Wisdom & Unknowing

(part 3)

“I know enough now, to know, that I don’t know anything.”

The ancient Chinese were said to have a curse, “May you live in interesting times.” We certainly are. As a species we are learning to live with more uncertainty and unknowing than most of us are comfortable with. The Corona virus, as disruptive and deadly as it is, is providing us with a glimpse at how truly vulnerable we are. That came home to me when I learned that March Madness had been cancelled. Suddenly, Life, which generated this particular virus, was the terrorist, and it has means far beyond anything known.

In some respect, this isn’t the age of the virus — it is the age of unknowing. Nobody knows how long this uncertainty is going to go on. It seems that we, especially of the modern world, have forgotten what we as a species have always known. We are, and always have been, existentially vulnerable. Our lives, species-wide have always belonged to bigger unknown forces. The virus, bad as it is, is just another manifestation of the mystery we live in.

While, it is killing many like me off, it is doing the rest of us a favor. Reminding us about how truly vulnerable we are, and how uncertain existence is. Given the global environmental crisis that is unfolding around us, it seems, Nature is compassionately warning us. Times like this, bring out the best and the worst of us. Unknowing blooms. But, the bloom can be beautiful, leading to a realization that we all are in the same uncertain situation, or, it can turn into a battle, a fear-ridden run through the heart of darkness.

Unknowing is how this species came about. We know how to weather uncertainty. Yes, the businessmen are panicking, the stock market is tanking, demonstrating how dependent we’ve become on the illusion of certainty, but the greater truth is, that we humans have been around long enough to know that we don’t know. The Universe, we find ourselves within, has a life of its own. It always has. We are only a part of it, and we succeeded making a home here because we knew there was something larger going on. Mystery is having its way with us.

In fact, mystery is us. Just as the Universe humbles us, and reminds us of our place, it puts its arm around us, as an extension of itself. Who really knows what we are doing here? Somehow the Cosmos deemed it so. And, strangely, at least to some of us, being a social animal has helped. Mirroring the rest of the Universe, and its reliance on relationship for innovation, synergy, and creativity, we are capable, like the Universe, of turning toward the unknown together.  We can panic, and be afraid, or we can rally around each other, and become what we have been made capable of.

Social distancing has become one of the methods used to defeat the advance of the virus, well the truth is, that the virus is forcing us to see, how much we need each other, and how much our distrust of each other, has eaten away the foundation of our resilience. With the appropriate distance — there is a strength available to us — that is not ours, but what we are part of. It is possible to relax into that connection, even as the virus shakes us into the vulnerability, that comes with living deep in mystery.

The unknown is wising us up. This is, despite the panic and uncertainty, a period of great sensitization. Life is putting us to the test, offering us a chance to be squeezed and pressured, and to find out what we are really made of. Wisdom arises, when knowing is shattered, as in these ‘interesting times.’

Wisdom & Unknowing (part 1)

“I know enough now, to know, that I don’t know anything.”

You may have heard someone say that, or maybe you have. Maybe it has just lingered, as a thought, in the back of your disbelieving mind. Or, you realized that everything you thought you knew, hasn’t been enough to see you through what’s facing you now. However, you have come to this insight, you just came to the leading-edge of wisdom. It can happen to anyone, but it most often comes to old people, those who have been humbled by a long life. That is one of the reasons older people are considered to be wise. Life has worked some of them over, and conferred on some of them, a reverence for mystery.

A long time ago, so the story goes, Socrates got in trouble. He was charged with corrupting the young, and tried by his peers, the citizens of Athens. In this ancient Greek story, Socrates was found guilty, and ended his own life by drinking hemlock. He realized that he was doomed to be an irritating gadfly, challenging the self-satisfying knowledge of his fellow citizens. His awareness, that he didn’t know, was toxic to his society, and the source of both his wisdom and unpopularity.

Wisdom came from his not knowing. His knowing he didn’t know, elevated his awareness, and pretty much assured his fate. His neighbors didn’t recognize and welcome a view that went beyond their own. They proved that being wise can be dangerous. Socrates knew too much, by not knowing. He became the embodiment of wisdom, and it was his commitment to integrity that led to his death — and revealed the connection between not knowing and wisdom. 

So, why is any of this important? I don’t know, maybe because linking not knowing with wisdom is interesting, and having an example of how wisdom (not knowing) can be risky, suggests another reason why real wisdom may be so rare. Not knowing is frowned on in this culture. Expertise is valued. It goes beyond wanting a knowledgeable brain surgeon, to an insistence that creativity follows laws. There isn’t room in the market place for not knowing, and so wisdom isn’t valued as it should be.

There is a paradox at the doorway to wisdom. To access the place of mysterious     awareness, one must give up knowing. Typically, that paradox is too daunting for most people. Old folks, on the other hand, are being taught by Life, the essential skill of letting go. They, by virtue of heading toward disappearance, are busy surrendering — this includes giving up knowing — of being certain of anything. It is part of being stripped down, and preparing for what is to come.

