Rubbery Stuff That’s Indeterminate
and Scary
— I’ve heard that if you keep your intent soft, warm, fresh, and new (like a baked daily bread sort of thing), it rarely hardens into a weapon.
— I’ve also heard that what keeps me safe from you, also locks me in here with me. “So, thanks a lot”, we all secretly say and/or feel.
— I don’t know and I do care.
One of these is not like the other. They are both truths about my humanity. They are not in conflict. I do not need to know more in order to care more.
I care fully, even about things I know nothing about, when I care about you. And if my caring leads me to want to open up even more (which, darn it, it always seems to) then, in that sense, my caring can lead me towards knowing more…even if that requires some academic-type activities…that’s when knowledge and caring are in cooperation and not opposition…Personally, as I attempted to indicate, I use my caring to guide me into and through my ignorance, which I have maturely acknowledged, and accepted without further complaint, is complete. Yay!!
I did spend years, however, practicing and attempting to use my knowing to analyze, and select, and dictate, and measure out my caring. I was led to believe there might be a short supply someday…or just today…or maybe right now? Those times were when I experienced the misery, the illusion of disconnect and the utter dusting and scattering of my plans…the moment I tried to tell life what it needed to do.
Well,
I still don’t know and I fully care (even more?) without fear.
How about you?
Sorry/not sorry to ask.
Here’s the truth: I don’t need to know or face your answer truthfully.
That’s on you.
Spoiler alert: No one’s mad or blaming anybody. We’re all trying to let us out of the cages we’ve locked ourselves in. (Thanks, Dante, for pointing that out so neatly and safely tucked away in your classic.)
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A brief aside: a crude word, ignorance, when the truth is always much kinder:
my ignorance is another way of referring to the unlimited unknowns in my world.
Zen practitioners tell me this is my not-knowing…the realms beyond the limits of my thinking…not the beginnings of my stupidity.
I can’t tell you how genuinely odd it felt…facing the unknown in its stillness and vastness…when and then emerged the recognition that the unknown and my ignorance were one and the same thing for my world purposes…
Oddly enough, that makes sense and it will feel super odd when it makes sense to you too.
That much I can assure you of.
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