There is a common expression of wisdom that goes something like- “The older I get, the less I know.” Or as my friend and teacher Jim Riggs used to say, “The more you know, the dumber you are.” I like to refer to the same basic conceptual territory by saying “Know less to know more”. I would be surprised if riddle-like sayings like this pointing to the same thing do not exist in most languages and cultures in some form. They don’t represent a belief or even a philosophy really, but are rather a simple, fundamental, observational wisdom.
These words all point to the humility that can naturally come with age and experience, wherein it sometimes becomes apparent to us over time that we are repeatedly wrong about what we believe to be true. In addition to being out and out wrong, these misunderstandings may also have to do with things being much more nuanced, complicated or subtle than we often initially considered them to be. We seem to have a tendency to conclude a lot based on very little, which is misaligned with the truth of our overwhelming ignorance and our limitations to perceive and understand truth.
While these humble realizations of our limitations and foibles most often come to us over time, the attenuation of our egos to defer to truth does not necessarily have to be such a slow and painful process dependent solely on age and hard experience. At least some of us could learn this shift to a more truth oriented perspective earlier in life. Some never realize this wisdom, or push it away when it comes up, but many get at least a hint of it at some point. What seems tragic is that very few who glimpse this truth will really follow that illumination to what it can ultimately reveal. My interest is to go in the direction that this glimmer of a revelation points, map it out and make it available to whoever is ready and willing to hear it. It seems unlikely that many will be prepared to go there, but that is okay. My simple agenda is just to toss out some seeds and see if they land somewhere that they can naturally grow and flower. Maybe they’ll sprout now, maybe later, maybe not at all. It’s all good.
View this sharing of ideas as an invitation to self examination, to see if there is a fundamental truth in plain sight that is either not seen, just partially seen or actively avoided. I would also invite you to not accept or believe what I’m saying, but just let it sit in a “maybe space” and see what happens. There is no good reason to either accept or reject it, but rather good reason not to do either. Acceptance and rejection are just opposite sides of the same coin. They are truly the same in principle, just unnecessary, self constructed limitations to further inquiry.
This subject has everything to do with information, knowing and belief. In this writing, I will concentrate on our personal relationships with information. This will take us to our often vague conceptions around knowledge and knowing, as well as nuances and misinterpretations around belief vs knowing. Let’s take a look.
Because this wisdom of “know less to know more” points toward humility and cautious thinking borne out of experience, it must then necessarily point us away from youthful hubris and arrogance. If taken in earnest, what this realization would lead to is a reorientation toward questions and the unknown, v.s. tidy answers and false certainties. It shifts us away from overvaluing what we think we know and toward exercising caution when placing things into the category of known. It says in essence, that we don’t know as much as we sometimes would like to think and that we always have more to learn. It accepts our limitations and yields gracefully to not-knowingness.
The gaining of this wisdom could be easier than it is, if as a society we did not actually tend to encourage the foolishness it points away from instead of the truth it points toward. When people have the realization that these sayings refer to, they are getting a glimpse of the social matrix into which they were slowly conditioned. To put it bluntly, by engaging in and encouraging a sort of blind hubris, we are training people to be gullible and vulnerable. Most of us just have to find this stuff out for ourselves in the school of hard knocks. It does not have to be that way. For those who are willing to orient toward truth in a big picture sense, an internal shift away from the arrogance of false certainty is always there waiting.
If we are going to talk about this subject, we have to look at the dysfunction this wisdom references, and the ways in which that dysfunction is expressed. This expression is probably part natural and part learned; either way, we can bring our thinking more into alignment with truth by seeing the problem and addressing it. Of course it does not matter that we notice it if we don’t do anything about it, so I will also make a stab here at how we might navigate information, ideas, and the concept of knowledge more effectively and truthfully.
These sayings that we began with can sound like contradictions or paradoxes. Seemingly contradictory sayings such as these which also have a strong sense of truth, are usually in actuality pointing out ways in which our normal views are often limited or skewed by things like assumption, belief and perspective. They are saying that we need to back up further and look at how we are framing everything. These almost riddle like statements make us think. Know less to know more? How could that be? To understand, we have to look at the concepts of information and knowing- what they are v.s. what we sometimes think of them as.