Giving up knowing can feel like loss. Gaining wisdom isn’t always something one wants. Losing is a humiliating process. In this culture it often means becoming less. For this reason, one of the hallmarks of wisdom is humility, along with not knowing, the wise frequently appear as anything but knowledgeable. Gaining wisdom, the capacity to not know, is such a harrowing reversal, that almost no one seeks it out. Wisdom, much like aging, is a surprise, not the outcome of some practice. It comes with the mysterious wind of evolution. 

The unknown is a benefactor. Not knowing is the root of all knowing, it is the heart of wisdom, which always goes beyond what we know. When you feel yourself relying on what you know, then hubris is much more likely to be what’s happening. 

Wisdom is really needed in this crumbling time, and what we don’t know is more likely to bring us to the unexpected than anything. Surprise is the best indicator.  Evolution wears many guises.

In The Deep

I used to think I knew who I was, and where I was, now I know better. I’ve had awhile to discover that very little is what I think it is. Getting older has introduced me to Mystery and I’ve found myself in the deep.

Somehow, I went down the rabbit hole, and now everything is topsy-turvy and unfamiliar. The world I woke-up in, is not the world I’m occupying at this minute. The hallucinogens I used in the past, don’t compare to the depth of distortion I’m now experiencing. And, I haven’t taken anything, but I am in the deep.

All my life I’ve been treading unknowing, trying to keep my head above the surface. I managed, or so the delusion went, until I collapsed from fatigue. There is no rest for the existing — in the deep.

Tumbling seems to be the most real part of my experience. I am adrift in a soupy darkness. There is no day or night, or they are both the same — some form of blindness has set in. Distinctions have no lasting value, in the deep.

Journeying isn’t a good metaphor anymore. There is no place to go, no form of movement, no discernable here or there. Life seems like an endless moment, an eternity of sameness. In the deep, one swims aimlessly, and gets nowhere.

The deep is neither warm nor cold, comfortable or uncomfortable, familiar or even unknown. It just is. I could say, “I sank into it,” but it has always been my home. I simply am in the deep.

I’d like to put my life back together again, but I no longer possess the illusory belief that would seem to make it so. I am weightless, waiting for I don’t know what.  A mirage to myself. I am some part of the deep.

Strangely, I don’t feel alone. In the deep there is presence. I can’t explain it, but I know that I’m being held — hostage or latency, I don’t know. The uniformity of all I know mesmerizes me, delivering me to a calmer darkness. I am swallowed in the deep. 

All my living has come to this.  The many shores I thought I inhabited were here all along. I have come to be where I have always been.  I am floating, or is it sinking?  I really don’t know, no sensation gives away any orientation, in the deep.

I am not happy, or sad. I don’t have a feeling of resoluteness, or failure, rather a kind of elated weariness. I have labored hard to find myself here. No more will I go down or up. In some strange fashion, I seem to be the Universe expanding without moving. Anyway, all I know is that it’s all happening, without happening, in the deep.

Is there somewhere the Universe is expanding into?  Into the deep. 

Wonder

It’s Sunday morning and I want to write a Slow Lane. But, I’m hesitating. The things I thought I might write about, are either too cool or too hot. Neither will really do.  So, I’m just sitting here wondering. I want to write, to enjoy the respite from being so physically broken, that these little writing meditations allow. Now, I’m just sitting in silence, waiting for some inspiration to strike me.

As I do, my mind wanders.  I’m remembering the new men’s group that met for the first time yesterday. It was a complex, uncomfortable event. Every time I start-up with a set of new men, it feels like trying to start a conversation with my father — awkward silence, or small talk. 

Eventually a lot got surfaced. We marveled at being a group of old men meeting. All of us wanted to compare notes, we were sharing in something men in this culture don’t do, and never really get to experience so thoroughly. Getting old, publicly, becoming vulnerable, visibly. Out of our first meeting came a sense of wonder. We seemed to know enough, that there was widespread agreement, that we didn’t know much of anything. This left us with a lot to wonder about.

We never tried for any kind of agreement, but it seemed to me, we shared bafflement — at getting so old, at having slipping bodies, at wondering what we were for, at aching with uncertainty about what we might have to give. Losing so much left us feeling raw.

It was a good and unusual experience. There is no way to evaluate it. We were all virgins, meeting together, to do something we didn’t know how to do. Pretty extraordinary for a group of men. I liked it, except I can’t exactly say why. I guess I think meeting — if only this once — was such a courageous, and counter-cultural thing to do.

