The Grace of Non-Knowing

On pressing CTRL+ALT+Delete on consciousness — Non-Knowing as an essential spiritual technology

Feb 09, 2023

After publishing my 5,000-word opus, ‘The War for the Soul of Mankind’ yesterday…

I later went back and added the following paragraph right near the end of the Epilogue:

“After contemplating such heavy, intricate ideas, I always find it valuable to spend some time returning to the blank simplicity of pure Non-Knowing. This can reconnect you to the living presence of Astonishing Mystery that is all around us, and from there you can see which of these ideas your Heart feels called to carry forward.”

Returning to Non-Knowing is the CTRL-ALT-Delete of consciousness work.

That is, it’s the refresh button, the reboot of the operating system.

After writing most of ‘The War for the Soul of Mankind’—basically a short book on our current earthly situation that feels like one of ‘my’ most significant works in a while—I spent a lot of time the past few days returning to Non-Knowing.

I went for some long, meandering walks through the forest in Germany, often repeating to myself the words, “Thank you, Non-Knowing,” or simply, “Non-Knowing.”

I deliberately “gave everything back to God” for substantial stretches of time, as best as I could. I gave back all concepts, identities, assumptions, maps, models, expectations, stories, past, future, names, and so forth. I even gave back the words/concepts of “God,” “Jesus Christ,” and so forth.

As I did this, a beautiful spaciousness began to open up. I was brought into the direct simplicity of the naked Now. And in the absence of elaborate conceptual latticework, the Now shone forth, glimmering with the ever-present luminosity of Grace—the mysterious radiant aliveness of Being.

This happened a few times, to varying degrees, and it was like an ice cold shower for my overwrought mind—loosening my grip on my ideas, melting away dogmatic fixity and insistence.

“What is there to say about anything, when you don’t know what anything is?,” the Mystery seemed to whisper, with a loving smile and chuckle. The trees silently nodded in agreement.

“Out beyond ideas of wrongdoing and rightdoing there is a field. I'll meet you there. When the soul lies down in that grass, the world is too full to talk about.”
— Rumi

Non-Knowing as Spiritual Technology

Non-Knowing is an immensely powerful spiritual technology.

It’s a way of returning to the naked inconceivability of direct experience.

A way of resting in the non-conceptual Silence of What Is.

After masticating and organizing all these heavy ideas about God and ‘the devil’ and Heart Warriors and dark magick, I had earned a rest. It was a perfect moment to hit CTRL-ALT-Delete on consciousness.

One might ask, “But, doesn’t that sorta invalidate all the ideas you shared? If you don’t know anything and it’s all a Mystery, what’s the use of elaborate maps?”

I’d say no, it doesn’t invalidate the ideas. It just places them in their proper context of That Which Is Beyond All Ideas. It doesn’t render the map non-useful to me or others. It just dissolves my over-attachment to the map—which probably makes the map *even more useful*, as it brings me more so into a space of non-dogmatic peace, allowing me more freedom to see the map clearly and apply it as one of many useful lenses, when it is contextually appropriate to do so.

This is the power of Non-Knowing as a foundational (non-)orientation. It allows for meta-systemic thinking, in which many maps and systems can be utilized as tools, applied and interchanged freely and skillfully, depending on context.

No single map is ever going to capture reality. The territory that can be mapped is not the Eternal Territory. Not even close.

Non-Knowing allows one to play with and benefit from many (seemingly contradictory) maps.

I sometimes say that one of God’s truest names is Non-Knowing.

God doesn’t know anything. (At least not in the way we claim to “know.”)

God simply is.

Conceptual maps can be highly useful, yet all maps are ultimately limitations. We must be willing and able to burn them down at a moment’s notice, if we wish to remain close to the Living Presence of God.

Maps can only express that which is finite and quantifiable, whereas God in its totality is non-finite and non-measurable—totally beyond even our most elegant, evocative, and poetic language. This is vital to remember.

It is possible for one’s maps and one’s foundational Non-Knowing to move together in a truly symbiotic dance. The maps act as useful orienting mechanisms within the Great Mystery, while the regular returns to Non-Knowing ensure that we do not clutch our maps too tightly, or mistake map for Territory.

And, one more thing…

Non-Knowing is not agnosticism.

Non-Knowing is an open doorway leading beyond the conceptual…

Back to the primacy of Direct Experience.

And Direct Experience, seen with the unveiled eyes of a holy fool or a newborn child, is nothing other than the Undeniably Miraculous Heart of God.

What is your Direct Experience, if not an astonishing Living Poem unfurling before your very eyes, with untold beauty and intelligence writ within every detail?

We are nothing other than the handwriting of the All-Loving Creator, who shapes the ink of pure formless energy into the limitlessly shape-shifting cornucopia of flavors we call “life.”

The miracle is all around us, every single day.

We are it.

Utterly incontestable testimony to the omni-brilliant artistry of God.

Who are you?

Where are you?

What are you?

This life is the farthest thing from a mundane sequence of haphazard biological accidents. Such nihilistic materialism is the desert-like domain of those in the clutches of a dark magick, indeed.

Look around you, my friends.

Forget what you think you know, and look around you.

We are.

This is.

It is all actually here.

It is all actually happening.

It is all actually dancing.

Notice the unfathomable Gift.

Let it crack your Heart wide open.

Then give it back, in the way that only you can.

We abide in the Blessed Kingdom.

Thank you, Non-Knowing.