We Grow Into The Unknown

What I am about here is the orchestration of perception. I take the director’s baton and tap, tap, tap, bring into harmonious arrangement the squawking chaos of discordant perspectives by inviting you to speak your truth of the particular part you are to the receptive ear of the whole. Our voices unite us in the oneness of expression when, speaking, we are heard, respected, honored, well received and understood.

Each of you has your own way of seeing, your own way of apprehending and assessing reality. I am not about to talk you into seeing the way I see, into valuing what I value, into thinking the way I think, but. By saying what I see and think, I can force you into reacting to what I say, into thinking about what I say, into thinking for yourself about what I say—and if I can get you to think about your reaction, to dig into it, the exploration can be fruitful. You may well deepen, expand, enlarge your thinking just by thinking about your thinking. Or, you may just retrench yourself in your preferred pattern of thought. Oh well.

But the rule here is to dig where there is water, where there is emotional response to what you see and hear. Opposition is as valuable as agreement. What we are looking for is the emotional level of your response. The more stirred up you are, either positively or negatively, the better. Explore your reaction. What buttons am I pushing? Why are they hot for you? What memories come to mind in relation to that button being pushed? Talk to the reactive side of yourself. Interview her, him. See what she, what he, has to say. Spend time digging down to the heart of the matter. Poke around in the muck. See what is there. What ALL is there.

What I’m good for is waking you up to you, inviting you to meet yourself, your own thoughts and explore where they come from, where they lead. You have to do the work of figuring out why you are responding to me as you are. It isn’t a matter of getting me to be more like you want me to be, to say more of what you want me to say, but of examining your desire to change me. What’s up with that, as they say.

The same goes for your reaction to one another, to what the other is saying. What is going on? You have to do the work required to know. You have to trace things back to the source in order to find and face what is there. It isn’t enough to say, “Oh, I know what this is about,” and letting it go at that. Pretend you don’t know, or recognize that you don’t know all there is to know. Dig into what it is about. Sit with it. See what comes, what happens. What is being asked of you? What response do you need to make?

We are all blind to what we do not want to see, but. What needs to be seen is constantly coming at us in our physical and emotional reactions to our life experience, and in our dreams. Something is trying to get us to see what we do not want to see. We have to learn to look. This is our spiritual work, looking at what we do not want to see. This is the next piece of the puzzle, the next step in the journey. It has nothing to do with agreement or disagreement with what instigates the reaction. It has to do with following the reaction to its source and seeing what is there to deal with, or follow, or serve. What is there? We have to face the demon, to call it by name, and see what happens.

This is called knowing what is true and what is also true, or knowing how things are and how things also are. We do not know what we do not know, and so, we have to be wondering what else is there, what more there is to know. We grow into the unknown, into the unknown that we don’t know anything about, and into the unknown aspects of what we think we know very well, including ourselves.

We are an aspect of the mystery that we do not know. Life is not so much about getting what we want and arranging our lives like we want them to be, but about knowing who we are, who else we are, who all we are, by opening ourselves to what else is there. We open ourselves to the mystery and assist the unconscious, unknown, energies that are calling our name, beckoning us to take up our work of knowing and becoming who we are, doing the work that is ours to do, and aligning ourselves with the life that is ours to live. This is lived spirituality. It is not head stuff, thinking and believing certain ways. It is life stuff, living the life that is right for us, the life that we are created to live, by stepping into the mystery, into the unknown, trusting ourselves to it, singing our own song, and living the adventure that is our life. Amen! May it be so!