It left me wondering. I notice I’ve been doing that a lot lately. Feeling awed by what’s happening, or overwhelmed, by the mystery that seems folded into everything. There was a point in yesterday’s group, when we men surmised, that perhaps, our ability to wonder was what we have to offer. I like the notion of being aged into wonder. It makes me feel like Life knows what it is doing.

So, anyway, as I’m getting older — heading toward the horizon — I’ve found myself thinking, about whether I have anything to leave behind — for other’s coming along? My guess is no. It seems that people benefit by discovering for themselves. I care, but I’ve learned from my disability helplessness, that caring is complicated, and that people, no matter their circumstances, seem to thrive best, when they have weathered uncertainty, for what matters to them. 

In the meantime, I ponder. It seems like it is good that I’m getting slower and slower, more silent, less confident, and more uncertain. I’m slowly sinking into non-existence, becoming invisible, a shade, soon to be forgotten. I expect I’ll make a good anonymous ancestor. Though, of course, I wonder about that.

Conjecture, that is what I seem to be good at now. Living has taken away all of my certainties. It fascinates me, that all of my lifetime of losses, has brought me to this place. I wonder, if there is something inevitable, and natural, about wondering this much.

Here After

“What did I come in here after?” That’s what she says every time her memory fails, and she finds herself, in someplace, on a mystery quest. She has taken to calling, these increasingly occurring failures of her short-term memory, “here after” moments, as in, what am I here after?

When I heard this story, recounted by a friend, I knew I had to write about it. The only thing is, I can no longer remember what it was about this, that made me motivated to focus upon it. It rang some writerly bell.  So, hold on, I’m about to go off.

I like the sense of irony, or desperate humor, that is conveyed by her encapsulation of this little aspect of getting older. A ‘here after’ moment. It reminds me of the fairytales, and other stories I’ve heard, that all end the same way. They lived happily ever after. As if there is some place where things don’t change, where the moment goes on, despite the grip of time.

I don’t know about you, but when I have such a forgetful moment, when I can’t find a word, or I’ve screwed up my schedule again, forgetting something or someone, I feel like I’ve just suffered a psycho-emotional fall. Suddenly, I’ve been reduced, some form of gravity just brought me back into my decaying orbit. I am having my own form of ‘here after’ moment. Death seems closer than ever, and I find, something in myself is getting prepared, by falling, in this way.

Isn’t the time after death also referred to as the “here after?” There is something eternal about these kinds of moments. Oh yeah, that’s why I was so touched — by her seeing the everlasting aspect of these moments. It isn’t the first, or last, time I have arrived at the realization — I have no idea why I am here. What did I come here for? Am I in this scene for a reason? I don’t know. Is this a memory failure, or success? Whatever it is — it’s my “ever after” moment — just arriving.

What am I here after? The uncertainty implicit in that question haunts me. I spend so much of my life energy on other things. Some are very compelling distractions. But, no matter what I do, I can’t forget, that even as I am forgetting, I don’t really know what I am here after. This life seems to be my ‘here after’ moment.

I feel chagrined when my memory goes south. De-pantsed. Nakedly human. For a moment I am a flower with a broken stem. I wouldn’t pick me. I might admire the poignancy of my beauty, but I would move on. Out of the corner of my memory’s eye, I notice a long-misperceived latency. Something tells me, I am here, for this moment of uncertainty. 

What seems to be unchanging, in this parade of constant change, is the level of uncertainty that is omnipresent. How can that be a quality of ever after? I guess that is the ‘ever’ part, and the rest is the ‘after,’ that I clearly don’t remember.

Anyway, the “ever after” seems to be a place where things go when they slip the mind or, a moment when the mind is really working. I haven’t quite figured it out yet. And to be honest, I can’t really remember why I want to.

The Soul of Community

The soul of community is coming through us,

light on its forehead,


old stories in its right hand,

unknowing freedom in its left.

Don’t ruin this chance with easy promises,

 politeness,

pretenses of knowledge,

or elegant quotes.

The help that has been longed for is here. 

Join with other great souls.

Gathering together becomes a ceremony,

 approaching Mystery.

Meaning: pass quickly through your being 

into absence, unknowing and emptiness.

The self of your name and fame 

secures you


with a new knot every moment.

Personal identity is a sheath

The unique one resides within.

Reality unites


worn covering,


with our mysterious, unencumbered, nature.

 Look closely.

In community,

                           Love is purifying love.                           

                                                   —Rumi re-translation by David “Lucky” Goff

A Holy Vision

To be sane

in a mad time

is bad for the brain

even worse

for the heart.

The world is a holy vision,

had we clarity enough to see it.

A clarity that people

depend upon people

to make.                                                       

                                                       Wendell Berry

This is a difficult world to live in. This particular time in human history is full of uncertainty. To be a good citizen during these times is a daunting and powerful thing. Winding one’s way through the thicket of grief and joy makes such a present-time complex. The good and bad saturate this moment. Caring hurts. Awareness twists. The slippery dominates. A rare kind of vertigo arises.