Information is data with meaning. While it is easy to encode information into data, as when writing this sentence, it requires someone’s mind to extract that information. The meaning itself can be anything. I can write “dogs fly when cats cry in Sunday footballs”. There is a lot of meaning there which you can perceive, but it is nonsensical and doesn’t represent anything like objective truth. I used a translation software tool to translate that into thai- สุนัขบินเมื่อแมวร้องไห้ในฟุตบอลวันอาทิตย์. It is doubtful that many who read this in English know enough Thai to even extract any information at all from that data set, if it is even accurate. Like most of the rest of the world, football might be translated to what we call in America a Soccer ball. The translation may also just be foot and ball. It doesn’t matter, the point is that for information to be relevant, useful or effective, we have to speak in the same code. A shared context is required for information to be functional, otherwise it is just noise, or useless data. Further, the words we use are purely made up symbols that are certainly not the thing we refer to and do not accurately represent reality. They are an impoverished substitute for the real thing.
A further problem with information is that if we communicate something in a way that is vague, or complicated, some people might extract the meaning we intended while others may misunderstand the intended meaning. So, we can see that data can contain information and information is intended to contain meaning, but it doesn’t mean that the information, or even the meaning, actually represents truth, or that the intended communication is what is interpreted from it by the receiver. The bottom line is that it should be clear that information and our interpretation of it is slippery even with the best intentions.
If nothing else, it is important to recognize an inherent double edged sword aspect of information, which is that INFORMATION MAY REPRESENT EITHER TRUTH OR FALSENESS. To make information even more complicated, it can represent partial truth, or represent truth if interpreted by the receiver in a certain way. We all know that while the digitally influenced age we now live in is bursting at the seams with information, much of it has to be anywhere from dubious to wrong, simply because there is so much disagreement out there. Some information is of course intentionally false or perhaps intended to be very subtly misleading. Clearly then, information as a category is not inherently representative of knowledge. Take that concept on board, it is important. It may seem very evident, yet we often behave as if it is not.
This uncertain aspect of information has huge implications. Knowledge though is even more slippery than information. What even is knowledge? Let’s view knowledge for now as this statement, though I’m not saying it is accurate.
Something that is thought to be known which also actually represents truth.
I’m intentionally going to avoid the concept of truth for the most part right now. If examined closely and deeply though, truth, like knowledge, can begin to become less firm of an idea than we may usually think. Let’s just vaguely say for now that truth is something that is accurate, or represents “is-ness”.
An important question at this point is- If information can be encoded into data, can knowledge likewise be encoded into information?
If knowledge is something that is known, then that state of knowing requires a knower. If there are no knowers, there would be no knowledge, but rather just unobserved truth, if that is even a thing. We have to ask then, who is the knower of knowledge which has been encoded as information? Could you for instance, take something you know that I don’t, encode it as information and thereby transfer that knowing to me?
If knowledge is personal to the knower, then no, you cannot transfer your knowing to me. I can consume information intended to represent someone’s knowledge, but all I can really say is that I consumed that information. Maybe they made it all up. Maybe they made critical parts of it up. Maybe they stole it. Maybe they are delusional about knowing whatever it is they think they know. No matter how unlikely any of these possibilities may seem in any given situation, the simple fundamental truth is that I do not absorb knowing. What I absorb is information. It doesn’t matter if the information is correct. I can absorb it, but to me, it is just information. Remember that this all assumes the view that knowledge requires a knower and that this unique knower actually knows a truth.
An opposing position says that knowledge can be encoded into information and transferred to others. The broader institution of academia seems to assume this view as a default position. That is a pretty big scope involving a lot of very intelligent people, so how could it be wrong? It just does appear to be wrong from the seemingly reasonable perspective I just laid out. The counter argument would be that if the information consumed is correct, and is interpreted correctly, then it transfers knowledge. If not, it would be misinformation. If we are to try to take this position seriously, we have to put it to the fire and ask - how is it that we know that the information we consume is true and therefore represents knowingness? In other words, how do we identify knowledge from a sea of information and of what use is it to consider correct information as knowledge if we can’t tell which is information representing somebody’s actual legitimate knowledge vs information which does not? This question is no mere hiccup in the chain of knowledge and information, it is the most important thing.
