Spiritual Life is About Not Knowing

Spiritual Life is About Not Knowing June 20, 2015

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We like to think spiritual life grows deeper as we learn and gain experience. We believe spiritual life becomes stronger as we study ideas or memorize quotations. We see spiritual life as a product of what we know. When we know more, we will recognize more of the sacred depth all around us.

I value and enjoy learning and thinking. I have struggled to understand concepts, even to memorize long passages. I no longer believe, though, that spiritual life is stronger in me because I know more.

More often, what I think I know about spiritual life tends to get in my way.

It can be easy for us, based on our analysis, to rush into thinking we know things. We feel more comfort with knowing than not knowing, so we push ourselves to know. Once we think we already know, we do not allow anything new to contravene our decisions. We see what we know as set in stone. We do not go beyond it.

It fascinates me how people can draw lifelong conclusions from unconscious decisions.

Spiritual life is beyond what we already know. We recognize there is more spiritual life in saying I don’t know than in repeating pious platitudes. Spiritual life is beyond our understanding, and grows beyond our certainties.

For me, letting go of what I think I know is often a fresh start of spiritual life. Spiritual life draws us to reach further, beyond the limits of what we think we know. Spiritual life fills us with new possibilities.

Spiritual life is at work in us, persuading us we do not know everything we think we know.

Where is spiritual life drawing us to go beyond what we think we know?

How will you go beyond the limitations of what you know today?

[Image by why 137]


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