the reality of not knowing

this morsel has popped up on the radar in about half a dozen different ways this week, and so i guess it's time to write about it. although, to be fair, it's pretty damn silly to write a blog post (using words, which construe some kind of knowing) to essentially say, hey folks, i don't know anything!

but i have a great sense of humor, so i am going to give it a go anyway.

the way awakening rolled in my life is that after a moment of absolute unity, every single moment from then on became about deconstruction and demolition. i knew that what i thought i was, was just some kind of sick fascination, and it wasn't essentially true. the process was built upon a lot of duality - having a sort of seething hatred for what i knew i wasn't, or those storylines and identities that were clearly false. i knew, as i mentioned in previous blog posts, that i knew there had to be something more than the strange, wacko world i found myself in, a world that never made much sense at all. the process was brutal, and messy, and cruel, and violent.

early on, sometime in the first few months, i was riding home on the bus one day, reading jed mckenna, my jed-i master during that period of time, and i was curious about why the process for the last few weeks had grown so stale, and why i felt so dry in my experience. and it became clear, all of a sudden, that the real price of this whole thing was an absolute surrender into the willingness to not know a single thing. not only wouldn't i know anything at any point in the journey, i just couldn't. and furthermore, the dryness of the past few weeks was because the mind was still trying to know, and the effort of that was taking the whole process and stallling it before it ever really got going. it looks so pathetic in type like this - the whole thing hit me like a fucking bomb. like a depth charge in my mind.

i didn't know anything for sure. i didn't, and i couldn't. i wouldn't, not ever, not ever again, if i was honest.

i am not kidding when i say i cried for weeks, yes weeks! every time the phrase floated into my mind that i didn't know, i would get all teared up and turn into a hysterical mess. it hurt so, so bad. all the mind wanted was some stability, someplace to land, to rest, to call home. some certainty. and the truth itself, ripping through my life like wildfire, showed me in no uncertain terms that if i really, really meant what i said about wanting truth - that was the price. everything. every single goddamn thing. all of it.

so i let go, into the mess, into the confusion and hysteria. i could see how much the mind wanted to stop at each insight about what was happening and hoist a flag - and call this My New Truth. but the grace of this life will remain the integrity, and the sincerity that flows through. i couldn't do it because i couldn't lie to myself. i wouldn't, not ever. not over this, this whole process, it was too damn important. it was the only real thing i'd ever known in 30 some odd years. it was everything.

and along the way, during the two years that the truth ripped through my life and gutted me, i didn't really get involved with groups or people or any of that. no community. this was my solo project, and it was the most alone i'd ever been. and it was good for me, because talking to people, every single time i ever tried, i saw how clearly false the entire exchange is. just in my experience, it's more honest to sit quietly with a beer and a pizza, farting into the wind, than to try to have some deep spiritual discussion with another human. (i don't drink. and i don't eat pizza. but still. hahaha.)

now, after what happened on christmas, when the bloody sword dropped from my hand, because i could find no more left of me to gut, all of a sudden the energy is moving back into the world. i am talking with people again, and i am incredibly surprised to find myself doing so. but whatever, i'm not in charge.

and the thing that keeps coming up is the experience that in order to actually have a conversation with anyone, especially in the "spiritual" realm, i am expected to have some kind of thoughts, or opinions on stuff. it's come up over and over this week - people either asking my opinions on things (i live in boulder, where people get spiritual at the checkout line, no kidding) or the online board that i post on occasionally, or the friends i've gotten back in touch with since i came back to town.... everywhere, there is this kind of strange dialogue.

the energy, the movement of this life right now, wants to share the kind of freedom this not knowing has brought to my own life, my own experience. i look at people, and they seem all tight and bound up and stuffed inside of themselves - like they really believe they live behind their eyes. and i am moved. metaphorically, i want to reach in, and unfold the wings of their hearts, and show them that they could always move and fly, and have no boundaries or borders. it's not like i feel i have to, or that it's some grand mission. i just love the look in people's eyes when they're grokking up with truth and freedom. it thrills me. and so the mouth keeps flapping, the hands keep typing. this empty space is trying to express itself, with full knowledge that it can only ever fail. it cannot express what is beyond all expression.

i know with absolute clarity only one thing. i know that i do not know a single thing. and in that knowing, there is some beautiful levity to the life, to the step and the lilt and the gaze and the touch. there is flow. and it feels very, very nice. and it longs to share itself with others who suspect, but are too busy knowing, to unknow themselves back into freedom.

and every time the mind gets involved, either by dissecting some conversation that was had, or trying to figure out some more proper words..... that's just Not It. but how do you share the not knowing because the love of this life demands it - when the very act of sharing seemingly has to express itself through this format of speaking/writing - the very venue of which cuts up the One into duality/the Many in order to express itself?

what a conundrum! anyway. it's fun to try. and i love life and people and all of it enough to keep playing with it. curiosity and questions are the best method i have available right now, just asking things, gently and without hope of an answer..... and praying, someday, someone will look me right in the eye and say:

"yeah, that's an interesting question. i just don't know."