”The things that will get you into trouble is not what you don’t know, but the things you are sure of”
— Mark twain
Although I claim I ”know” stuff I seem to be able to forget what I know?
Am I allowed to forget if I claim I know?
The more I ponder the more it seems like knowing is about how long we can remember until we forget. And what is happening when we think we know more than someone else?
I have noticed that things seems to look different when I look from a place of not knowing as opposed to when I think I know. The funny thing about this is that the more I let go of my ”I knows” or ”this is how it is” the better life I have and my relationships improve. Take a minute and think about the last time you spent time with someone who you got the feeling like they know everything. Those types of conversations seems to drain the energy rather than being uplifting and afterwards it often feels like there is a distance between you.
Another interesting reflection is to take a look at what happens with our relationship with ourselves when we think we know. How do we deal with ourselves when we think we know?
I sometimes feel that thinking that we know is like pulling a veil over our senses. And the more we think we know and hold on to what we see as truth, the thicker our veil becomes and the harder it gets for us to perceive the reality around us. How does this come into play when it comes to ourselves? Well, it seems quite simple. Nobody likes a know-it-all, not even when it comes to yourself being that know-it-all.
My conclusion around this is:
- When someone think that they know it might create a distance and drain the relationship
- When I am in a state of not knowing my relationships with others improve
- When I am in a state of not knowing my relationships with myself improve
In my own life I see learning is more about letting go of something old rather than to pickup something new. if you see what I mean. This seems true to me because the learner is always the mind. I understand that this might be hard to grasp, as all things that the mind is having trouble grasping, or in other terms, make logic of.
It is like deep down inside me I always knew, and the only thing I had to do to see that, was to let go of the stuff that I was hanging onto at the surface. As soon as I let go, my mind gets clearer and in that clarity I see the true nature of things. I sometimes think that the experience of learning is like remembering what I already know.
It has been said in several different ways before and despite what I think I knew about this another layer was peeled off when I realized that fine distinction between knowing and knowing that I know.
So consider letting go of what you cling onto at the surface, it might help you reach deeper into your own wisdom.
”If the past was the age of adding to one’s mind, now is the age of subtracting what is in his mind.
A person who has the courage to subtract his minds in this time will recover his original nature”
— Woo Myung