Tag: presence

The Sanctuary of Not Knowing

Suggesting spiritual refuge is to be found in ‘not knowing’ rings a familiar bell, though ironically, striking it yields no sound. It has no tone; yet all vibration is missing. I am intrigued. The clapper isn’t striking anything solid, as if that would be too much like ‘knowing.’ As if knowing is the materialization of thought, as if anthropocentric knowing is the only way, as if what we ‘know’ is all that can be known. One cannot un-ring the bell.

Not knowing feels like an undiscovered land, an abundant refuge in which I am not the center. Perhaps there is no center, only a kind of getaway we all seek but rarely find. It’s freeing to not know, to imagine oneself a rich and compelling un-network connecting everything without having to be anything at all. It’s seductive, to be sure. We are invited to imagine the Unseen, to enter a limitless ubiquity. Being shaken from whatever we thought we were doingand being drawn into this provocative, gestating, undefined space of is not unlike being a fish suddenly realizing there’s such a thing as water. Aha!

It seems there once were some fish who spent their days swimming around in search of water. Anxiously looking for their destination, they shared their worries and confusion with each other as they swam. One day they met a wise fish and asked him the question which had preoccupied them for so long: “Where is the sea?” they asked. The wise fish answered: “If you stop swimming so busily and struggling so anxiously, you will discover that you are already in the sea. You need look no further than where you already are.”  —Carolyn Gratton, The Age of Spiritual Guidance

So it is. If we can allow our vision to soften and detach from whatever is capturing our attention, whether sensation, feeling or thought, even for short moments, we might discover a new quality of animation, not to mention connection, among all things.

When was the last time you encountered someone determined to ‘not know,’–if that isn‘t a contradiction? When was the last time you – a fellow explorer of not knowing — locked eyes with a fellow not knower? I can only imagine such a moment as spontaneous combustion — of possibility, the sharing of a unique view in which we remain uncommitted, an intermingling of presence and absence, witnessing yet not adopting every impulse to hold anything, noticing without retaining. Holding all that is real without declaring any of it to be true…or not true. This is an island in the middle of a vast ocean, stillness surrounded by motion.

We’re used to connecting over what we know. We’re used to establishing agreements about what we know, forming alliances, partnerships, romantic, economic, political and spiritual relationships defined by all we agree is true. And not true. Everything hinges on sustaining those agreements: all progress, growth, everything, every framework of discernment, even love itself is restricted to the parameters of agreement. And we habitually behave as if shared knowing defines the entire context in which we swim.

Could it be otherwise? What becomes of love in a field of not knowing? What if we weren’t so quick to define water, instead allowing ourselves to marinate in a realm of dissolving assumptions? What if we weren’t so quick to believe knowing and believing are the only currency of being with. I mean, look around. How are we doing with that? Certainty about what we know is the root of all conflict. We, humanity, are being driven over the precipice by those who know and who never take the time to not know. I’m not suggesting we deny physics or science in general, but just consider, even science is also invariably, inescapably, inadvertently conducted according to discernible biases about what is true.

Not knowing dissolves presumed boundaries. It becomes an entree to trans-corporeality, an intermingling of bodies, minds and natural phenomena. We become each other for a moment–at least until the knowing mind interrupts. We enter an uncommon relationship that doesn’t make sense. And at this historical moment, attempting to make sense in the usual ways makes no sense at all. We should likely infer the parameters of this unknown territory have always been accessible beneath the awareness of the One Who Knows. We can become the one who doesn’t know – adopting wholly different terms of relationship that have always been available were we to ever simply let go of knowing.

Not knowing is Rumi’s field beyond right and wrong.  It lies beyond Yeats’ widening gyre. It might as well be the field beyond truth and falsehood. It’s the undiscovered and unappreciated spaciousness of mind, released from restrictions imposed by being So Damn Sure, which is what makes living with uncertainty So Damn Hard.

Truly realizing not knowing becomes a meditation on Belief. Every voice tugging at the mind to give up this quixotic adventure arising from belief becomes a restraint against discovering and exploring the freedom of not knowing. Not knowing implies a certain trust and fearlessness to remain present in a state of greater uncertainty than we have ever known. It also offers perspective on the routine uncertainties of our current predicament, making them more palatable, even mundane by comparison.

None of this implies the disappearing polar ice caps aren’t real. They are indeed. It is the reflexive struggle againstuncertainty generating the pandemic rise of fear and anxiety just now. Not knowing allows us to befriend uncertainty.

We are not in control. We never have been, no matter how we cling to that myth or struggle to recover. Anxiety and fear are functions of belief. Knowing and doing are intimately related. Not knowing is a sanctuary in which we may release ourselves from impulsive doing to allay anxiety and fear. The sanctuary is where we can exercise non-doing, waiting for doing to arrive.

