I Do Not Know
Those beautiful words ‘I don’t know’ are what opens to door to wonder, This wonder is immensely superior to the fleeting I could also see how there was no shortage of certainty in the world, and yet these ‘true believers’ all believed in vastly different things.comfort of foolishly thinking that I understand what is going on. I realized that all teachings, theories, and beliefs are just feeble efforts of the fearful human mind to tame life, this is useful, but life won’t be tamed or contained by my limited imagination.
The ability to question everything and experience a sense of wonder is such an awesome part of the human experience. As Socrates said, “the unexamined life is not worth living“. It is such a shame that we give up this wonder so easily. To believe that we have found the answers is to exchange wonder for false comfort. The only way to maintain this comfort is by constantly convincing ourselves (and anyone else who will listen) that what we believe is true. We only have to look at the state of the world to see how well that is going.
I discovered a long time ago that I just couldn’t trust my beliefs or opinions. I could see that my attraction to certain ways of looking at life had more to do with my personality and my conditioning than it did with any kind of Truth. How likely was it that out of all the possible personalities, I just happened to have the one that was delusion-proof?
Another thing that became obvious to me was that I couldn’t trust my sense of certainty. There were too many things that had appeared certain to me (undeniable even) at one point in my life only to later appear foolish. I could also see how there was no shortage of certainty in the world, and yet these ‘true believers’ all believed in vastly different things.
I needed to find something that wasn’t dependent on beliefs or my sense of certainty. Eventually I did. In those moments when I was able to let go of everything I thought I knew, I discovered an incredible stillness – an unshakable trust, wonder, and intimacy with life. It turns out that this is what I’d been searching for all along. Such sweet liberation. This peace begins and ends with the words ‘I don’t know’.
