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The Wisdom of "I Don't Know"
by Matt Kahn

On every spiritual journey, there are insights that are revealed with the purpose of opening up the mind to a different level of consciousness. These insights usually come in the form of wisdom that can shock the mind into a point of view it hadn't realized before. In this shocking way, consciousness now sees what it never saw before, and has the chance to drop what the mind has been holding onto in the form of stories, distorted perceptions, or limiting beliefs.

To understand this fully, imagine yourself walking down the street holding a bag of groceries. Consciousness represents the you who is walking, the bag of groceries is the collection of stories, distorted perceptions, and limiting beliefs you are carrying, and what you are about to bump into represents the wisdom in disguise that offers you the chance to drop what the mind thinks it needs to hold onto knowing.

When you bump into wisdom, disguised as any variety of circumstance, the bag of groceries drops to the ground. In that moment, the mind's usual pattern is to remind you about the importance of your stories, distorted perceptions, and limiting beliefs that you just dropped, and like actual groceries, you begin picking up what you dropped so it can be used to nourish whomever you think yourself to be. The mind steers itself away from the inquiry of why the body bumped into something and dropped its bag of groceries, and remains solely focused on picking up everything it only thinks it needs.

The truth is, the mind would never understand why the body bumped into what it did, and why it dropped the groceries, and would rather avoid what it doesn't know in exchange for another moment of reaching for what it thinks it needs. We only drop what we no longer need. The wisdom that finds us in its many forms tends to shock the mind into temporarily dropping its bag of tricks. This is a way of reminding consciousness how it does not need what it is holding.

Instead of opening up to the wisdom of the moment, and letting the stories, perceptions, and beliefs fall away, we usually follow the mind's request to pick up everything that seems to have fallen, and continue with our struggle. Any mind does whatever it can to avoid the pitfall of "not knowing", or resting in the unknown.

Within the mind exists an ego that has created an imaginary sense of value with what it thinks is true. It believes what it thinks, and this sense of certainty creates a perception of value that the ego celebrates as knowing.

This knowing becomes the advice it offers to itself or anyone who would dare to engage it, and remains the reason why every ego thinks the world would be a better place, if only everyone else would follow its lead. The question then becomes whose lead do we follow, since every ego leads in every different direction?

Let's go back to the idea of your stories, perceptions, and beliefs as a bag of groceries. These groceries are only useful in the moment, to feed you for a limited time and whatever doesn't serve you is discarded, in order to make room for a fresh batch of nourishment. Imagine the ego's imaginary value of its own stories, perceptions, and beliefs being similar to a refrigerator full of food.

The ego might brag about how much food it has, and yet that food has been the same food in the refrigerator for a long period of time. What the ego thinks it's bragging about, is actually a refrigerator full of rotten food. It doesn't realize this, all it knows is how the food in its refrigerator is what it relies on to feed itself.

It wouldn't know life could be any different, since there is absolutely no room in the refrigerator for something new and fresh. The irony, of course, is the refrigerator full of rotten food will serve the ego with its illusions until not even it can tolerate the smell and it's forced to throw away what no longer works.

If the ego is so lost in its own illusion, it might make life harder on itself, imagining it's a broken refrigerator somehow causing its precious food to smell so bad. Inevitably, it is in this kind of moment, the ego has not confronted what it doesn't know, but inches toward this perspective by first getting rid of what doesn't seem to work.

All the while, the insights of life are much more compassionate than that. The role of insights is to help the ego avoid a refrigerator full of soon-to-be rotten food, by disguising itself as the wisdom that bumps into the body of the ego, as the bag of tricks it no longer needs, falls to the ground. Wisdom doesn't know why you bought the bag of tricks you carry. All it's concerned with is informing you that you are holding onto something you actually don't need – in a very simple and direct way.

If you didn't need the groceries you dropped, you would be forced to eat whatever you already have and that's the heart of the matter...you drop whatever you don't need when what you already have is enough.

Without taking this metaphor too literally, remember how the groceries you carry are the fresh stories, perceptions, and beliefs we all usually buy. We place them into the subconscious mind we are viewing in this metaphor as a refrigerator, usually pushing the rotten stuff further back. No matter how full our refrigerators tend to be with a mixture of fresh ideas and rotten perceptions, it's usually the case that even the fullest refrigerator is still never enough for the ego.

