Saying, "I don't know."

“If you destroy ‘I do not know,’ you destroy all possibilities of knowing.” Sadhguru Jaggi Vasudev

Thinking we know it all leaves us with no reason, nor inspiration, to learn. In other words, certainty is the enemy of knowledge.

Is “the devil made me do it” a credible explanation for one’s behavior? It is for some people. Just as, “God wants me to run for the Presidency,” is a credible explanation for others. Perhaps the ones that believe God talks to them are also the ones that believe the devil makes them do things they don’t really want to do.

We have been taught that the idea of having the correct answer, even if its from a supernatural source, is a good thing and saying “I don’t know” is inadequate and embarrassing, especially if you’re supposed to be a leader. How often do you say to yourself, “I should know that!”? It’s very stressful to have to have the correct answer, as if there was a ‘correct’ answer, all the time.

Fear of embarrassment for not knowing, being stupid or inadequate, causes people to limit their lives to only those things in which they feel safe and knowledgeable. Many do not pursue their dreams and ideals, such as contributing to a world that works for everyone and everything, because they are don’t know how to proceed. Many feel like victims, believing that everyone else knows but them. Feeling stupid and inadequate, they become angry, blameful and act from a place that seeks revenge and punishment. They seek to dumb everything down and they become anti-intellectual and anti-science.

Saying, “I don’t know,” is the reason for science and intellectual endeavor. Saying, “I don’t know,” leads to contemplating the great mystery of life and remembering our connection to spirit, which does know. Saying, “I don’t know,” helps us get our bloated nothingness out of the way of the divine circuits. Saying, “I don’t know,” enables us to think of our lives and the world as a learning laboratory, in which we experiment in order to discover and rediscover our reality as spirit, and spirit’s reflection in and around us. Saying, “I don’t know,” opens us to wonder, curiosity, inspiration and discovery.

Why do objects appear solid when the atoms they are made of are mostly empty space? How do driveway weeds thrive when other plants are withering in the heat? What is the “chemistry” of falling in love? Why are babies so cute and teenager so challenging? How does the tiny acorn become a mighty oak tree?

Delight in the great mystery. Live as if you were born into a learning laboratory. Use your innate curiosity to explore, learn, and awaken the memory of your connection to Source. Use, “I don’t know,” as an inspiration to be bigger, better, more compassionate, freer and more joyful.

Definitions

Aquadextrious:
The art of turning the bathtub tap on with your toes.

Pain:
A cat licking your sunburn.

Budget:
A method for going broke methodically.

Willpower:
The ability to eat only one salted peanut.

Profanity:
The linguistic crutch of inarticulate idiots.

Boat:
A hole in the water surrounded by wood into
which one pours money.

Bachelor:
One who treats all women as sequels.

Cigarette:
A pinch of tobacco, wrapped in paper,
fire at one end, fool at the other.

Flashlight:
A case for holding dead batteries.

Taxpayer:
Someone who doesn't have to take a public
service exam to work for the government.

Consciousness:
That annoying time between naps.

Stress:
The confusion created when ones mind overrides
the body's basic desire to choke the living daylights out
of some idiot who desperately needs it.

Jury:
Twelve people who determine which client
has the better lawyer

Chickens:
The only animals you eat before they are
born and after they're dead.

Hospitality:
Making your guests feel at home,
even if you wish they were.

Adult:
A person who has stopped growing at both ends
and is now growing in the middle.

A Parallel Between England in 1939 and America 2011?

Gandhi wrote, “There is a person now slumbering within us, which if awakened would do to evil what light does to darkness.” I read that today and love the synchronicity of the way it fits with what I wrote yesterday. I would only change the word, “person” to “power”, meaning spirit.

Now given what I’ve been writing, you know that I don’t want to give undue energy to the seeming evil in the world, for the more energy I pour into my belief in evil, the stronger the evil becomes and the weaker spirit seems. In my reality as spirit, I know that there is only spirit/God and nothing else, and therefore, if I’m concerned with ‘evil’, I’ve forgotten my identity as spirit and identified with the ego.

So, the seeming reality and sway of evil is, in the learning laboratory of Life, a red flag meant to remind me of the need to awaken from the ego’s dream and choose spirit as my teacher.

