To make art, to teach a class, to play the stock market or raise a family, you have to lean forward into the unknown. You have to use not knowing to your advantage. To the ego, this always appears as threatening, for its role in life is to call the shots and assume control. The ego’s prerogative is always to know. But to live in the delight of the moment, to live a life open to magic, you have to sneak past the guard of the ego. By not knowing we ignite the spark of creativity and tap our intuition. The famous French artist Edgar Degas once said, “Only when he no longer knows what he is doing does the painter do good things.”
In myths and stories the world round, not-knowing is best captured by the trickster, the fool, the shaman, the child. You can sense this in the teaching of the delightful and crazy Korean Zen master Seung Sahn. Whenever one of his students asked him about accomplishing the Way, he would say, “Only don’t know, go straight.” He taught always to act from “don’t know mind”. By not knowing, you open yourself up to the Great Force behind all change in the universe, one that is always outside of your control. When Tenzin Gyatso, the 14th Dalai Lama said, “Until the last moment, anything is possible”, he was pointing to the connection between the law of karma which is always unknown and living a life of liberated awareness. It is like playing jazz or acting in live theatre. It also happens in the ordinary tasks of cooking dinner and raising children. You never quite know what will happen. But rather than feel helpless in the face of the unknown, put not-knowing into practice. Be ready for it. Don’t fear it or try to resist it. For it is by living in the spirit of not knowing that you open yourself each day to endless possibility.
Photo credit: JaneB13 for Pixabay
