Good Morning Digital Neighbors! Happy Wednesday to all except @Fred_Bourque who is on Tuesday #3491. No one really knows the count since it doesn't matter. Thanks for all who joined the Tuesday with Audrey - it was a very enjoyable and fun session of laughter, discussion and community.
How about some David Whyte for a midweek reflection? His pearls, my commentary.
SELF-KNOWLEDGE is not fully possible. We do not reside in a body, a mind or a world where it is achievable or, from the point of being interesting, even desirable. Half of what lies in the heart and mind is potentiality, resides in the darkness of the unspoken and unarticulated and has not yet come into being; this hidden, unspoken half of a person will supplant and subvert any present understandings we have about ourselves.
Human beings are always, and always will be, a frontier between what is known and what is not known. The act of turning any part of the unknown into the known is simply an invitation for an equal measure of the unknown to flow in and re-establish that frontier: to reassert the far inward, as yet unknown horizon of an individual life; to make us what we are - that is, a moving edge between what we know about ourselves and what we are about to become. What we are actually about to become, or are afraid of becoming, always trumps and rules over what we think we are already.
The hope that a human being can achieve complete honesty and self-knowledge with regard to themselves is a fiction and a chimera, the jargon and goals of a corporate educational system brought to bear on the depths of an identity where the writ of organising language does not run.
Self-knowledge includes the understanding that the self we want to know is about to disappear. What we can understand is the way we occupy this frontier between the known and the unknown, the way we hold the conversation of life, the figure we cut at that edge, but a detailed audit of the self is not possible and diminishes us in the attempt to establish it. We are made on a grander scale, half afraid of ourselves, half in love with immensities beyond any name we can give.
Self-knowledge is often confused with transparency, but knowledge of the self always becomes the understanding of the self as a confluence between what is know and not known; a flowing meeting of elements, including all the other innumerable selves in the world, not a set commodity to be unearthed, measured and knocked into shape. Self-knowledge is not clarity or transparency or knowing how everything works; self-knowledge is a fiercely attentive kind of frontier conversation with the unknown, a form of humility and thankfulness, a sense of the privilege of a particular form of participation, coming to know the way we hold the conversation of life and perhaps, above all, the miracle that there is a particular something rather than an abstracted nothing, and we are a very particular part of that particular something.
*What we recognise and applaud as honesty and transparency in an individual is actually the humble demeanour of the apprentice, someone paying extreme attention - to themselves, to others, to life, to the next step, which they may survive or they may not; someone who does not have all the answers but who is attempting to learn what they can, about themselves and those with whom they share the journey; someone like everyone else, wondering what they and their society are about to turn into. We are neither what we think we are nor entirely what we are about to become, we are neither purely individual nor fully a creature of our community, but an act of becoming that can never be held in place by a false form of nomenclature. No matter our need to find a place to stand amidst the onward flow of the world, the real foundation of the self is not in self-knowledge, but in the self-forgetfulness that occurs when it meets something other than the self it first wanted to know
Consolations - Revised edition: The Solace, Nourishment and Underlying Meaning of Everyday Words. David Whyte
Self-knowledge is not fully possible, if you get in the 80th percentile you are doing great and only the great minds and souls, the ruminators, the reflective and self-observant humble souls get above that. Self congratulatory types always think they are above that, have turned away from the mirror of self-admiration (not self knowledge) they are ready to be admired by the world.
I really love David's use of frontier as that boundary between who are and who we are becoming. This line really sticks out: . What we are actually about to become, or are afraid of becoming, always trumps and rules over what we think we are already. That line illuminates how we act and become in moments of courage or fear when we meet the future or hit the frontier. Fortune favors the bold. Fear is its own punishment. Hard to remember that in the moment, fear can seem so real and so powerful. It is a powerful survival tool, but one that is often horribly misapplied since we left caves.
but a detailed audit of the self is not possible and diminishes us in the attempt to establish it.
I am not sure I agree with David on this little smidge of a point. Audits of self tend to be a good thing is you are trying to understand your story and your journey, just know the audit is never final and your conclusions are fluid at best. There may be moments of defining solidity in the story, but so much of our lives is subject to further review.
We are made on a grander scale, half afraid of ourselves, half in love with immensities beyond any name we can give. Transfiguration - The Lord's and our own. While we can't give a name to such immensities on our own, a few believe that the Immensity has given a name to us. Sadly there is not universal agreement on that name and what it means or wants with us.
self-knowledge is a fiercely attentive kind of frontier conversation with the unknown, a form of humility and thankfulness, a sense of the privilege of a particular form of participation
That sense of privilege is the joy of being alive. That form of participation is the engagement I find in life, especially with fellow pilgrims, but not limited to human experience. Nature has so much to offer. Nature is amazing, healing, inspiring and overwhelming. It has a power all of its own as the Master's first canvas of expression. So the story goes, He found it good. So the story goes, when it comes to us, He finds it very good.
You can't laugh, cry or share with a tree or even a dog to same degree that you can do that with a human being. Rylee-girl has no interest in memes or stories of our life, but she does love and she does feel. There is a strange empathy we can find in animals, but there is a greater empathy to be found in person. Sadly there is also the opposite. Dogs and trees won't give us the same cruelty as humanity is capable of dishing out.
the humble demeanour of the apprentice, someone paying extreme attention - to themselves, to others, to life, to the next step, which they may survive or they may not; someone who does not have all the answers but who is attempting to learn what they can, about themselves and those with whom they share the journey; someone like everyone else, wondering what they and their society are about to turn into.
Apprentice - a great word, I would would happily trade it with Disciple. I don't have all the answers but I have some very concrete ones on which to plant my feet. I have found a permanence in the midst of all this change that occurs with self-knowledge. That abiding reality, that presence that transcends change and yet can encompass all change is the Master or at least His presence. I pray I can keep a humble demeanor as try to learn what I can as I make my way.
Happy Wednesday friends! Love you all.
