Not Knowing and Oshun

Oshun
Originally uploaded by Seeking Tao

The door to God is
the insecurity of Not Knowing anything,
Bear the grace of that insecurity,
and all wisdom will be yours…

The impulse to be free comes from outside of the mind, and because of this, it makes the mind feel very insecure. Most spiritual seekers move away from this insecurity by seeking and striving for a distant spiritual goal. That’s how they avoid feeling insecure… in an attempt not to directly face the Unknown… the ego creates a spiritual seeker… You are not the seeker; you are the sought. …

You have to become more interested in the silent background than in the foreground, the phenomena: thoughts, emotions, sounds, smells…
the Self is discovered in the background.

Adyashanti, from The Impact of Awakening.


I received this email, sent from a small town in Mexico, at the foot of the volcano, Popocatepetl, from She Who’s Rather Good at dealing with Not Knowing.
I’ve edited a bit, but basically She said:

I've been a little alarmed the last few days by Not Knowing.
Being down here feels so much like being in the current.
Usually it's a surrendered being in the current,
but every once in a while I freak.

It feels like so much of my "self" has already fallen away
and what if MORE falls away?
What if clients stop coming to me?
What if people stop referring to me because I'm gone so much?
What if I stop being able to do what I do well?
What if...

Yackety-yack, but still alarmed.
Silly, really, but still present.

And meanwhile, all is really well here.
We went out into the countryside a bit with Catherina and Alita yesterday.
Stopped at the river that's the home of the Yoruban goddess, Oshun
(the river runs off Popo)
and did something that felt an awful lot like baptism,
only better.
And then had wonderful trout at a nearby restaurant.

It had been windy, so the air was incredibly clear and
Popo looked like you could touch Him.
There was one spot we stopped at to look at Popo,
and there in the foreground was an astonishing red bird
which Isobel thinks was a white winged tanager.
Stunning to see him in the foreground
and the brilliance of Popo in the background.

It was an amazing day.
I was there, knee deep in water, tossing out five oranges
to go along with various prayers to a Yoruban goddess
in water cold from Popo
thinking that I could never have mapped this road.

In the meantime, Isobel and Alita are plotting the purchase of a camionetta (an SUV)
so we can explore independently a little more,
and we're planning a longer December stay.

And at this moment I'm down in our dining room
in our house full of windows.
We bought these amazingly sweet-smelling flowers (unfamiliar to us)
along with batches of sunflowers.
The house smells of the flowers and of the beans that are cooking
(at this altitude it takes beans ALL DAY to cook...)

Silly, with all that, to be
grabbing at the reeds at the side of the river.
But, there you have it.