How many people have said, the further along this path I go, the less I know?
Now here I am saying it.
Is it because we lose our knowledge? No, for me, it’s because what I accept as knowledge becomes a smaller and smaller field. It’s because my standards go up. (1)
What do we call knowledge?
So much of what we call knowledge is information we’ve received from the mass media, which we’ve accepted as truth. And that’s that on the subject.
So an airliner smashed into the Pentagon on 9/11. We saw it on TV. (Of course we didn’t see it but….) I’ve concluded that that’s knowledge and I’m closed on the subject.
First of all, that isn’t knowledge; it’s a belief. But I assert that our close-mindedness covers a much wider range of our beliefs than I think we may realize.
In this space I’m in … I went to call it “bliss” and my insides rebelled. No, this is ecstacy … what I accept as knowledge is a shrinking field. (2)
I remember, at the end of my vision in 1987, the words formed in my mind, “The purpose of life is enlightenment.” Michael, I presume, had just shown me the entire journey of a single soul from God to God. I came out into the world from the Father and lo I return to the Father again, Jesus said, which describes this sacred arc.
I emerged from that experience saying to myself, now I know one thing: The purpose of life is enlightenment. Everything else was questionable or not knowledge.
I certainly look at myself, as I peel back the layers of the dimensional onion, and I find more and more beliefs disguised as knowledge. It’s convenient. It sounds right. I have a meeting in half an hour. How much of my knowledge is of that variety? (3)
Moreover, the ego has an investment in inflating or exaggerating everything as a survival measure.
But the ego doesn’t operate at stillpoint and it can’t possibly reach ecstacy. In these two places I’m safe.
In terms of knowledge I’m fast becoming a pauper. I only know a few things.
But they’re among the best things to know. (4)
Footnotes
(1) As we see from our contemporary political scene, whether we live up to those standards is the question.
(2) I am so glad I’m writing this down. I won’t remember it by this evening. My reasoning powers will be there but not my short-term memory. I will be “in the moment,” as Michael wants me to be.
(3) I may be a decent writer but that doesn’t translate into having good ideas on, say, pandemics or global finance. I don’t.
And my beat on the waterfront can only be so wide, bounded by my interests, real knowledge, and energy. What this latest experience of ecstacy has brought about is a focusing of interest along with a shrinkage of certain knowledge.
I am Richard Dreyfus staring at his mountain made of mashed potatoes. “This means something,” he says as he absorbedly shapes it to look like…. [Devil’s Mountain]
Credit: Close Encounters of the Third Kind
(4) One: The purpose of life is enlightenment. Two: I know what the nature of love, bliss, and ecstacy are. That exhausts the certain knowledge I have. But contemplating it is certainly enough to satisfy me for a lifetime.