This quandary of the unknown nature of information, vs the concept of actually knowing the truth of things, brings us to a place where we really need to look soberly at where the rubber meets the road- that place is any one person’s personal relationship with information. The shift from consuming information to actually possessing something like knowledge typically requires our engagement, often over considerable time. It is too frequently not easy or quick to vet information as to its truthfulness. Therefore, knowledge in the cleanest sense cannot be absorbed from others solely through information. At the least, absorbing true information that remains unvetted is not an open and shut case, but a beginning point to actual personal knowing.
Really think about the position I propose in relation to yourself for a minute and sit with it. If knowledge requires a knower, then what do you know? I mean, really, really know for absolutely sure, without any filling in of the blanks or making leaps of faith and without deference to any external authority. It is likely that you will find that you know very much less than you may have previously given yourself credit for. This can be a very uncomfortable mental place to go for many people, especially those who have spent a lot of effort in absorbing information with the idea that information is equivalent to knowing. I was that person once and am still unwinding this false interpretation. It is a process not just an intellectual grasping of the concept. Shifting one’s perspective to that of not actually knowing much can be experienced or interpreted as an insecure place to live. A significant aspect of the nature of this life is the insecurity of not-knowingness. It is this very discomfort with the unknown, and our attempts to ease it, which largely drives our dysfunctional behavior and misunderstandings around information and knowledge. We end up grasping at and pretending to knowledge. We construct a veneer of seeming knowingness from scraps, filling in blanks or ignoring gaps as necessary. We then invest in that illusion and live prepared to defend it both within ourselves and outwardly to others. This process is a habituating drug. It is a behavior that seems to sooth the fear and insecurity of not knowing very much in this bewildering and difficult to understand experience of being born into and living the bizarre phenomenon of this life. A primary aspect of this experience of life is the groundlessness of not knowing. While the process of constructing truths as seeming anchors or handrails is engaged in ultimately to sooth the emotional response to that reality, like most habituating drugs its chronic use comes with costs.
So back to “know less to know more”. What is meant by “know less…”, is to stop pretending to know things we don’t know. It means to treat unverified information and ideas as simply that, without placing them tidily into the categories of right or wrong. This “not-knowing” orientation is of course not really knowing less, it is just aligning with honesty and truth enough to begin to see how little we actually do know. What it really means is to stop manufacturing false certainty. It is to stop pretending to knowledge that we don’t truly possess. If this approach is perceived as embracing or increasing ignorance as a goal, that is a misinterpretation. It is simply recognition of a pre-existing state of not-knowingness. That recognition of not-knowingness in itself is a fundamentally important truth, so we simply stop ignoring a truth that is right there in plain sight- our own limitation of knowing.
The end of the phrase, “… to know more”, references something more like actual knowledge and the process of cultivating it. If we set forth to gain knowledge with a map of falsely constructed certainties, we begin the journey with a major handicap to say the least. Another analogy might be that we put on glasses which filter certain things out and allow others in. The filter is made of bits of ideas and information pretended to be knowledge. If only it were actually that simple and we could just take the glasses off.
What we actually do is build elaborate conscious and unconscious constructs of pretended knowledge in our minds. These foundations, pillars and labyrinths form a world view that is maintained and defended through ongoing thought-behaviors like judgement, rationalization, acceptance and rejection. The purest intellectually innocent part of us, that part which is uninhibitedly curious and seeks truth, knows that these constructs are not actual truth or knowledge, but rather a landscape of pretend knowing. This is essentially a process of trying to lie to ourselves. Is that even possible though? How can we be the liar and the lied to at the same time? Consciously, we tend to ignore the reality of this process of constructing "knowing", even when we talk about it openly, because it is just what everyone accepts as normal in the current paradigm. That paradigm is absorbed as a default operating system while we are growing up. Psychologically, we are seeking solace from the underlying fear of the unknown which drives this game we play with ourselves. In reality, we are investing in self delusion and neurosis. We build the prison, decorate it and call it a palace. We are the jailor, the prisoner and partial architects of these fantasy constructs. Of course some of these structures are installed by conditioning such as direct indoctrination or just by social osmosis, but each individual as a perceived identity is key to keeping it all running. Our participation is required to stay in those limited bounds.
