THE TRANCE OF KNOWING. THE DANCE OF UNKNOWING.
“The day you teach the child the name of the bird, the child will never see that bird again” – Jiddu Krishnamurti
~ From early childhood, the light and delight, innocence and wonder of a child’s simple being fades into a lifelong darkening that happens around age three, or so. It’s all the nature of growth – in what happens, yes 😉 There’s a progressive diminishing in the lightness of pure being; a growing up, out and away from being to becoming, to living, if not thriving, in the long shadow of one’s cultural conditioning with mind’s naming and claiming it knows. Indeed, the beginning of the knower, the known, and the knowing arises with the labeling of experience as ‘known’. There follows, like night after day, the muddying and obscuring of pure delight in seeing and joy in simply🔆 being.
Draw back the curtains
let in a child’s delight
Everything wrong
doesn’t have to be right.
In reality, before we fell into the trance of knowing, the unspotted eye saw nothing but miracles! Perhaps we can cleanse the door of conditioned perception with a relaxed wandering along a wooded stream, with a quiet pause while waiting for a bus, with a soft touch of a flower petal, a gentle squeezing of a child’s tiny hand, a long lingering gaze that invokes appreciation and gratitude for this very moment exactly as it is – totally unknown, splendid and fragile, poignant and alive, yet, familiar because known. Pedestrian, but not really.
The eye of the seer is the seen. The observer is the observed. As one looks, so one sees. Look from anger and you’ll see an angry world; from fear, a fearful world. From love? That’s for one to find out! The really good news here is that in reality, that which one actually is, is love, peace, beauty, and joy. In truth, these named qualities are enjoined – where there’s one, there’s always all the others! In fact, they are One.
All grace and wonder in living is in the whole, the subtle, and the quiet.
“Look deep into nature, and then you will understand everything better.” ~ Albert Einstein
Indeed, and let’s add a little grace note here on the ‘direction’ we may also be well advised to look: Look deep into your inner nature with an open and alert watching of the naming, knowing and believing mind-chatter – perhaps with a long quiet walk into the garden of your outer nature. In reality, they’re the same, yes.
“You will be able to answer your own inquiry, your own question, when you are not seeking an answer.” J Krishnamurti
To look and see, all one apparently needs to do, is stop doing; stop running in the mediated trance of the named and known, and dance lightly and gracefully, curiously and intimately, in unfolding, un-named and unknown Being. Love, loving. 🙂
