Have I written about mystery before?
There's prolly a post on Phacebook on the subject. I feel compelled to return once again to the topic. Mystery may just be the fulcrum that allows the lever of imagination to change my mind.
Away from fear.
Fear is nippin' at me. I can't see the future, but I've read so many phucking end of the world virus books, and they're reminding me a LOT of what's happening, the reality right now. I can't help but seek some kind of defense. Some kind of armor. Against my fears.
Here's another arrow to put in the crisis quiver: Mystery.
See, we humans have a strong drive to understand. For whatever reasons—evolutionary, environmental, hereditary—we just don't like to feel we're in the dark. I suppose worrying about those sabretooth tigers possibly lurking behind a boulder for a couple thousand generations will do that to ya. Prolly hella helpful, back in the day—nowadays? Not so much.
And when I say nowadays, I mean Covid-19 days.
Our aversion to mystery is not going down well in what the world has become. I actually think we Americans are slightly better prepared for the chaos to come from the last three and a half years with Trump as president. You may love chaos on an intellectual level, but we are not designed for chaos, if we strive for chaos, we'd best be ready to accept the consequences for our families and friends.
But.
Our unfamiliarity with mystery makes us vulnerable. With so much up in the air, it might be particularly difficult to let go of your old habits. Seeking understanding of every single thing handicaps the thought process, rather than enhance it. One must take practical steps to transform one's perception of the value of knowledge.
Such steps include running thought experiments. Take an issue, narrow in scope, and bump it up against your beliefs about mystery. Also, an effort must be made to 'program' you're subconscious. Best if performed just as you're falling asleep, you 'plant the seeds' in the subconscious that will grow into n
ew ways of thinking and behaving. Of course, mindfulness and meditation are advised.
I guess it comes down to one decision: Do you dedicate yourself, full time, to 'solving' the mystery, or do you accept it, all of it, every aspect of it, as mysterious?
In April of 2016, I had a dream that has helped me tremendously in terms of mystery…
I was standing on a flat plane I could see forever in any direction, though I had no scale to what I was seeing. Then, there appeared, hanging in midair in front of me, an object…it's very difficult to describe though I can see it as clearly at this moment as I saw it then. As an attempt, I'll say it looked like an upside-down obelisk. It was mostly light colored, but there we're strange markings on it. I was ove
rwhelmed by the sight of it, and a voice from behind me and to the right said, "This is the beautiful thing". And I immediately knew that was true—I realized I was overwhelmed by the sheer pulchritude of the object. I was marveling over my good fortune to be able to see the beautiful thing—when behind the object a giant flower blossom appeared. It was dark grey, the most unappealing color one might find conjure, and it was huge. I noticed that when the blossom appeared, human figures had appeared on the horizon, so now I had a sense of scale for the incredible size of the blossom. All the petals in the blossom were standing on end. Then a voice behind me and to the right said, "This is the mystery". And the beautiful thing moved towards the blossom, right into the center of the blossom between the pedals. And all the pedals closed around the beautiful thing.
And then I woke up. It was clear to me my subconscious had just enabled some supernatural communication. The memory of that dream still hangs, in the rogue's gallery of recollections I can muster.
Ever since that dream, I have worked steadily toward a full embrace of mystery. And an accompanying move to devalue knowledge. In the first place, what do you 'know'? I mean, how much of your knowledge is beliefs, formed completely independently of any evidence. If you haven't materially witnessed proof of something…how can you really make any claims about its veracity? Sure, sure, two plus two is four, even in China. And you need to remember that that stove is hot, don't get burned!
In other words, the stuff you learned as a child holds up pretty well for navigating life. Why carry around an overburden of knowledge when you have access to the internet? Offload a bunch of those unhelpful beliefs! Once you accept the mysteries of life, you'll have a reserve of energy you can tap when the world suddenly shifts beneath you…