Different saints have advised against the accumulation of knowledge. Humans don’t need more facts; as my teacher has said, they need a different relationship with what they already know. We get stuck in beliefs and patterns, and then there aren’t any creative actions. We are just functioning from a conditioned state.
I think I got a taste of this the other day. I had an experience that made me think that life is more about subtraction than it is about addition. I will try to explain what I mean by that. I was sitting with my family at dinner when I felt a strange feeling that someone was missing from the dinner table. This entity must have been very captivating because it felt that something stimulating was not at the table that night. I looked at my husband and son and thought, no, it is always the three of us. Nothing is different.
However, our dinner had taken on a different atmosphere than usual. My husband and son seemed less complicated, and everything just felt unimaginative. I wondered if I made my husband and son more complex than they actually were. Did I project complications that are not there onto my world. I asked myself if this was a more truthful world, and I was witnessing it for the first time. I wondered what it was that was missing at the table that night. It felt like it was a world of its own that I usually project onto my environment. A world that gets me up in the morning to start my day because of its bright, captivating nature. As I sat there, I started to miss it. I wondered if it was gone forever. I say this because it was more alluring than what I was experiencing in those moments at the dinner table. It seemed to me in those moments, I was experiencing something less fabricated and more accurate. I don’t know the exact worldview that I carry around, but I'm pretty sure it is always with me, except for those moments that night when I was sitting with my family at dinner.
The experience felt flat but unincumbered by my perceptions of how things should look. My son and husband were doing their thing outside of my beliefs about them. There was a beauty to it, even without my engaging expectations. It was more truthful and real. That experience has faded, and I'm pretty sure my good old buddy is back with me again. I reflect on the experience often. It is always in the back of my mind, reminding me to question what I think and feel. I wonder if it is possible to have the permanent freedom to see what is right in front of me without my added friend.
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