The question "who am I?" is perhaps the most honest, far-reaching question we can ask ourselves, the question which puts us directly in front of the mystery and miracle of our existence. Yet from childhood on we are given superficial answers to this question, answers which denude the question of its power to awaken us. Answers that take the unknown out of our lives.
From a psychological point of view, the history of humanity can be described as turning away from the uncertainty of the unknown toward the certainty of the known. As we grow up and move through childhood and adolescence, we begin to lose our sense of wonder and learn to define ourselves and the world in ways that allow us to live as much as possible without uncertainty. To practice the work of self-transformation means to reverse this process and to face anew the challenge of uncertainty, of the unknown.
As infants, the process of living begins with taking in new impressions from the outside world through our various senses. These impressions act as food for our nervous system and brain, which begin their extraordinary development. We discover the potentials of our body and learn our own individual ways to move, crawl, speak, stand and walk. Through trial and error—and reinforcement from those around us—we quickly learn how to use these activities to get what we need to continue growing and learning.
As we get older, however, the immediate, concrete "knowing" that takes place through our bodies gives way to the more abstract knowledge that takes place through our maturing minds. We have experiences, hear stories, and come across images and ideas that excite our imagination and begin to open up new worlds of exploration to us. We begin to ask fundamental questions about the vast unknown world in which we live. These questions evoke new sensations and feelings—new impressions of ourselves and our possibilities. And these impressions lead us forward into the next stages of growth.
As our education continues, however, and we learn how to read and write and to manipulate numbers, our thinking takes on a new sense of authority. We are taught that thinking is the primary channel through which our many questions can be answered and our uncertainties resolved. At the same time, we are taught the so-called answers themselves. We learn the latest theories of science, psychology, history, art, economics, and so on. We are taught numerous facts and figures that give us the assurance that everything important is either known or about to be known. And, perhaps even more important, we learn to accept society's goals and values as our own. Though we may rebel, our rebellion, for the most part, takes place within the limits set by society. Our mind and feelings become filled with theories, information, and values. Under the spell of our self-image, we weave this information into unique patterns of knowledge and action that shield us from the unknown.
Even a moment's serious reflection shows us, however, that these patterns do not really help us when it comes to the big questions of human life. In fact, they frequently do little more than obscure them. Though we do ask questions, the question marks often don't go deep enough. We stop at the point at which it is obvious that our minds can go no further, where our knowledge fails us.
The work of self-transformation has to do with living in the face of this failure, at the edge of the unknown. It is here that life takes on its truly human dimensions; and it is here that we become concerned about exploring our own real limits and potentials. As we face the eternal questions of life, death, truth and meaning, the defenses of our self-image retreat for a moment, and we feel the stirrings of a new sense of possibility, of wonder.
It is the sense of wonder that gives us an entry into our being. Wonder opens up our organism—our thought, feeling, and sensation—to new levels of sensitivity. We begin to realize that these human functions, fed by the powerful light of consciousness, are, in themselves, extraordinary instruments of perception, bringing us a universe of new impressions. And as we allow these new impressions to touch our inner life, instead of merely being absorbed or rechanneled by our self-image, our sense of wonder grows, as does our sensitivity to the life in and around us. It is as though these new impressions begin to feed the further development of our brain and nervous system.
Unfortunately, we generally experience this wonder only accidentally, under the influence of a strong inner or outer shock of some kind. When the shock ceases to reverberate in us, the wonder—and its concomitant impressions—also begin to wane. Though we cannot manufacture this experience intentionally, however, we can attract these moments more often through the work of awareness. It is possible to free ourselves for moments from the mental, emotional, and physical patterns of our lives and experience the energies and forces that lie at their heart. But this work can seldom be done directly, just because we want to. It needs practical support. Fortunately, that support is often there, in our ordinary lives. There are always situations, which, if viewed from a new angle, can provide the shocks that we need to awaken our sense of wonder and bring us impressions from the unknown—impressions from arenas of human experience that we seldom experience.
Every day—whether at work or at home—we are faced with people and problems that seem automatically to call forth the known in us. If we watch ourselves closely in the middle of an argument with someone we know well, for example, we'll see how certain habitual thoughts, feelings, and postures put us in a "known" place in ourselves, where it is almost impossible to listen. Seeing this clearly in ourselves without judging it can provide a shock, which, if we take it seriously, may make us realize that we've never really listened to this person—that he or she is, in fact, mostly unknown to us. If we can relax for a moment, we may actually hear the person's voice in an entirely new way—as though a total stranger were speaking to us. And we'll actually hear meanings and nuances that we never heard before. Suddenly it becomes exciting to listen. We are faced not only with the unknown in another person, but also with the unknown parts of ourselves that this evokes.
Another useful experiment has to do with visual images. We've all had the experience of looking at our husbands, wives, children, friends, or business associates and suddenly seeing them in an entirely new way. For a brief moment there's an opening in our perception, and the person—indeed the whole environment—takes on a strange, unknown quality. Totally new impressions enter our consciousness. It's as though we had been projecting an inner, partial image on everything around us without ever really seeing what was actually there. When this experience occurs, however, we generally view it as an aberration of some kind, and quickly return to the safety of the familiar.
It is possible, however, to have this kind of experience intentionally and more often. The secret lies in realizing that these inner images and the attitudes and assumptions that underlie them actually alter our perception of the world. Impressions that do not fit these images are either made to fit by the organism or screened out altogether. Though these images may be based on something real, they are generally lopsided and invariably distort what we are looking at. To reverse this process of distortion and experience the world more directly requires that we free ourselves from these images.
As an experiment, set a time and place where you will attempt to look at someone in a new way. Before seeing the person try to visualize what he or she really looks like. Then let yourself relax, attempting not to be influenced by what you think you know about the person, and try visualizing the person again. A few minutes before you actually get together with the person, try to find a similar state of relaxation, letting go of any images—whether good or bad—you have about that person. Then, as you deal with the person, see if you can look at him or her as though this were the first time you had met.
Whatever experiments we undertake, however, perhaps the simplest and most honest effort we can make to attract the unknown into the midst of our everyday lives is to try whenever possible to put what we think we know into question—especially the attitudes and assumptions that underlie our behavior. It is clear, of course, that this cannot be merely a mental exercise. To be sure, the mind has to begin this process of questioning, of exposing our inner assumptions to a larger scale of reality. But to be effective, this questioning must pass into our feelings and body as well. For in these aspects of our being lies the transformative energies that can reawaken us to the miracle of our lives.
Unfortunately, there is no direct way to bring this questioning into these parts of ourselves. But as we ponder our situation and try some of the practices described in the various issues of Inner Alchemy, we will begin to develop an appreciation, a flair, for the unknown in all kinds of situations. And as we exercise this flair, allowing the unknown to manifest wherever we can, we will begin to see the appearance of a whole new attitude in the way that we live, an attitude of "organic self-questioning." This attitude can, under the right circumstances, begin to grow in us and open us to more-subtle impressions both of ourselves and others. It is these impressions that will begin to bring the mystery of the unknown back into our everyday lives. D