Again, the ego either feeds off what is stale and rotten, or goes shopping for something new to consume. In the spiritual journey, egos do this with teachings, knowledge, and can skip from one teacher or tradition to the next, keeping itself occupied in the search for more, while avoiding the truth of what it doesn't know.

An ego's best day is existing in a world where all it thinks it knows has somehow been the heroic insight that saved everyone from their own notions and illusions. It's worst day would then be a collision with a more expanded level of wisdom, and facing the realization that it doesn't know anything, despite how proud it is to defend what it thinks.

Another level of irony is how the spiritual seeker winds up searching for the wisdom it actually doesn't want to find. It actually wants wisdom to further validate its own thoughts, to add more imaginary value to its knowing. The last thing an ego wants is for wisdom to be a solid wall of truth that it runs into, dropping everything it holds.

The ego within the spiritual seeker may often imagine it has been brought to this crazy world and somehow, must think itself out of the hell of humanity and find the hidden world of heaven, like some reality TV show. While wisdom will be the first to inform you how much there is to know, it will also remind you that no one is asking you to know anything at all.

There are many amazing things you will discover, and their only value is whatever is realized in the moment you find them, much like a single serving of food that is fresh when you first open it, but loses its freshness if you try to save it for later.

The reality of human suffering can exist as a reaction from the ego's insistence to hold onto what it thinks it knows, and how those thoughts remain in conflict with what is actually happening. What an ego knows, not only becomes its imaginary center of power, but creates allies with anyone who agrees, and instant enemies with anyone who opposes what an ego believes. From politics, to religion, and any other issue imaginable, the conflict that arises to divide humanity is nothing more than a bunch of thoughts—all insisting at once that what it knows is spectacular and amazing, with anything else being ridiculous and ignorant.

You are here to experience life, not necessarily explain or understand it. While there is much to know, you may find yourself relieved of egoic arrogance when you can laugh at the fact that you don't know anything at all, and you only happen to know what you think you know. To think about what you know, is to remember what was once true, and that is a matter of memory, versus a keen awareness rooted in the present moment.

Any emotional conflict that may arise is the wisdom of the present moment, doing its best to embody a moment of truth that contradicts what once was true, that is no longer  necessary for you to hold onto anymore. Whenever you feel emotional conflict arise, know it's the ego insisting on holding onto knowing what it knows. To relieve this burden, allow your emotions to be the alarm clock that wakes you up from your egoic dream, to remind you to remind yourself of what you don't know.

I'm not suggesting to make this into a mantra you repeat on autopilot like a magic phrase that offers enlightenment after you've said it a million times. Instead, use it as a helpful and compassionate reminder for when life feels a bit precarious. When someone cuts you off in traffic and with vengeance the ego asks, "Why?" You respond with, "I don't know." When a thought arises demanding when your millions of dollars will be here, your response can now be "I don't know."

The magic is when you meet any conflict with what you don't know, your heart opens to what actually does know. You don't actually know anything. You are just an image using the function of memory to recall what you once thought you knew, trying to keep it fresh by projecting it onto the present moment. This is like moving a loaf of stale bread that is wedged in the back of your refrigerator, hoping it will somehow become edible by moving it to the front.

I invite you to say "I don't know" with loving compassion, as it guides your attention into a moment where a peaceful space can be found amidst the deepest pain of suffering.

Whether you are in tune with angels, spirit guides, the consciousness of the Universe itself, the love of Mother Earth, or the wisdom of your Higher Self, one can only access such higher knowing by admitting that what it knows is not relevant in this present moment – where memory can only reflect the past. In that moment, the ego may feel a bit defeated, but conversely, the heart opens to allow in whatever is needed from whatever truly knows.

Whatever knows, also knows exactly what you need in this moment. Why? Because knowing only exists in its very nature to know. All any ego can do, is think about what it knew before, or what it wishes it knew, and how it feels about not knowing.

Please receive this with a soft, open hand, and instead of grasping it and answering everyone in your life with "I don't know," remember this wisdom as a temporary strategy that is reserved to support you when the need to know burns within.

Those who truly know, understand there is nothing to know, since everything is already known at the core of our being. Those who think they know, only think, and it's the "getting lost in thinking" part that leads one astray...further from the wisdom of "I don't know," leading one to believe whatever they think.

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