Knowing, the Known and the Knower
The knowing mistakes itself for the known. The knower is always actually the known. There is no known without the knowing of it. (These three statements go full circle.)
“The knowing mistakes itself for the known.”
There is no knowing outside of now, now is the only “time” that we can remember the past, or imagine the future. Now is not separate from past and future, and we cannot locate “now”. When we are “present in our now” we are aware and open, we are free of thought that says that there is past and future, that there is “other” apart from “this”. An open mind is the only way learning can occur, it’s the only way knowledge is let in and recognized, it’s the only way love and appreciation are allowed to be realized. It is a full letting in, allowing and acceptance. An open mind is simply awareness in the absence of judgement, or thought saying that it already knows what it is seeing. This open mind is all there is already, in the present moment.
“The knower is actually the known.”
It is when we cut ourselves off from the knowing by mistaking ourselves for the known that we can “forget ourselves”. This is how we seem to disconnect ourselves from the Love and Intelligence of the whole. Because this disconnection manifests in the form of negative emotion, it confirms that we CAN never truly mistake ourselves for the known. In our direct experience, our hands are not different from the table, keyboard, or anything in our environment. Our vision does not discriminate but with the addition of thought borders seems to appear. In feeling and sensation, the contact of our hands on any object is not of two things, but one feeling.The idea of our hands being part of our body and owned by us that is separate from the world is a thought, it is never our direct experience devoid of thought. The hands that feel are the felt. Of course, having this common sense knowledge and being careful to protect and honor the body is helpful on a practical level of understanding. However the deeply rooted belief may be examined because the emotional ramifications of believing oneself to be separate and vulnerable may have gone awry.
“ramifications - mid 17th century: from French, from ramifier ‘form branches’ .”
Our thoughts tend to follow beliefs that have grown out like branches. Thoughts that do not align with direct knowing awareness are responded to with negative emotion. When we continue to think the same thoughts we perpetually feel negative emotions and believe that this is how things are. We may feel fear, hypochondria or milder forms, we may feel inadequate because of our physical appearance or health, we may feel we are defined and restricted by our gender and other’s expectations of us and impressions of us. We may feel wrong, bad or unspiritual for “having” a body at all. We may feel a whole host of uncomfortable feelings based on wrong assumptions about who we really are. In direct experience the body is love and awareness itself. While it is sacred and to be cared for, it is never a cause for concern accompanied by negative emotion. Our critical body functions such as our heartbeat, digestion and breathing already occur without our thinking about them. Stress is caused by misunderstanding ourselves and is detrimental to the body. Emotional well being and physical well being are intimately one.
“There is no known without the knowing of it.“
In deep sleep we are not a body, not an individual. We may focus on certain uncomfortable truths, but we cannot focus on all the terrible things in the world, nor even think them at the same time. We also cannot find the solution to a problem if we feel that the problem is the known, while also admitting that the solution is the unknown.
Awareness, (the present moment, direct experience) is where knowing and unknowing merge. It is where the known, knower and knowing are not separate.
When we are alert or are listening for something we have to drop thought and become totally aware. If you are out in the woods with a friend and they say “Listen!” you would likely stop in your tracks, and become completely present and aware. Likewise, at any point that you feel a negative emotion this is a clue to stop and listen.
“It is like a man going on a journey, when he leaves home and puts his servants in charge, each with his work, and commands the doorkeeper to stay awake. Therefore stay awake—for you do not know when the master of the house will come, in the evening, or at midnight, or when the rooster crows, or in the morning—lest he come suddenly and find you asleep. And what I say to you I say to all: Stay awake.” Mark 13:34–37
Motion and emotion are very related, but we never actually move. From the point of view of awareness there is no separate line between body and world that allows movement. You can switch your perspective by becoming very aware when you walk and noticing that the idea of you moving in a world rather than simply being pure “still” awareness, is an idea. Awareness is neither still nor in motion. You can switch your perspective to one resembling VR, but without a screen. Everything is coming TO you.
This is the basis of the law of attraction, we attract with our thoughts, and emotions (feeling is always real time) are indicators of those thoughts. Thoughts can be mistaken as emotions, and feeling and awareness can be covered over with thought in this way. An emotion is never what we think it is. When we stop and listen, or FEEL as we do as in meditation or throughout the day, the separation dissolves between what we think we are and what we think the emotion means or is about. Don’t take my word for it though.
Because the world IS your awareness, and is not made of different substances and is not material in exclusion of spirit, you are already intimately one with it. Every subject, or true form of intelligence can be understood on a deeply satisfying level when the subject of knowing is known to be the knowing itself.