The academic and spiritual teacher, Ram Das, who was a disciple of Maharaji Neem Karoli Baba, said that whenever he had a question that he could not answer, he understood that he was in a state of consciousness that could not provide the answer. He understood that he would have to move to a state of consciousness where that question would have already been answered. He said this in response to a question about being thwarted by obstacles (such as questions we don’t have answers for) along the spiritual journey.
Image from PxHere
It is not as if we’re on a spiritual highway that is interrupted by obstacles. It is that we have fallen asleep along the infinite highway of love and simply need to wake up and pay attention. Put another way, our spiritual journey is about waking up from the mostly uninterrupted sleep that we are in. As long as we’re awake, we’re consciously on the highway. When we fall asleep however, we lose sight of the highway. The highway has always been there, wide, endless and free-flowing. There are no obstacles in it. But falling asleep does mean that we often lose sight of it.
It is not as if we’re on a spiritual highway that is interrupted by obstacles. It is that we have fallen asleep along the infinite highway of love and simply need to wake up and pay attention.
Now, you can’t be ‘awake’ and not be ‘present’. If you’re awake, you are present. And in presence, there are no unanswered questions. The problem for most of us is that we are not fully present long enough (or ever) to realize this. And so we’re less likely to be ‘informed’ by the all-knowing, all-seeing presence which we might choose to call God, Love, Infinite Intelligence, the Dao and so on.
And yet, just a few moments in the vicinity of presence (in other words, even being partially present rather like a dimmer light) can cause enough of a shift in our state of consciousness to predispose us to the answers we seek. An intuitive nudge, a prompt, a desire to go to a certain place, to see or call someone, finding a certain book or ‘chancing upon’ a certain quote are all ways in which we are brought closer and closer to the truth that we are seeking. However,
We must be willing to suspend what we know
To get the most out of the promptings of presence or truth, we must be willing to suspend what we think we know. As Sadhguru, a great spiritual master, often says, the true seeker is one who accepts that he or she doesn’t know. If you think you know, then what are you seeking?
Until we know something in an experiential way, we cannot claim to know it. At best, we can only say that we know about it. But knowing about something is not the same as knowing it. I know about writing a book. I’ve read countless articles and books about writing a book and spoken to people who have written books. But until I write a book myself, I can’t claim to know what ‘writing a book is’.
Think, then, about the things we claim to know. Do we really know them or do we know about them? There is a difference. A huge difference. An irreconcilable difference, actually. Until and unless we are prepared to accept that we don’t know, Truth or Love will not be able to reach us. We have placed our knowing in its way. But the open field of not knowing allows all the Unknown in.
The unidentified author of A Cloud of Unknowing said this:
When we’re asleep, the functions of our physical faculties are suspended so our bodies can get complete rest. Sleep nourishes and strengthens our bodies in every way. The same is true of the spiritual ‘sleep’ of contemplative prayer. The stubborn questions of our restless spirituality and of all our creative and rational thoughts are firmly bound and totally emptied, so the happy soul can sleep soundly, resting profoundly in the loving awareness of God as he is, completely nourished and strengthened in spirit
The Cloud of Unknowing – A new translation by Carmen Acevedo Butcher
The questions we cannot answer are questions that ultimately need to be laid to rest in the Unknown wherein the soul and the mind can rest profoundly in loving awareness…
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