The Dimension of the Unknown

Video Blog Transcription:

(00:00):

So there's this really cool practice in my tradition that I was trained to ask myself before I go into ceremony, or before you go into any experience of life, actually. And it's basically to say to yourself, “I am nothing. I know nothing.”

Now, if you think about it, it's kind of an odd thing to say, right? Our culture really values knowing things. We get trained for a job, we go to college, and we study to take a test. It's all about knowing things. And here we're saying, “I am nothing. I know nothing.” So it's like taking all the things we know and putting them aside. So why would we do that? Why would we say that to ourselves?

(00:54)

Well, the reason is, it turns out that when you say that to yourself, it opens a dimension of being. And more specifically, it opens the dimension of the unknown. To explore this, I want to contrast and differentiate the dimension of the known and the dimension of the unknown. And first of all, what's in these different dimensions?

So the dimension of the known includes all of our experiences, all of the things that we're conscious of. It includes all of the things that we've learned, all the lessons, the cause and effect: when I do this, then this tends to happen. And so the dimension of the unknown basically includes everything else. And as it turns out, you may have noticed, the dimension of the unknown is really vast. And from what I can tell, it’s pretty much unlimited.

(01:55)

So when you compare that to the dimension of the known, as cool as it is, we've worked hard for it, right? As cool as it is, it's fairly small compared to the dimension of the unknown and ends up being somewhat limiting.

So if you had this really challenging problem or question, do you want to know the things and the answers you're conscious of? Or do you want to know all of the answers and all the possibilities in all of life? So then this video is really about how do we access the dimension of the unknown so we can access all the possibilities of life.

So the next thing is, how do we access these different dimensions? So with the dimension of the known, what we do is, we have a problem, or we ask a question, and then we scan and seek, and we go through, and like accessing, accessing all of our previous experiences. And then we look for and find an answer or a solution.

(03:03):

And when we find that answer or solution, it closes the loop. It solves the problem. So then we can rest, and it's kind of a relief. Right? I had this problem, I found an answer, I'm good, I can move on. I can let it go. So the mind likes that. It likes to find solutions to its problems fairly quickly. And there's no quicker way to solve them than by accessing the known.

So in contrast, when we're working with the dimension of the unknown, we're going to intentionally leave the loop open. So we're not going to go with the first answer or the first solution to our problem. We're going to say, “Okay, that's a cool solution, but what else?” We're leaving it open, and then this presents to our mind and to our being that there's this unsolved problem, or there's this unanswered question.

(04:04):

And then what it does is it opens it up, and we start having ideas, and we start having intuitions, and different things come to us to help us solve this problem. Now, this is a little uncomfortable because remember the mind likes things closed, so we have to sit with it for a little bit. And what it ends up doing is it opens us up to all the possibilities.