During such a time it is easy, perhaps necessary, to lose one’s balance. This poem confirms this loss, while also affirming the underlying wholeness that sustains vision. There is a larger balance that can be found. It is a balance that relies on an assembly of human beings. The world is a holy vision that can be best seen together. This poem serves as a mantra that provides protection during an eclipse of coherence.

The age of modernity swells with chaos. The personal, social, political, and environmental are all under extreme pressure. An increasing speed of change, breaks everything down. The institutions are losing their integrity, and becoming untrustworthy. A great malaise blankets the land. It is a time when survival is in doubt. 

This is the backdrop that humans must cope with now. Human life reels with the extra burden of this apocalyptic awareness. There are fewer silent and beautiful places left. To maintain any kind of balance in such a world asks one to live unbalanced. As the poet, and singer-songwriter Leonard Cohen says, “The blizzard of the world is crossing the threshold and threatening the order of the soul.”

Living in this kind of maelstrom is taxing. The mind that has crafted this tangle cannot go beyond it.

It is “worse for the heart.” Feeling the ailment that besieges these times is like feeling a ghost-infested house. The body-snatching denial of the masses heightens the heartache, increasing isolation, and rendering madness a relieving balm. There is nothing so debilitating as being sanely mad, and insanely well adjusted. Just as a plant wilts when it is denied water, the human spirit shrinks when it is immersed in a fragmented world.

The life of our times is a good mirror, as the poet knows, reflecting back to us who we have become.

Human constructed reality falters under the weight of too much hubris. The human world is bleak — but beyond the knowing and certainty of this era, there is a light. It is an underlying miracle that manages, despite our distractions, to support Life. This light is obscured by the beliefs that define the age. The junkyard of throwaway values is hiding our true home.

To really see what shines beneath us all, requires being in the world but not of it. Collectivity provides its own sight. Alone one can sense obscurely the animating force, but that intuition is not clear and stokes a hunger that only true vision can slake. This vision is multi-faceted. It takes many eyes and diverse meanings to behold it. Clarity is a relational thing; existing only through the perceptions of many different viewpoints.

There is an opportunity that interdependence brings. Communal life is more than a safe place, more than shared values and shared behaviors — it is multiplied awareness, which provides revelation. Between the many there is a level of perception that is larger, more informed, and more sensitive than what is common. A greater portion of the whole awaits cooperative perception.  The minds of many working in concert, magnify awareness, and reveal of the larger picture of mystery. 

Reverence for what made us, and locates us here, comes from an essential recognition of our mysterious origins. There is an opportunity that our mutual dependence provides — an opportunity for collective sight. The Universe of relationships is alive to the mind that is large and multi-faceted. As the poet says, this is “a clarity that people depend upon people to make.” The inclusive mind is a mutual mind; the result of shared endeavor, of collective learning, diversity, and of people looking together into what is.

This poem captures the effects of two relationships that define our possibilities. The first expresses the way our experience of ourselves is linked with our cultural practices. There is another relationship that is evoked. The magic of our larger surrounding is hidden away, obscured by social distrust, and its resultant blindness. The gravitas of this poem is captured by the poet’s use of the word “clarity.” There is a fog, an impenetrable haze, which comes between people. This smog is produced by distrust, alienation and isolation. It paints the world with depressing grey-tones, while obscuring a view of what mystery has wrought.

To see further, to more accurately take in the many-faceted complexity of our natural inheritance, requires overcoming the blindness of the crowd. From learning to distrust the many — one must make the journey of learning to trust one’s self in the midst of others. Such a journey is a complex maneuver. By becoming a part of something larger, while maintaining personal integrity and identity, one becomes a facet of the multiple eyes that are necessary to see more clearly. 

The relationship within is what enables the relationship without. Another way to say it, and to see the world more clearly, is that as self-intimacy grows, intimacy with one’s surrounding expands. The world comes freshly into view as the self does. The eyesight of the many is enhanced when some of them can see beyond themselves (because they can see themselves accurately). Community grows that capacity, providing the means. 

The process of growing a lucid response to a mad world is based upon our relations with each other. Some are capable of depending upon each other, they are made ready by the rigors of relating, and they have learned to hold on to their uniqueness. When this happens the integrity of the whole collective improves, and a multi-faceted viewpoint is more assured. Many eyes enable the holy vision.

The poet knows that “the world is a holy vision.” This vision provides an antidote to the madness that infects us. That antidote is available through workshops, seminars, and groups — wherever two or more are gathered together. The development of immunity, however, requires a longer-term engagement, immersion in a more complex social situation. Surviving in a mad world requires a kind of mutual reliance that now needs to be re-invented. We are social animals, capable of feats of collaboration. The poet reminds us, we need each other, to perceive the holy vision.