The ‘red flag’ I see now, as I write this, is the candidacy of Rick Perry, seen through the prism of what I wrote yesterday, plus the idea that if good ‘men’ do nothing, evil will triumph and England’s appeasement [as well as that of the other democracies] of Nazi Germany before the 1939 invasion of Poland. This comparison was stimulated by a movie I’m watching [movies have a big influence on me] about England’s appeasement of Nazi Germany called, “Glorious 39.”
Here’s what I see: the Republicans will nominate an extremist. With his actual experience in governing, his masculinity and good looks, Rick will easily defeat Michelle. Americans will then have a clear-cut, literally black and white choice between a temporizing socialist compromiser and a no-nonsense anti-government extremist. Which do you think will win?

The parallels with Americans now, before Rick becomes President, and England and the democracies appeasement of Hitler and Nazi Germany are striking. Rick has the backing of the big corporations. The big corporations both here, in England and Germany backed Hitler. For example, IBM was doing business with Hitler even during the war, supplying the machines and systems that supported the so-called German efficiency in military action and death camps.

We now have gridlock, political polarization and wide-spread disgust with the political system; so did Germany in the 30’s. As Nazis and Communists battled in the streets [which, thank God, we haven’t gotten to yet, Dems and Rs just battle on TV, the internet and blogosphere], the vast majority of Germans were paralyzed in the middle, as are the vast majority of Americans now, and, as I wrote yesterday were during the McCarthy and Jim Crow days.

Germany was in a deep financial crisis with high unemployment and no growth, except for military spending, as we are today. Granted it’s not as bad here and now as it was then in Germany, but it’s the worst most baby boomers have seen and if you’re unemployed as 9 million are, and gov’t programs that support you are being eliminated, then the unemployment rate is 100%

Many people in the democracies thought that racism and fascism – Hitler and Mussolini, were harsh, but in the long run, just what was needed. They did not think it was evil at all. Many people feel that way about Rick. Yes, he’s a little extreme and he says things that are harsh, but after all, he has to say those things to get elected, he won’t actually do them. He does? Why? That’s what they said about Hitler, too, and it was all there in Mein Kampf.

It’s scary isn’t it? A little far fetched, perhaps. But history repeats itself…. And if we always do what we always did, we’ll always get what we always got. Is what’s going on economically and politically in the USA business as usual or something to be concerned about? And if we choose to be concerned, what are we to do?

Gandhi wrote, “There is a person now slumbering within us, which if awakened would do to evil what light does to darkness.” I read that today and love the synchronicity of the way it fits with what I wrote yesterday. I would only change the word, “person” to “power”, meaning spirit.

On Seeing the Movie The Help

My wife and I saw The Help, Saturday afternoon. It is an excellent film – splendid acting, writing, music, scenery, photography and a number of strong, gut wrenching messages. On the way home, what struck me most was how the Blacks lived relatively normal and morally decent lives despite the humiliation, abuse and constant threat of terror. I thought of the power of intimidation, threat and fear. I thought of Joe McCarthy and people in the early ‘50’s living under a similar domestic, not foreign, threat of intimidation and fear.

I came away from the movie understanding that we have met the terrorists and they is us – good Anglo Christians, not, swarthy Muslims. And I thought that right this minute, the people who want to turn the clock back to those days and rely on hate, threat, fear and intimidation, many of them knowing and unknowing racists, are once again in the ascendancy and seem to be holding the rest of us hostage. Why do we allow it? Why don’t we speak up and call a spade a spade? How many good lives, including those of the haters, must be lost and damaged due to hate, fear, ignorance and intimidation?

Besides blaming the haters and fear mongers, which was my first choice, many answers to this question arise. The answer resonating with me now is that the best way to deal with hate, fear, terror, threat and intimidation is first individually in our own minds and then collectively, in twos, threes, groups then communities. First, I take responsibility for myself, get clear, then from that centered connected place, reach out to others. Both individual and collective action are necessary, not either or; both.

Terry Cole Whittaker says the mind is the greatest terrorist weapon; and that terror is error with a “t” in front of it. We put up with hate, fear, terror, threat and intimidation because we think we have to, that there is no alternative and that we don’t have a viable choice. That kind of thinking is the error. We always have a choice, and the only meaningful choice is between spirit and ego. If I choose spirit as my teacher and learn to see as spirit sees, I can see the world as a learning laboratory in which I am being trained to see spirit in all people, places and things, especially in those people, the haters, who press my buttons. I learn that they are my buttons, mine to manage and learn from, not to be pressed by me or anyone else.

Connecting with mySelf and learning to manage and learn from my buttons, makes me more attractive because believe it or not, everyone is in the learning laboratory with me, even the haters, needing to learn the same lessons. When others understand what I’m doing, they will join in. I think this is what Jesus meant when he said, when two or more are gathered in my name. His name is love and self mastery, not hate, fear, terror, threat and intimidation. First, I learn, then join with others to help them learn, not as a savior or a holier-than-thou pompous ass, but as a compassionate, loving member of one family; then we choose spirit and put the ego’s hate, fear, terror, ignorance and intimidation aside.

