Friday, February 2, 2018

Mystery

I am thinking that the best way for me to achieve some measure of true humility would be to really take-in the level of unknown I live with. Mystery can help me gain the proper perspective. Uncertainty greatly enhances my chances of finding humility in myself, by revealing the world to me as partial as we humans make it. It is pretty unlikely that I will mistakenly act bigger than I am, in the face of the large hole in everything that is the unknown.

When I mistakenly think I know something, I leave out the best part of everything. There is a crack that runs through everything, Leonard Cohen writes - it does let the light in - and the light comes along with uncertainty. Usually imperceptible, invisible forces move in the realms beyond our imagination. Great feats, that appear to be magical, or miraculous, originate in unknown places. What I know is so small, while what I don't know is so large.

I say, I am aware of a "higher power," but I am reticent to let that "higher power" have the room that comprises the unknown to move in. It moves there regardless of my limitations, but I like to think I know what's going on, or how things should play out. Unknowing is more freedom than I can bear, more humility too. I should know I am building sand castles before the tide. Instead I ignore that inconvenient truth.

Reverence for the larger mystery of who we are, starts with some kind of acknowledgement of greater Mystery. I know this, and I don't know it. This kind of unknowing is ignorance, there is another kind, that is a rare form of wisdom. I know about it, but I am largely unable to practice it. Ripening, my ripening, happens as I am infused with more and more unknowing. It would be better for me, if I didn't call this phenomenon confusion, or dementia, but recognized it for what it is, the onset of radical availability to Mystery, immersion, in the sea of unknowingness that supports us.

Getting more and more mesmerized by the moment is frowned upon in most circles. It is tantamount to senility. Only the great masters are supposed to be capable of it. They have a legacy to uphold, a lineage of the enlightened behind them, and diligent practices. They embody the love that spawned this Universe. Strangely, so do some of the old, those who have been shrunken by Life, and enlarged by Mystery. Not knowing is some kind of passageway. It isn't just a passive one — though— there is a cost. Unknowing means giving up knowing, not like giving up eyesight, but more like learning to rely on inner sight to compliment what one sees.

I sense myself growing in the night, becoming some other life form —hopefully, a more humble one — softened up by the tides of unknowing beyond my control and understanding. There is a quickening happening in me. I can feel it. It isn't happening because I want it too, or at any speed I might desire. Life seems to me to be carrying the load, aging me into a fresh awareness. The unknown seems friendlier, like a benefactor in disguise. I wonder who or what is there?