The Cloud of Knowing

12/18/16 The Cloud of Knowing

We are the mystery, unknown to ourselves.  And instead of that causing great anxiety, we could be relieved and free from pre-determined roles, expectations, and responsibilities.

I have been thinking in a way that I don’t fully understand that what I am feels very insubstantial. I  felt more solid and determined as a person when I was younger. I imagine that when this is all over I will not have mattered much and whatever this is will go on. So my struggle, my anxiety to prove my worth, to achieve my potential will have just been a mental movement.  I will have been like the weather, acting, interacting, pushing others around, but with no important long-term consequences or significance.

I said to F today that it seems we are nothing and the only way to add weight/substance to our being is to create identity through association. I want my actions to be seen to prove that I exist. If I am someone’s friend or enemy, mother, teacher, or artist then I must exist within that relationship.  My memories are proof that I was actual – I interacted with others, with places, with consequence.  But without memory who is to say that it is true?  I may be nothing but Life as a material body. The body is space moving through space, existing only as the environment allows it to exist.  Taking in air, water, heat, light, food - the body is a filter of material substances.

My conditioned psyche can only view the world through its filter of experience.  It’s quite easy to imagine that there is so much more than that to this mysterious world, mysterious Life.  We are floating through this mystery in a cloud of our own limited perception, unable or unwilling to acknowledge that our point of view obscures the mystery that we are – keeps us in the known when we are the unknown – divides us from the sacred by the costume of identity that we each wear.

(Image: The Cloud of Knowing)