Can doing arise from non-doing? How will we know? Can doing exist in a field of not knowing? I will say yes. I’m going to say enthusiastically that doing arising from not knowing is not like any doing we’ve done before because it emerges in a pervasive field of uncertainty.

If we choose to remain in not knowing, will we do what needs to be done? Will we even know what needs to be done? I don’t have the basic practical measures in mind, but rather the deeper personal existential and spiritual choices. We will know what must be done because whatever doing arises from not knowing will be enacted in a context of Presence. Presence being the absence of past and future.

All belief, all knowing arises with memory of a past and a vision of a future. Presence rarely exists in a field of doing, at least not in the fullest sense. Presence dawns in the act of fully relaxing into not knowing, allowing the past and future to fall away. We are here. We don’t need to believe in anything. We are available for not doing. There is no place for anxiety and fear to hide here. This is sanctuary.

 

Fearlessness

If we have no fear, there is no thinking. No conceptual mind. And vice versa. No thinking, no fear. —Tsoknyi Rinpoche.

Thinking and fear are inseparable. I mean the analytical, deliberative and conceptual nature of our waking process coupled with a vague anxiety about either the past or the future. Labeling this largely unconscious and pervasive condition a defense mechanism—the opposite of a direct somatic interaction with the world– opens a portal into a rich, yet largely hidden dimension.

By whatever means, we all benefit from noticing and softening the dominance of conceptual mind whenever possible. We sense the value of alternative ways of knowing and, if we’re fortunate, gain some facility with them. But such explorations can quickly become muddy and complex with counter-intentions and conceptual intrusion. Ultimately, when the intention is to get out of our minds, the prime directive is deceptively simple. There’s nothing whatsoever to do.

Relaxing analytical mind and entering the axis of heart-mind and direct somatic experience is a dive into the deep pool of emotions and primary motivations, often blocked by uncertainty and fear. Everyday thinking (for most) is about competency and approval (in an imaginary future), driven by fear of not having things we want and not having enough time to get them.

Foremost among these is a desire to accomplish something, and quickly. For many, the thinking process is all about being somebody, reaffirming an identity, the face we turn toward the world. Acting swiftly and with confidence is the strategy to adorn our identities with permanence, constantly overlooking the fact that, in reality, there is no one to be.

Looking at this bubble of fear and deflating it is profound. Fear, it turns out, is not a permanent condition. As soon as the natural defense mechanisms to hide it are recognized, it’s possible to dial it down, sometimes to near zero, for extended periods of time. True fearlessness, the absence of thinking, may come as rare and transient moments of profound somatic presence. It may be cultivated or arise spontaneously.

Thoughts of the past or future are a defense against full somatic presence is ego’s panic. Ego is fragile and always needs reinforcement and protection. None of my fears or the illusory protection they provide is ‘me.’ ‘I’ would always rather be somewhere else, watching the entire crazy, helpless, endlessly entertaining creative process of building these defenses, which under scrutiny dissolve like so many sand castles before the incoming tide.

Viewing the climate issue through the lens of a perpetual fearful state, our individual and collective responses orient around fear-based rational metabolizing of data and formulating rational responses. That doesn’t mean we are deliberately denying or condoning the denial of our deeper emotions. But it certainly can mean we are giving short shrift to them, as if focusing on doing the same thing over and over again will distract us from the discomfort of realizing we have not altered our course from its suicidal path.

Conventional activism is not reducing global emissions. What fears construct the bulwark and what feelings lie beneath our failure to alter this failing strategy? What if the way we think about global problems is how we perpetuate them?

An alternate approach is Deep Adaptation: taking a fearless look into the darkness, unpacking our fears and listening deeply for the gifts within. Experiencing the grip of fear, whether momentary, profound or incomplete, propagates as a gift and manifests as enlightened intent. True fearlessness lies at the nexus of empathy, enlightened action, equanimity (in the face of subtle and/or uncontrollable forces) and the softening of ego. It is where uncertainty meets trust, where structure meets chaos and doesn’t recoil, where empowerment, joy and compassion intersect. This is the path of Deep Adaptation.

These qualities naturally and spontaneously subvert the life-long conditioning of the fear-based, selfish (and self-denying), rational, zero-sum paradigm and maximally defended hyper-ego of modern culture, politics and economics. To be fearless is to operate outside the perversion of today’s inverted totalitarianism. To place oneself so far outside the norm is a revolutionary condition. In fact, fearlessness is lawless, at least in the sense of operating in the present moment, outside a set of unwritten laws governing acceptable human interaction. I am talking about the absence of fear, not bravado, not a jacked-up boundless courage in the face of fear.

