Jan. 13, 2025
Ep 197: The Power of Not Knowing in Everyday Life
What if letting go of certainty could unlock a new level of freedom and creativity in your life? This episode, inspired by Rich Friesen's recent insights and Peter Ralston's transformative book, The Book of Not Knowing, challenges the comfortable confines of our belief systems and societal norms, such as politeness. We discuss how these beliefs offer safety and security but can also inhibit authenticity, stifle creativity, and limit deeper connections with others. Through the lens of personal stories, such as a friend's medical journey, we explore the impact of being overly attached to perceived knowledge and how it can close us off from new ideas and opportunities for growth.
Join us as we dissect the illusion of certainty and its constraints on our spirit's freedom. Using everyday scenarios, we underscore the balance between necessary knowledge and the suppression of imagination. This conversation invites you to explore how the need for certainty might be restricting your potential, encouraging a shift towards embracing the unknown. Whether you're navigating personal belief systems or the weight of societal expectations, this episode offers an opportunity to reflect on the liberation that true awareness can bring.
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Transcript
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Truth and Transcendence brought to you by being Space with Catherine Llewellyn.
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Truth and Transcendence with me, catherine Llewellyn.
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Today I want to pick up on Rich Friesen's guest appearance last week.
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Rich's epiphany experience was triggered by reading the book of not knowing by Peter Ralston.
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That's R-A-L-S-T-O-N, which is available on Amazon, and here's what it says about the book Over decades of martial arts and meditation practice, peter Ralston discovered a curious and paradoxical fact that true awareness arises from a state of not knowing.
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Even the most sincere investigation of self and spirit, he says, is often sabotaged by our tendency to grab too quickly for answers and ideas as we retreat to the safety of the known.
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And Rich spoke about this in some depth, didn't he?
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Last week?
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About having a whole belief structure that became really a large part of his identity and he felt safe and secure within that.
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And I think any of us can identify belief systems that we have that we're hanging on to because they help us to feel safe and secure.
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A very benign example that I can think of here in the UK is something around courtesy, being polite, and there's something about politeness that can be helpful, in fact, and that can assist us to move through large crowds of people, large groups of people, interact with lots of different people, get things done, cooperate around certain things.
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So on a fairly basic level, the belief system around it's a good idea to be polite actually makes sense.
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But beyond a certain point, if we want to go into authenticity, creativity, passion, intimacy, deeper connection with people, politeness and the whole belief structure around politeness can actually hamper us.
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And I think that the British can have a bit of a reputation worldwide of being a bit stiff or not really saying what they think or feel, which is a bit of a historical archaic caricature.
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But there is still some of it present and I think probably present in other cultures as well.
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So thinking we know obviously inhibits our openness to new ideas, because why would we consider new ideas if we thought that we already knew?
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The classic example of that is the GP, the doctor, general practitioner who is convinced he knows what somebody's symptoms mean and what is wrong with that person.
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And so if that person turns around and says, well, how do I get a second opinion?
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And so if that person turns around and says, well, how do I get a second opinion, that doctor, that GP, might be offended or annoyed by that.
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This happened with a close friend of mine whose partner had breast cancer.
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Very sadly, she recovered fully and went on to have children and is doing very, very well, but at the time she was terrified and very unwell and is doing very, very well, but at the time she was terrified and very unwell.
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So they went and they had all the examination and the specialist was there and he said this is what's wrong with you, this is what you need to do.
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And her partner, who was my friend, turned to him and said thank you very much, how do we get a second opinion?
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And he was very, very upset by that, very thrown by that, because he was convinced that he knew what was going on and what should happen next.
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By the way, I'm not saying all gps or doctors are like this, but it's one of the things that can be fairly common and for all sorts of reasons.
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So thinking we know obviously inhibits our openness to new ideas.
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I think we know this.
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But I think something we aren't necessarily aware of is how that closeness to new ideas and that attachment to what we think we know actually traps us and over time, it suppresses our freedom of spirit, because the free spirit does not flourish in a preset, unaltering universe, which, of course, doesn't exist anyway.
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So our determination to know, or to believe that we know, stifles our imagination, it reduces our flexibility and ultimately suppresses our sense of freedom.
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So it is important to know certain like which side of the road are we driving on at the moment, it's very important.
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Or which switch do we turn on for the back left-hand ring on the hob, on the cooker?
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There are things we need to know.
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What is it okay to eat or drink without poisoning myself or without getting high in a dangerous fashion?
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Or all of these things?
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It's good to know these things, but it's also very powerful to hold that knowing lightly and to know that there is more that could be known.
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Okay, we've experimented, we've tested our hypothesis, we've come to a place of being comfortable and confident in what we think we know.
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Fair enough, that doesn't mean there isn't a lot more that we could know.
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It doesn't mean there aren't circumstances where what we think we know is no longer the case.
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So if this is something you'd like to experiment with, which I heartily recommend, you can play around with it by as you go through your week next week, asking yourself every now and again am I putting a lot of energy and investment into believing that I know something about something where either believing that I know something about something where either possibly I don't really, or perhaps could I take a different perspective and open to the possibility there may be more for me to know that I don't necessarily know, and and see if you can experiment with that and see if you can discover some beginnings of senses of liberation, and that's just within yourself, if you can discover some beginnings of senses of liberation and that's just within yourself.
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If you want to go a little bit further, you can play around with when people ask you questions, especially if you're an expert or a leader or an authority in any way, when someone says to you what does blah blah blah mean, or what's the significance of this, or what should we do about that.
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See if you can sometimes say do you know what I don't know?
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I'm not sure, I have no idea.
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Search me, I don't know.
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And see if you can do that and do it in a way which doesn't sound like you're doing some sort of exercise that you've heard on the podcast, and see what it feels like.
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See if you can create some space for yourself.
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See if you can create some openness for yourself whereby you reclaim more of your sense of freedom.
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Thank you for listening, have a great week and I will see you next time.
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Thank you for listening to Truth and Transcendence and thank you for supporting the show by rating, reviewing, subscribing, buying me a coffee and telling a friend.
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If you'd like to know more about my work, you can find out about Transformation, coaching, pellewa and the Freedom of Spirit Workshop on beingspaceworld.
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Have a wonderful week and I'll see you next time.
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