The Grace Of Knowing

When we ask ourselves, what do I really and truly know?—this is a very simple yet deeply important question to ask. This can be the question that unlocks the root cause of possible erroneous thinking. We live in a society that “believes” a great deal. We often tend to believe what we read, what we are told by the media, and what we want to believe for our own comfort. The reality is that a belief is simply that, and is not real until we ourselves have the experience of actually “knowing.” If one were to take the time to find out how much of our lives are dictated by believing instead of knowing, we would find that some of our words, stories, attitudes, thoughts, and responses have a deep connection to believing something and not really knowing it to be true.

You may notice here that I am not saying the word “knowledge,” as that too is different from knowing. Knowledge is a training by the use of study of the works of others, or the words and understanding of others who we think know the answers. It is not usually of our own awakening, but that of someone else’s experience. Knowledge has a “ledge” in it that contains a certain limited amount of information. But when we remove the “ledge” from knowledge, we are left with “know,” which is a state of being that is awakened to a truth from within and not from the written word or external sources. Therefore, when we are in the process of acquiring knowledge and we have the fortune to know in our hearts that what we are studying and acquiring is actually true, then knowledge loses the ledge of its limitation and opens to something new and greater. Then knowledge has the ability to move beyond the words and teachings into greater possibilities.

Knowing is something that is difficult to put into words, but I dare to say that we have all experienced it. It is that feeling, that absolute assuredness that what we sense as true is exactly that. We simply know. Then we are experiencing it and it becomes a part of who we are, not something we have read, not something we have memorized, not something someone else told us. It is now organically a part of our natural state of being. It takes no study, no memorizing, no test-taking in order to have the experience of truly knowing. It simply happens. And when we know something in this way, we are awakening even more to our own divine truth of being.

Perhaps it is wise to be aware of our thoughts to find out if they are beliefs from others’ words or a true knowing within ourselves. Once, when I was in conversation with a wise friend, I regurgitated a statement that I had read or heard and said it as though it was a fact. He very kindly looked at me and said, “Do you experience that as true?” I was somewhat taken aback as I was egoically trying to enter into our conversation with some knowledge I had acquired. This is when he told me that he had come to a wonderful understanding, which he shared: “Don’t believe anything until you experience it, and then you will know it.”