To live outside the law you must be honest……..Dylan.

The dominant paradigm exploits fear to condition behavior, more so now than ever because the messaging has become so sophisticated and the drive to monetize our emotions so strong. That messaging tells us when we are afraid, we must look to ourselves as the source, not to the daily deluge of mass indoctrination. The individual is pathologized. These are the mechanisms of social control.

The origins and mechanisms of fear in our lives all serve a purpose. At the same time, we can reflect on our beliefs and reflexive responses to everyday events, appetites and needs to consciously explore alternative strategies. Extending this deeply resilient and adaptive practice to the collective context exponentially increases complexity.

As we determine effective pathways to justice, it’s increasingly clear that turning off discursive mind enhances our capacity for fearlessness. This is now the cutting edge of transformative group practice, in which the presence of fear can be named, exposed and collectively defused. Cutting through the defenses and obscurations involves unwinding the triggers and layers of fear we’ve accumulated since birth–or even before.

The clarity we can build and the resulting behavioral changes eventually become automatic. Such a process may be called by many names. I call it the Buddhist long game: the transformation of mind. Every such path of inquiry into fear is a journey into the heart of suffering. This is one thing we all share. Ultimately, all practice is directed toward one simple truth: the majority of emotional (not instinctual) fears driving us, tenacious though they may be, are illusory. We may have our story about them, yet they have no true objective source. Which is not to say fear can merely be dismissed; not at all.

Compassion is closely related to fearlessness. Situational compassion expresses empathy and responds to the suffering of others in a direct way. Absolute compassion is an encompassing awareness of the profound commonality of human experience, the suffering and bewilderment at the heart of being human and related confusion about the difference between what is real and what is actually true. Holding such a view while surrounded by an ocean of fear without being affected by it is nearly unimaginable. Yet fearlessness grows with compassion. And vice versa. They are inseparable. Absolute compassion is entirely incompatible with fear.

In stepping through the gateway of compassion, we step into fearlessness. True compassion cannot fully manifest without realizing all phenomena exist in a supremely expansive state of equal-ness. There is no distinction between enlightened fearlessness and compassionate intent or any other way of being. Many of our fears are variations of denial—self-imposed disempowerment. They are responses to familiar threats to which we have become habituated. They become comforting costumes layered upon core reality. Over time they shape a fixed identity, as if abiding fear becomes a reassuring view of our selves.

Nowhere is this dynamic more apparent than in relation to the existential threat of climate change. But fear is typically subject to causes and conditions and can be reviewed by cognitive mind. Discovering and breaking through every form of denial about our future is a central principle of Deep Adaptation.

We might assume fearlessness is a matter of will. But let’s not confuse conceptual knowledge for wisdom. Knowing more will never take us to the truth of fearless intent. Wisdom comes by inquiring ever more closely and deeply–with a bottomless compassion for oneself–into the sources and nature of our fears (and denial) and liberating the energy and clarity stored within. Exercising will is more like counter-phobia, throwing a cover over that clarity and burying it further from sight.

The distracting activity of mind and the accompanying dance of denial is often symbolized as an untamed mustang. It is attractive, seductive and wild. Fearlessness is the ability to recognize the beauty and spontaneity of that wildness without being seduced by it.

The fearless one sustains an unflinching gaze into her own suffering, compromise, limiting beliefs and behaviors. The fearless one acts with a compassionate intent that holds fear, hope and separation as having no substance, no traceable origin or destination, no firm ground at all.

The fearless one is willing to sustain the consequences of living beyond convention, even if it means putting one’s own safety at risk, not solely to place a spotlight on the entrenched nature of the dominant paradigm, but to engage with it in fresh and creative ways, transmitting a highly contagious view of the possible: a world in which there is no true enemy. The fearless one affirms there is enough for all, there is unbroken relationship with all; there is infinite choice and nothing to do but create.

In this condition we glimpse our true nature. It can shake our world, arousing awareness of our fears and the sway they hold over us. The fearless one even evokes our fear of fearlessness with a gentleness that melts our defenses, exposing our vulnerability and the artifice of our times.

The fearless one opens possibility for something new, a vast, spacious and timeless freedom we know in our hearts is possible, yet which, without the support of others, we are barely strong enough to sustain more than a few moments at a time for ourselves.

What might a culture of fearlessness or fearless collective action look like? There are surely many examples, some deliberate and some spontaneous. Can all political initiatives be about dismantling the mechanisms and structures of fear? Many of them already are. To explore these pathways, interrupting our pre-occupation with individual identity and survival, is to unfold into fearlessness, to enlarge our sphere of action, to embody compassion, to forge justice, to break through the familiar into a new and fresh territory of freedom–and invite others to do the same.