The Infinite Beauty of Not Knowing

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I’ve recently been thinking about the things that I don’t know anything about. As you can imagine, it can be difficult to imagine the things that you can’t even imagine. It can be scary to consider that the things that you know are an incredibly small and almost insignificant portion of the knowledge that actually exists in the universe. But when the Oracle at Delphi proclaimed that Socrates was the wisest man in all of Athens, it wasn’t because of the information that he possessed. It was because he was aware of the incredible amount of information that escaped him. By taking a look at himself and not only realizing, but accepting, that he knew nothing, Socrates was able to open himself to the infinite possibilities that exist in not knowing.

This is not an earth-shattering way of thinking.

You’ve no doubt heard one of your friends say in passing that ‘ignorance in bliss’. I had a science teacher in sixth grade who was fond of saying that ‘we don’t know enough to know how much it is that we don’t know’. But outside of cliché statements and wise old science teachers, there is a ton of applicable wisdom to the sense of humbling yourself and admitting that you don’t know. It allows you to assume the role of the student and, more importantly, allows you the space to be taught.

There’s an old Zen story of a student who had spent his life studying the philosophy of Zen. He had studied all of the texts and had his own understanding of the Universe. He considered himself already to be somewhat of an expert. He then heard of a great master who lived on top of a mountain that had perfected the art and he decided that he would become the master’s pupil. When he arrived to meet the master, they sat down for tea as was customary. As the tea was ready, the master walked over and began to pour from the pot into the student’s cup. As the tea reached the brim, the master continued to pour. The student let this pass until he could take it no longer and then shouted that the cup was full and it could hold no more tea. To this the master smiled at the student and said,

“You can’t fill a cup that is already full.”

The student had come to the master with his own knowledge. Without first purging his already present beliefs from the mind, the master could offer no new knowledge to the student’s cup. This is why it is so important to humble yourself when assuming the role of a student. I have, in my own experience, struggled greatly with this task and because of my own pride find it difficult to accept knowledge from those who would only wish to help me.

In Kevin Smith’s 1999 comedy, Dogma, Chris Rock as the thirteenth apostle explains this perfectly when recounting his time with Jesus Christ. He shares that up in heaven, Jesus is most upset by the deeds that get carried out in his name. Jesus never wanted a belief structure to be built around what he had preached. Because beliefs are hard. Beliefs become a part of us. They are what we identify with. And they are almost impossible to change. People will die for what they believe in. To believe is to have faith in or confidence in. In other words, it means to know something. And if you know, then there is no room for conversation to the contrary. You’re not willing to learn.

So instead of grounding ourselves down into a belief that becomes a part of the identity we assume to be Self, let’s do just the opposite. Let’s start with the scariest and yet most exciting and important statement that we could make.

“I don’t know.”

“I don’t know’ is scary, because you don’t know what might go wrong and can be labeled anxiety. “I don’t know’ is also exciting, because you don’t know what might go right. The teetering back and forth of these two opposite directions is to be stuck in no man’s land. And remember that balance is not a state that you reach, but an act that you perform. It can be exhausting balancing yourself in the realm of the ‘I don’t know.’

But ‘I don’t know’ is the only real first step on the path to greater knowledge in any and all subjects. You have to be willing to drop the ego that tells you how smart you are and work to understand what the teacher is saying. And the word ‘understand’ is important in its origin.

A good friend of mine speaks often about the makeup of that word, and the importance of humbling yourself below another person in order to understand their point of view. It’s impossible to do if you start from the higher ground. In my experience as a student I’ve often had to check myself when I’m being taught something that I don’t automatically agree with. My first reaction is to lean on what I already know and prepare for my rebuttal to the teacher as to why I don’t think that approach is correct.

But if you’re constantly looking to argue, you’ll find arguments.

If you’re constantly thinking that you have the best understanding of the universe, you’ll never be able to add to your knowledge. The knowledge that you had will become old and stale. You’ll cling to it because your ego wants so badly to be the smartest person in the room and at that point you’re no longer trying to gain knowledge, you’re trying to be right. And the brain does a fantastic job of finding evidence to support what it has already decided upon.

Instead let’s take a trip up into the seventh chakra. I like to envision my chakra system as an upside down triangle with the point sitting at the base of my pelvis. That’s my root chakra. That’s how I get things done and manifest into the physical world. As I start to travel up from the root chakra, the space gets wider and more open. At the second chakra I have the ability to move and flow and am not limited to just one space. At the third I begin to identify a form of self that is multifaceted and can do many different things. At the fourth I balance the three earthly chakras below with the three ethereal above. At the fifth I create sound that can travel across the world in the blink of an eye. At the sixth I see a vision of all the possibilities for myself. And at the seventh I am free.

There is no top to the upside down triangle and I am liberated into the infinite possibilities of the astral plane. My imagination runs wild with thoughts and plans and ideas that can stop at the drop of a hat and turn on a dime. There’s a feeling of lightness up in this ether that is unknown to any chakra below it and it’s all because of three simple words:

I don’t know.

Because when that limitless idea gets a sense of direction, we drop to the sixth chakra. When that plan gets a name we drop into the fifth. When we take that name and start to add physical properties we drop into the fourth. When the physical tests us and we resolve to get the job done we drop to the third. When we have to flow between the different aspects of the project we drop into the second. And at the moment of action we are restricted to that singular focus point of the first. We can no longer change the idea so easily. Faltering here would no doubt affect everything moving up the chain and our hard work would be lost.

It’s important to balance both sides of this equation.

You can have your head in the clouds all day and get nothing done, but you can also be so engrossed in the current work that you are blind to everything else around you.

I think the work I’ve done in the past couple weeks has shown me that, a lot of times, I want this slide down to go a little faster. I want to drop out of the ether and be more productive in the physical. In order to do that I have to first drop into that sixth chakra where I have the vision for what’s to come. I have to know what it is that I want to do. But that can’t really be forced. When it is, it seems cheap and inauthentic. So I’m thinking that the answer might be to do a little less. To let my feet float up off the floor and get lost in the infinite universe of the seventh chakra. And the first step to getting there might be admitting the obvious:

That I don’t know.

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