The nature of knowledge and truth can be hard to navigate. All of us, know a laughably minute speck of almost nothing compared to what there is to potentially be known. The predominant truth among and within us isn’t knowingness, but rather not-knowingness. The idea that not knowing is an important knowing falls into the same category of such seemingly contradictory statements as know less to know more, but it can be very valuable in challenging our idea of what truth is. I don’t know or I’m not sure, could be argued to be the most important truth. Not only is it the most predominant truth, it is the gateway to seeking knowledge. Not knowing is the truth which frames the journey in a way that can show us how to navigate toward specific truths if they are to be found. We instead usually think of truth as collections of known things. A more global concept of truth not only accommodates not-knowing as a truth, it highlights it as the predominant truth in relation to ourselves.
Learning information is very useful, but there seems to be a fundamental problem in academia, which is that it is based on a false premise from the position I’ve laid out. The false premise is that knowledge can be transferred to people through information alone. If we say instead that knowing requires a knower, and that it is real knowing just to knowers of that knowledge, then knowing cannot be transferred through information. It can only be pointed to. Am I saying that all of our schooling is almost all absorbing information and not knowledge? Without getting into etymological quibbling, yes. Over time, especially if we are engaged in the field we studied for, more and more of that information might be confirmed personally as knowledge, but that is a process which takes time and engagement. This view may be a little hard to grapple with. Let me pose some simple questions and thought exercises to help illuminate the reality of these assertions.
Has any textbook ever been changed to correct what came to be thought of as incorrect information?
Has any practice in any discipline, once widely taught as dogma, been changed to a new standard in order to reflect a perceived change of view which is now thought to be correct? (often a new dogma)
If you stacked up a huge pile of literature from all eras on one subject, would it all be in agreement with no evolution of ideas over time?
The essential problem here is discerning from information, what is and is not true. If we don’t know which is which then we simply don’t know and therefore we can’t put the KNOW in knowledge. It is that simple. Try to argue to yourself against this position and I think you will fail. It is a simple observation. You can argue that information can be useful, and I would agree. That is what we have to work with to communicate ideas and indeed truths. That does not however mean that it represents knowing to us as individuals. Calling unvetted information knowledge just doesn’t work well. It ignores the critical nuances around the concepts of information and knowledge. The potential counter argument that information which is true conveys knowledge to the consumer of that information is impractical. What can we do with that when we cannot instantly vet information as true or false? Let’s say that I hand you three apples that look identical. I say that two are poisoned and one is not and I point to one saying it is not poisoned. Will you eat it? Even if you need to eat it for some reason, will you decide that you know it is not poisonous before eating it? Probably not. You will probably hope that I am right. At least me saying that I am right is something to go on, but there is no knowing at all involved on your part in that scenario.
With all of that on the table, we can now deal with the psychological fallout of this observation and then what we might do to escape these mental prisons.
If we didn’t find not knowing uncomfortable, we would not engage so much in these maladaptive constructs of pretend knowing. It is that very discomfort which makes the drug so appealing. Ultimately, this discontent with not-knowing is probably driven by the primordial field of existential fear lurking below the surface in all of us. Some of this fear is reflected as wanting to be accepted by others or to have status. People who can project an image of knowing what is going on, of having the big answers, or even just being able to point out a path to answers, can be magnets for those seeking the solace of appealing ideas to believe in. Most of us wander around life looking for ideas to grasp onto and invest in. The world is a marketplace of people hawking answers to those desperate to find understanding. Whether ideas can be demonstrated as true or not is not as relevant as whether they feed the need for something like a pretended or temporary appearance of solace. If you keep looking deeper under the surface for motivators, you will generally find fear as a base driver of all of this behavior, and that goes for both leaders and followers.
