The Known and the Unknown (II)

Our modern culture and politics is based on self-interest, and the values of psychology are ego-oriented, emphasizing self-knowledge, increasing self-esteem, and getting what we want. Yet, at the core, it’s these notions of self that make up a large part of our current problem.

An old Buddhist notion states that a primary cause of unhappiness is spending most of our attention and energy thinking about oneself, when that “self” simply doesn’t exist. The self we have adopted — the separate self or ego — is a noun referring to the perceiver, the observer and judge at the center of the known. But this “self” is an abstract notion, a linguistic invention… an autonomous entity that requires and assumes a point of view outside and detached from the flow of existence… a point of view that has no actual reality.

Who am I? Am I a noun or am I really more like a verb? In the world of language, “I” am a noun, and nouns — as things — imply separate objects and assume disconnections.

Language divides the unified field of experience. It can create polarities: up-down; left-right; good-bad. These distinctions may appear as opposites, but no part of a polarity can exist without the other. Left has no meaning without right; inner has relevance only in relation to outer; up makes sense only when associated with down. There is no meaning to left, east, or down in isolation.

This also holds true for the word “self.”  It too is part of a polarity, paired and related to whatever is defined as outer, or beyond the self. “Self” is meaningful only in its relationship to “world” or “other.” Any attempt to know the self as autonomous or independent, as distinct from its myriad and changing relationship to that world is an impossibility. Yet, conditioned by our language structures, we pursue self-knowledge or self-esteem as if this self were a separate entity, an actual fact; and this tendency becomes a constant source of loneliness, disconnection, and disorientation.

To stretch toward the vast and magical Unknown we have to move beyond this self. Castaneda’s teacher, Don Juan, constantly exhorts him to “shrink his self-importance;” reminds him again and again that the “I” is not the center of the world. When this self shrinks and is removed from center, the world around it expands correspondingly, and feelings of wonder, magic, and magnificence develop and flower. Throughout history, the methods of all mystical and spiritual traditions have involved forms and techniques to break the obsession and constant self-referencing of the “I,” and to open to the “Other,” the vast and unknown realms beyond its confines.

The practices and avenues to move beyond the self can be many and varied. Some involve expressions of surrender, praise, gratitude, or prayer — an energetic offering in which we speak from the self (the known), but what we are intending and speaking to lies beyond that (the unknown). Others use the physical, sensory world (ordeals, fasting, breath, yoga, sound); evoke the emotions through fear, love, compassion, devotion, or ecstatic dance; address the mind, (usually in the form of quieting it, as in meditation); or nurture the imaginative/visionary realm through dreams, art, poetry, shamanic trance, or the use of plant allies.

These practices can range from austere to elaborate, easy to difficult; from vision quests and initiatory rites to the simple expression of gratitude. But at their core they share one thing in common: a shrinking or removal of attention and energy from the self in its ordinary and consensual reality, and/or a corresponding emphasis on all that lies beyond … that changing, fluid, magical, and mysterious “world” of the unknown, and the profusion of possibilities to perceive and engage with it.

I experience a deep, abiding peace and joy. I want the same for you. Please explore the site and the programs offered here, and if you feel they could help you find or travel your path with heart, I’d be honored to help you.