themselves right before the foot hits the floor.
In a time when the wellness world thinks it knows about spirituality and insists that the path looks a certain way, I pray that we all learn to trust, embrace and celebrate the power in not knowing. And, I hope that we can continue to alight the collective heart within each one of us by individually choosing to examine the stations of fear within our psyche, freeing ourselves from within to show up for life with the warm embrace of an open heart.
Loving each other all the way home through the joyful, loving and even challenging moments of now.
As I continue to learn the walk of the words I write above, I recognise that although showing up with an open heart seems simple, it may just be the greatest ceremony of all existence.
And choosing to allow for not knowing in a society so heavily addicted to knowing is a revolutionary act to honour the path of the heart.
I hold huge respect for my fellow pilgrims walking this path and wholeheartedly cheer you on.
Blessings my friends,
Ryan