The Love of God Enfolds Me

“What is everything leaves room for nothing else, and what is everything is love – agape, spirit’s love for us and our love for It. Anything I do, I will do better, if I remember this fact and know spirit’s omnipotent, omnipresent love better. To help me remember, I affirm: ‘the love of God enfolds me.’ This captures the two-way aspect: my love of God enfolds me, and God’s love of me, enfolds me. I do better when I know better. Wherever I am, I am always in the Kingdom, and with God, all things are possible.

Saying, thinking, feeling, and knowing that the love of God enfolds me, reminds me that there are always right solutions at hand. My responsibility is to align myself with mySelf – my reality as spirit. Whatever the challenge is, I can go within, connect with mySelf, and, with Its guidance, see things differently and seeing differently, know what to say, think, feel and do to make a contribution to a world that works for everyone and everything. The world is still an illusion, but with spirit, I can understand that it is a neutral illusion, a classroom, and depending on the teacher I choose – ego or spirit, I can see it as either a reflection of spirit’s love or the ego’s hatred.

Saying, thinking, feeling, and knowing that the love of God enfolds me, is an affirmative prayer, a partial spiritual mind treatment, that enables me to free myself from the ego’s sin, guilt and fear, to know better and do better, without adding fuel to the false fires of discontent, fear and terror.

Complexity is Not of Spirit

If my purpose is to awaken from the ego’s dream of terror, sin, guilt and fear, and if I am mindful and make a habit of reminding my decision maker to see things differently by choosing spirit’s love, joy and forgiveness, I can be confident that wisdom will be given me when I need it. Asking my decision maker to choose again and asking for spirit’s help and guidance throughout the day, whenever I am mindful of the need to do so, will build my awareness of my connection with spirit, and will remind me that I am in the world, but not of the world.

Asleep with the ego, I think a thousand choices confront me, but awake with spirit I realize there is only one – choosing to realize my mistaken choice of the ego, a mistake I can undo. “And even this but seems to be a choice;” because spirit alone is true. Awakening and allowing the decision maker to choose spirit is the “final illusion.” As that mistake in undone, the world and he thought system that made it disappear.

I, and you, want to be mindful and not confuse ourselves with all the doubts that myriad decisions would induce. Complexity and multiplicity were made by the ego to keep our attention riveted in the dream/illusion of the world. They are the end product of the ego’s plan to keep us mindless – unaware of our decision maker’s power to choose spirit and let the ego go. We think that there are physical, psychological and other forms of problems that demand solutions. Yet this is all made by the ego, a smoke screen to confuse us about the real problem in our minds.

“Complexity is not of God. How could it be when all He knows is One?” Nothing conflicts with oneness so there is nothing to decide. It is conflict that makes choice and decision necessary. The truth is simple; it is one, without an opposite. Truth makes no decisions because there is nothing to decide between. What is everything leaves room for nothing else.

A Meaningful Purpose

If time and effort are spent trying to fix the world and not on learning how to choose spirit first, and then with spirit’s guidance ‘fix’ the world, nothing is learned, there is no sense of gain, and nothing is accomplished. An objective look at history will bear this out. Though much has been accomplished technologically, in terms of ending suffering and bringing peace to the people of the world, we have not progressed much beyond the caveman. In fact, given our technological prowess, we have actually learned to inflict pain, suffering and death beyond anything a caveman could have imagined.

Nothing much has changed. Guided by the ego, homo sapiens’ purpose has always been oriented to fixing the world, getting as much as possible from others and the planet, and not awakening from the decision maker’s choice of the ego’s dream of the world. Awakening from this dream is our only meaningful purpose. If I can identify with the goal, purpose and function of forgiving the ego’s dream, changing my mind and choosing a different teacher, my life, from birth to death, from the time I wake to the time I go to sleep, will have great meaning and purpose.

I will close my eyes at night with a sense of fulfillment, not necessarily because I leaned all there was to learn, but because I understood my life in the world is a classroom – neither prison nor paradise. I can rest easy with the thought that even if I had not learned all my lessons, tomorrow is another day, with a loving teacher who is infinitely patient. Thus I awake each morning with joy and return joyfully to bed regardless of the day’s perceived successes or failures, for I have identified with the only purpose that makes life meaningful.