NOT BY WILL, BY WILLINGNESS

In my quiet time I ponder how we must go below what we know...to the place of unknowing. We must pass by our egoic mind, which lives in fear of showing our ignorance. Face it, we must needs be ready and willing to walk out undefended. Or, as it was put to me, you gotta show your butt in public. 

Next, I go to my readings. There is the quiet word spelled out: Unless you change and become like little children, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven. – Matthew 18:3

"To go below to the place of unknowing" is the child's mind, secure in unquestioning dependence on another...unknowing. 

I like the description of the teaching in Matthew as like unto a Zen koan, which invites listeners to hold two contradictory statements together until a new awareness arises.

Interestingly, just after I read the Zen koan quote, I came across a Marcel Proust quote: We are healed of suffering only by experiencing it to the full. 

We note suffering to the full to be healed of suffering is the essense of our learning to resist not; then we catch  "until a new awareness arises." There it is, the key...which is not "until we think of a new answer" but "until a new awareness arises."

We must go beneath that which we know, under all that our reasoning mind has garnered for our intellectual security. The new awareness exposes intellectual safety as just another false security blanket. 

Not to put on airs, but I like to think of us as being floated across our own Rubicon...not by will, but by willingness. 

Thank you.