How are the different permutations of I know and you don’t true…?
Let’s take the most interesting ones first:
You know, and I don’t
- In a conventional sense, there is an endless amount of things others know and I don’t.
- They know how it is to be them, and how life is experienced over there, and I don’t. (Even if I think I do, I don’t. It can only be a projection of what I know from over here.)
- They know skills and information I don’t know, in an infinite amount of areas.
- They have experiences and a history I don’t have, which means they have unique insights I don’t have.
You know, and I know
- This is true too. In an conventional sense, there are many things all or most of us share knowledge of.
- For instance, the human patterns and dynamics are far more alike than different, so we share knowledge of those.
- We know what happens when we believe a thought, for instance of being a separate self.
- And we know what happens when there is friction between what beliefs tells us should be and what is. We may not know all the different ways it can play itself out, from first hand experience, but we certainly have a good idea of the general patterns.
- In a different sense, we all know what we really are.
- We all know, somewhere, that we are awareness and whatever arises within and as awareness. And this comes into the foreground for all of us, sometimes.
- It may be clouded over at times as well, and that is also something all or most of us share an experience of.
You don’t know, and I don’t know
- This one is also true. In a conventional sense, neither of us really know anything for certain.
- We have all sorts of ideas, thoughts and maps about the world, and they work more or less well for us in a practical way, but that is about it. We can never have full certainty about anything our thoughts tells us.
- When we find ourselves as awareness, and the content of awareness as awareness itself, there is a different not knowing.
- Thoughts arise as just thoughts, and there is a freedom from taking them as anything more, so there is also a freedom from knowing.
- Whether this is noticed or not, it is what is already and always here. There is already and always a ground of not knowing, and whether it is noticed or not is just the decoration on that cake.
I know, and you don’t
- Well, also true, as a reversal of the first statement I explored.
- I may know certain things in a conventional sense that many others don’t. (Also realizing that even if I don’t know about it, there are probably many others there with a similar insight or knowledge, and, most likely an insight and knowledge far beyond what is coming up here.)
- Awareness may notice itself in a more clear way than for most others. (Realizing that this is just a difference of the surface ripples, on top of an ocean of us all already being awareness and knowing it at some level.)
When all of this is explored thoroughly, and becomes a lived experience, the whole sense of I know and you don’t, or of a particular identification with another one of those permutations, tends to fall away. There is an easy sense of shared life, humility, recognition, receptivity of heart and mind.