Two-bit Guru | Knowing is Not knowledge | Photo of Dave meditating

In my last post I ventured into the fascinating area of science on the edge, either the edge of discovery or the edge of foolishness, depending on one’s point of view. In this post I’d like to delve deeper into on-the-edge, not in relation to the material world but rather in relation to the inner journey.

On my path I’ve discovered that the journey seems to be the essence of everything, of all being, and I believe it goes on after we leave the material realm. While I have accepted this truth in my head for decades, it has only been in recent years that I Know it because I feel it in my being. There is a difference.

This Knowing that I experience is not about knowing the way we know how to do algebra. It’s about knowing that it’s not about knowing. Knowing is not knowledge. Please understand that it is quite frustrating for me to describe this with language but that’s all I’ve got handy. I don’t know how to easily share my journey, but if you have embarked on your own inner trip then you will likely see what I’m saying. A good deal of what you’ll see on that inner journey, if it’s anything like mine, is nothing. Yep, nothing, and particularly nothing in particular.

Early on in my trip, decades ago, I was taught to visualize. I learned to visualize events that I wanted to happen, things that I wanted to own, knowledge that I wanted to have. An appreciable number of things did happen, but they happened the way a road trip would happen with a 6 year-old driving. My results were erratic, sloppy, skewed. When I visualized not to fulfill my own desires, I could see, literally see, other people in my mind’s eye, feel rapport with them, wish them well. This would have been a mundane event for me, except the people I saw I had never seen before. I only knew of their existence. This helped me to understand Knowing, a little bit.

I still visualize but not in a manipulative sense. The images come without my seeking them. At this stage, in that plane, I don’t know what they mean, if they have any meaning at all. This happens independent of will.

In meditation these days I often feel energies in my physical body, a sensation that I can only describe as “electricity,” or a sense of warmth, or a glowing. I feel sensations, Something, in my non-physical being, too. These sensations aren’t emotions although sometimes they are accompanied by a feeling of joy.

I have grown from expecting meditation to fulfill my desires to expecting nothing, except that the journey is always there, and Knowing that it will be forever.