Recently, I have been practicing sincerely meeting questions and declarative statements that arise in my inner dialogue with ‘I don’t know’ and Silence. How are you feeling? I don’t know. Why did you do it? I don’t know. Are you thinking about it? I don’t know. You’re in denial. Silence.
Maintaining ‘I don’t know’ and Silence is having a very palpable effect. It quietens everything down. It takes the weight off my chest, soothes the burning in my cheeks and settles the sickening feeling in my stomach. And it gives me space. It disperses the crowd of thoughts that had besieged my mind. It interrupts the ceaseless chatter, the heckling, the terrifying urgency, the clamour of threats, the paranoid defenses, the anguished plea for this feeling, this situation, to go away. It prevents me from remaining the victim that I have temporarily become and it arrests the panicked need to do something, take some kind of action, anything, anything at all to make this stop even when I can see how futile such action is.
Silence and ‘I don’t know’ put a stop to all of that. Most of all, it challenges the meanings I have imposed on everything I perceive and experience. Like thick, heavy smoke in an enclosed room leaving hastily when a window is opened, all of these forms of madness evacuate the mind-body space in a hurry when ‘I don’t know’ and Silence step it. It is liberating and oh so comforting and healing. In their presence, the conditioned mind is silenced and the unscripted and unlearned mind with its wise innocence is once again allowed to show me the unlearned, unfamiliar and always peaceful way. And I realize once again that life is so much easier and thrilling when I don’t know.
It’s a radical thing to do. Meeting meanings you have known and accepted all your life with ‘I don’t know’ and Silence can be scary at first. The conditioned mind of learning finds this intolerable, Not knowing has never been a legitimate option and certainly not one sanctioned by society because if you don’t know, then I cannot hold you responsible (or more the case, make you guilty) for things you have done, or not done. And you must be held responsible. It must be your fault. You must be the one to be blamed. Society, as we know it, cannot survive without blame, without fault, without judgment.
You’ve been trained, conditioned, taught a certain way according to certain rules and conventions and if you deviate from them, you’re guilty, you’re wrong. And yet, as we dive deeper into our essential nature, our unconditioned nature, we realize that ‘I don’t know is the most honest answer we can give’. Why? Because almost everything we claim to know, we have learned. Meanings and methods imposed upon our essential nature – our INNOCENCE – to ensure we tow the line, stick with the program, do not deviate.
There is a deep distrust of our essential nature, of who and what we naturally and truly are, and with that distrust, the attempt to suppress it. If we are not thus trained, we’d be like animals, it is claimed. Ah, what madness! We are enlightened beings by nature. And we have one sin and one sin only – the ignorance of who we truly are. And because we are ignorant, how can we be at fault?
‘Father, forgive them for they know not what they do’.
Did the men on either side of Jesus not know what they had done? Sure they did. They knew what actions they had taken. They knew what motivations they had. But they did not know that they were acting from who and what they were not – their conditioned, Ego nature.
Do we know when and how we are acting from our conditioned, Ego nature? For most of us, most of the time, the answer would be ‘No, we don’t’. Until we have observed our mind, our nature – conditioned and unconditioned, relative and fundamental, learned and unlearned – until we observe this and become fully Aware, we cannot meaningfully say ‘I know’. Until then, ‘I don’t know’.
Try it for a week, a day, an hour, five minutes. Go about your usual activities with a sense of ‘I don’t know’. If it helps, you might think: I don’t know because whatever meaning or understanding I have of this, I have learned’. Do it with everything you see, hear, think, say. Say your usual words but think I don’t know because whatever meaning or understanding I have of this, I have learned’.
Sit in silence and let whatever thoughts or feelings or images or sensations arise and say to each: I don’t know because whatever meaning or understanding I have of this, I have learned’.
Do it sincerely, without a smugness or indifference or false modesty. Do it as if it is a very real possibility. No, you don’t have to accept that it is absolutely, incontrovertibly true. But you do need to sincerely acknowledge that it is a possibility.
If you do, you’ll experience something profound, something deeply transformative. You’ll experience freedom and ironically, a greater sense of stability and groundedness. There is less and less to defend and more and more to just be as the constricted sense of the bounded, Ego, conditioned, historical’ I’ gives way to the spacious, unbounded, ever-present, ever emerging Awareness. You’ll find that your words and actions come from a deeper, more authentic, more natural place, free from the tyranny of conditioned thinking and learning. ‘I don’t know’ opens the door to that place within you.
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