The problem is that if we attempt to turn away from this fear by engaging in the avoidance behavior of constructing false certainty, the fear and insecurity does not ever actually go away. It ultimately reinforces the mechanisms of fear driven behavior. As the saying goes, what we resist persists. The way is through things not around them. The common, even institutionalized, approach of “I am uncertain so I will pretend to be certain”, avoids the grace of acceptance. By acceptance, I mean an emotional acceptance. Acceptance is grace and a way toward actual peace. Acceptance of truth in a global sense, as an alignment, allows us to set down a burden, the constant work and neurosis of maintaining and defending false mental constructs.
A useful analogy may be the stages of grief. The final stage of processing grief is said to be acceptance. Without the grace of acceptance, we will be stuck in loops of suffering over loss. The loss is real, but we can either invest in resistance and suffering over it, or we can accept it and navigate from that acceptance. Resisting that acceptance only intensifies and prolongs suffering. This acceptance is not mental so much as from the heart. Acceptance in grief is essentially emotional in nature and so is acceptance of the insecure and uncertain nature of existence in general.
There is an insidious misconception that we need to know things for sure in order to make decisions and act. The truth is that we do not need certainty in order to act. We act every day out of not-knowing, based on habits and simple observations. Most importantly, we act largely on personal judgements of probability. Probability is simply the likelihood that something is or is not true. We make possible future projections based on what information, knowledge or experience we have to work with. When viewed for what it really is, constructing false certainties in order to act, instead of recognizing that we are actually acting on probability judgements, should appear absurd and counter productive. It says something like “I’m not sure, so I’m going to try to convince myself and others that I’m sure so that I can then act.” What lunacy is that? We operate on probabilities on a regular basis. There is nothing wrong with that. Probability is in reality mostly what we have to operate on and it usually works pretty well. The problems start when we elevate these probabilities to the status of knowns. We can actually act on probabilities more effectively, not less, if we are honest with ourselves that it is what we are really doing.
Here is what I am not saying.
I am not saying that learning information is bad, or not useful. Clearly, learning information can be extremely useful. We just need to recognize that it can be extremely slippery and even harmful as well, depending on the information and how we interact with it. It has much more potential to be harmful if we are willing to accept it as knowledge when there is no actual knowing relative to ourselves. All I am proposing is that we be very honest about our personal relationship with any given information.
I am not saying that we should be more ignorant. What I am saying is that we simply ARE very ignorant and it is to the benefit of ourselves and others to recognize that and treat it as a fundamental truth. Further, being honest about what we know and don’t know automatically makes us more skeptical (in a true, global sense of the word) and cautious of accepting ideas and information as true. It may seem odd, but orienting toward and accepting not-knowingness should move us toward more understanding, not less, and makes us less vulnerable to false information.
Let’s summarize this perspective before we move into how we might aim ourselves in a direction of alignment with truth whatever it is wherever we find it.
Information is data with meaning
It requires another person with shared context to extract information from data
Information may represent truth, falsity or partial truth.
Information may be interpreted as it was intended or not
Knowing requires a knower
Knowing can be encoded into information by a knower, but knowing itself cannot be transferred to others through information
What we actually know for sure is vastly outweighed by what we do not know
Ego, driven by fear and the uncertain nature of life and mental experience, leads us to construct false certainties which we use to filter and accept or reject incoming information and ideas, and also as a limiting framework when engaging in exploring possibilities of truth. Those limiting mental constructs are not limiting by accident, their purpose is limitation, to narrow the field of inquiry.
Freedom and peace would seem to actually lie in the graceful acceptance of the insecure nature of life and the very dominant aspect of not-knowingness, not in the neurotic construction and defense of false certainties in a futile attempt to deny that reality.
