Seeing Without Knowing
It is a quiet Spring Sunday morning in Maine. You are sitting in a sunny spot in the garden, listening, watching, and sensing the world around you. The air is filled with pollen, bugs, and bees, and the ‘Choo Choo Bird’ (a Pheobe?) as usual, doing its indefatigable rounds. You have read the news this morning and know the world is in chaos, as usual, but right here and now, there is peace, quiet, and a welcome space to turn inward and engage the art of not knowing.
As inner silence deepens, thoughts can be observed arising- conversations held yesterday, things to do today, etc.- but in the space of awareness, none take hold; the direct recognition of one’s relationship with thought is to be free of thought.
To be free of thought. Wow. Now, that is the gift, no question, that keeps on giving. It doesn’t mean we suppress it or try to get rid of it. It means that once thought, the whole, complicated mechanism of thought, is seen for what it is, it begins to lose its power to control our actions, reactions, feelings, and relationships. We begin to know ourselves, oddly enough, as not-knowing, as the living space of awareness.
Not knowing is the art of meeting life as it is, moment by moment. You don’t need to know anything about the crow cawing to hear ‘Caw! Caw! You don’t need to know anything about the bees buzzing to know the buzzing of bees. You don’t need to know anything about the warmth of the sun on a sunny Spring morning to know what that feels like.
The art of not knowing starts with awareness of the present moment, but it has no limits. It is essentially becoming aware of awareness and coming to know oneself as awareness. Not knowing is not the result of a process. It does not come from anywhere and seeks nothing. It is our natural state, pure and simple, beyond the mechanism of thought. It could be said that we don’t find not-knowing, but if allowed, it finds us.
And you definitely don’t have to know anything about blackflies on a June day in Maine to know that once they find you sitting still in a garden, it’s time to move on.
Good post and replies Mike. Also a very important point u raised. It has to come too us . Many still look at all this as a reaching state I feel even though it's a not knowing happening. There has the be a careful attention in this here and now that there can still be a subtle goal there . To be here , no intention no will no prep quite a state of mind :)
“Not knowing…ah yes!…most intimate❣️🙏🏽 🙇🏽♀️