(My Thanks Giving piece, a day late.)
There’s a saying in a community of which I am familiar, it being ecumenical, it speaks of God as “The God of your understanding.” That’s a great saying, a great way of putting it, as it assumes nothing of you. Rightly so.
Our understandings are subjective to our experience, which are our own. We have different experiences from each other, each of us doing our own thing. Gardening is very different from say electrical work, which is very different from say accounting, which is very different from say programming, which…you get the idea.
We have our own experiences, which are our own, and different from others.
Our sensitivities also vary, so what we notice and pay attention to are also, our own. A gardener isn’t going to bug hunt code so well. And a programmer isn’t going bug hunt the garden so well. Same word, two different worlds. And an accumulation of completely different sensitivities.
Here’s the thing about intelligence. Intelligence is about the ability to notice. And noticing is about sensitivities. A yuppie isn’t going to notice what a street dog notices, nor is a street dog going to notice what a yuppie notices. Who’s stupid and who’s smart? That very question is nonsensical when you take into account my experience and understanding of intelligence. Intelligence is built from sensitivities gained ONLY through experience. Intelligence can only be measured relative to experience; there is no absolute.
And this is where legitimate diversity—diversity of experience—not bullshit “identity”—really pays off. With a diversity of experience, you gain a diversity of sensitivities, and boost your intelligence.
Intelligence is the ability to notice.
Reality is what it is, regardless of what we think it is, or want it to be.
That’s true about reality, yet our experiences and subsequent understandings are subjective. The overriding “tune factor” in this are our values. What do we care about? Why do we care about them (values)? Same singular reality, vastly different experiences and understandings. Values are our immersive, characteristic guide to living the day, each and every day.
Circumstances change. Things fail. Things succeed. Accomplishment often means the finish. Finishing often means starting something new. And in the course of our days, we learn to keep and lose values, or suffer for it. And most suffer for it, as their “values” are ideological, rather than learnt by way of honest experience and understanding.
This does not play well for certainty, does it? No it does not. Certainty requires a decision, rather than a perception, of what’s up. A wild ass guess. A wild ass wish. Certainty is ideological, not real.
What about knowledge?
Yeah, about “knowledge.” It is an emotion, the emotion of “certainty” and/or “religion.” It is the emotion of life’s greatest trappings: certainty, entitlement and control. None of which are EVEN possible, except as the emotion of “knowledge.”
There is a difference, an important difference, between “knowledge” and “experience and understanding.” That difference is the decision, the assumption, of certainty. Knowledge carries the delusions of certainty, entitlement and control. Experience and understanding do not. Experience and understanding carry the caveat of doubt, having been wrong so many times before. Being wrong is requisite to learning. Learning is only possible because we are NOT certain, entitled or in control.
Education is the life long process of finding out how much we’ll never know, not how much we do “know.”
What about bewilderment, then?
Are you starting to see now, how bewilderment is the pinnacle of understanding? We have subjective experiences and understandings, of the singular shared reality. Imagination and desires being irrelevant to that which is real. Our experience and understanding are at best co-incidental to reality, and always incomplete. Bewilderment is the term that best conveys this context of understanding. That our understanding is at best co-incidental to reality, and always incomplete.
Bewilderment is the pinnacle of understanding because it keeps front and center the veracity of all understanding, that understanding is subjective to our experience, and subject to error.
How to do anything then?
Ahh, yes, the NEED for certainty. Huh. Even the concept of “advantages” is suspect. Wealth versus poverty. Needs. Bubbles. Think of wealth as certainty; poverty as reality. And necessity as the mother of invention.
An easy time of things stunts our experiences, and builds our fear of things unfamiliar. In this regard, wealth can be and is devastating to many people. Whereas poverty forces us to sharpen up and look for ways to survive. Things scary to the wealthy are jokes to the poor. That explains a lot. 🙂
The need for certainty comes from fear. Needless fear. And it panics people into ideological insanities, driven by our own false God, the beast, ego. This is not productive nor sustainable, even when deluding ourselves with the emotion of knowledge. We go to war when things are not as they “should” be.
Absent the need for certainty, curiosity and play dominate our lives. We get to see what happens!
So how does one lose the NEED for certainty? By trusting in a higher power. By trusting in God, whomever, whatever God happens to be. Doesn’t matter. By trusting in God, and not your “knowledge” of God, you lose the need to know, the need to be certain.
Why wouldn’t everyone do that? Because God is beyond our ability to see and understand. Because God isn’t a certainty. Except that God is the only certainty. God, not our understanding of God.
I call this spiritual living. For me the essence of spirituality is trusting beyond my ability to see and understand. And knowledge itself? Pssshh… When I let go the limits of my own ability to see and understand, I open myself up the the unfathomable providence of reality.
By trusting my higher power, God, I swap fear for surprise. And delight in it.
Bewilderment is the pinnacle of understanding.
Does any of this make sense?
Thanks for the visit. Please share this if you like. See you next time!
Clarity, unity, organization, action. Let’s not fail where it counts.
Be American. Stay American!
David Weeks, Information Developer, Tampa, Florida.