How then would we align ourselves with truth? A system of things to do is not very likely to result in useful outcomes. The magic ingredients are more personal. The alignment has to be embodied over time, which requires following a path which is inherently uncharted. It can’t be just intellectually understood. There is nothing important to learn about this from anyone, just alignments you could choose to follow to find out what happens. Put very simply, the personal journey must be taken. The gaining of knowledge is not a process of absorption, but a continuing engagement in the exploration of ideas and the nature of things that is most efficiently undertaken in an open, probabilistic intellectual space. A good term for this is open inquiry. Information is not a cheat code for real knowledge. It is not that you have to think about everything, or question everything deeply. It is more a process of gracefully and humbly allowing our ignorance to be what it is, to just see it and accept it as it is in any moment. It may seem like a paradox, but in the quest for knowledge, not-knowing is our friend. There is no actual paradox there, it is just an invitation to reframe our thinking and alignments. Each of us will pursue and seek to understand more about what we might need or want to know, or what interests us. Or maybe not. It really does not matter. We will remain primarily ignorant no matter what. That is just the reality of being a seemingly limited manifestation of nature in a huge complex world which we can only partially sense, let alone understand fully.
Let’s go over four alignments that can act as a guidance system to steer us away from these nonsensical games we play with ourselves. They are Curiosity, Truth, Humility and Acceptance.
Curiosity means unbounded curiosity, not curiosity allowed to wander solely in the maze of a belief system. Curiosity is a thing of great purity in our nature. It is the fundamental, innocent driver of our quest for truth. If we throttle it, free inquiry is halted. Open inquiry requires unfettered curiosity. Real curiosity would seem to be deeply feared from any well established belief system as an existential threat for very good reason. It is.
Truth A common conception of truth is that it means collections of factoids that we have decided to believe are true. What is meant by truth here is
whatever is actually true
wherever that is found
even if it is not found
even if there is nothing to find
That is the most global and open way I can find to express what truth is as an alignment. Truth as an alignment must even be open to nothing actually being true or that truth is not a thing at all. It is important to recognize that the truth of “I don’t know” is not only a valid truth, it is the predominant truth. Not knowing also gives birth to the quest for more specific truth. Keep your conception of truth open and curious and the world will open up before you. If you try making it about alignment with the broad concept first and specific truths second your thinking will change significantly. This alignment will steer us away from the diversion of pretended knowing. If we do not have an interest in actually aligning with truth, driven by innate curiosity, then we will continue to invest in false knowing.
Humility grows out of a deepening alignment with curiosity and truth, but is also a requirement for that deepening. These things must all grow together. Humility as intended here means a mental attenuation of the ego that gracefully allows truth without mental resistance related to fear and insecurity. It is partly a letting go or surrendering of the egoic aspect of self which resists what simply is. It fears not knowing or wants to be seen by both self and other as knowing.
Acceptance is very much related to humility. The difference is subtle but important. Acceptance could be seen more as the allowance to shift perspective fluidly and go where the former alignments lead us. If truth is “whatever it is, wherever we find it”, acceptance adds something like “wherever it takes us”. Acceptance could be seen as having to do with emotional surrender. Its brother humility can be seen as something like a falling away, or intentional mental divestment from fear based egoic structure, while acceptance is the more positively framed emotional freedom of that letting go. Acceptance is grace in the face of whatever is. It could be seen to represent the feminine, or emotional aspect, while humility might represent the same falling away from a more masculine/intellectual aspect. The distinction may seem subtle, and it is, but it is important. They are like two faces of the same thing. Humility may be something like a decision based on accumulated wisdom, while acceptance is embracing the flowing, nature of emotional surrender to what just is. Humility is the warrior laying down the sword and shield and acceptance is the grace that is stepped into from there. Given that this whole mess is ultimately emotionally driven, it is not possible to dismiss this aspect and move forward. It is actually the freedom blossoming from this acceptance, which can truly allow intellect to be free enough to function rationally in something closer to open inquiry. Since a deep emotional architecture underlies this whole maladaptation, the aspect of acceptance is a key piece of the puzzle.
If these alignments are taken seriously, invested in and followed where they naturally lead, it is likely that one will eventually make similar observations to those put down here. Simply absorbing what I’ve attempted to communicate will do little good, even if it is memorized and understood intellectually. The mechanisms of misalignment with truth elucidated here have everything to do with the deep conditioning and emotions we keep on the back burner. It is not likely to unwind just because it seems to make intellectual sense. The realignments which allow us to move toward knowledge and wisdom involve a major internal paradigm shift on multiple levels or aspects of ourselves.
A simple but powerful exercise is to watch your use of language of limitation. Each time you use limiting “knowing” language, stop and reflect on the appropriateness of that language. Our use of words and phrases like never, always, proper, certain/certainly, definitely, absolutely, fact, “for sure”, 100%, and so on, if examined, can reveal a lot about how we construct false certainties and try to communicate them as truths. Undertaking this exercise can make the neurotic, untruthful nature of that mode of thinking and communicating painfully visible. Put more bluntly, you are probably more of a liar than you might prefer to think. Worse these lies are things we try to tell ourselves, not just others, and that is truly messed up.
If done earnestly, this practice can be very disruptive and lead us into deep, fundamental shifts in our internal world, which will ultimately begin to express outwardly in behavior and interactions with others. I made a swear jar once for the words Always, Never and Proper. If I used them either spoken or in thought, I would examine them closely and put a dollar in the jar if their use was basically dishonest, hyperbolic, or in any other way not really warranted. In most cases that I used them a dollar went in the jar. I didn’t have to do that very long before my way of thinking, internal dialogue and communications changed radically. Of course I just took the money out eventually to buy groceries or do laundry or something banal, but it was a very useful tool to confront my own mind. If you vow to give all the money to a cause or political organization that you profoundly disagree with, it will probably work even better ha ha.
I said that few really follow the wisdom of “the older I get the less I know” to the real unwinding that it points to. What I’ve written here may illuminate some of what will be found or what it might look like to go where these sayings point. This process of unwinding can go very deep. Beginning to see the pretend world that we build within ourselves, and as a group mind, for the neurosis and insanity that it is, starts a deconstruction process which opens us up to greater mental freedom and many new possibilities. When these constructs dissolve, there can be a pioneering or wild west feeling of curiosity about what is true and a willingness to look anywhere that is compelling. When there is no longer a place for information to stick as truth unless we know it absolutely, we find that information is no longer particularly dangerous and does not really need to be avoided or particularly resisted. It is just assessed and left hanging, not grasped or vigorously pushed away. If this curiosity and interest in truth is earnest, what can be found and followed may surprise you and result in the examination and letting go of very fundamental beliefs which almost no one questions. We might say that the ultimate truth would be seeing things for what they are, not how we color and interpret them, nor what we call them- seeing the world without filters.
Alignment with truth is alignment with the unfamiliar and you can’t know ahead of time where this realignment will take you, or what that experience will really be like for any given person. Our current reality appears to be that the construction of, and investment in, belief are popular, while actual alignment to truth is unpopular and widely discouraged. If you truly invest in the four alignments above and aim to follow the path that these snippets of wisdom which we started with point to, it will create friction both externally and internally for at least a time. In the end though there is a greater freedom and less friction as the grace of acceptance blossoms. That may not be an easy or comfortable process however.
Neither is the alternative comfortable though. Creating and maintaining false mental constructs is deeply uncomfortable, addictive, neurotic by nature and leaves us dangerously fragile and vulnerable. I am aiming to point you to an alternative to that ever appealing syringe of belief. The path of deconstruction has to be actually taken though. Reality has to be allowed in, not pushed away and obscured because we think we need it to be a certain way. Things are as they are. What we may have some control over is whether or not we accept them as they are instead of engaging in futile resistance. That resistance is nothing more than fantasy and it comes with a cost. Within the grace of acceptance is where we find a decreased friction between our egoic structure and what simply is, even if we don’t know what that is. While peace and freedom may be found there, they do not have to be the goal or the driver of this process of unwinding. Is the resonance with truth that lives in all of us not enough? Follow that.
As much as we avoid it in practice, the concept of truth rings in everyone in a fundamental way. We have simply mistaken real truth for constructed ideas and diversions that we think will make us feel better if we invest in them. Ultimately they do not do so in any long term fundamental sense, any more than a shot of heroine does. It is a courageous act to find the humility to lay down the sword and shield, accept that what is just is and free fall into truth gracefully with open arms just to find out what’s there. Let go.
