Life Awake
Life Awake
6. Experience And the Word
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Experience and the Word
The experience of a thing is always so much bigger than the words that describe it.
If I give you the word ‘water’ don’t expect it to quench your thirst. Also know that the word apple will always be much smaller than the sweetness that comes with sinking your teeth into it, and actually taking a bite.
We talk words but forget that what’s important is the experience that stands behind them. So we come to understand many things, but are oblivious of how very little we intimately know.
I like it that you understand many things because that means that you are aware of their existence, but ultimately I would like you to also take the time to know things, which means that you have lived them, and that they now live in you, so you can share them with others.
The one we call the mystic is the one who tries to share with you this big experience he is living. He wants you to understand that this experience is available to you, and that it’s really close, and in fact just around the corner. So you get excited to have some greater experience, but he’s just trying to tell you that this experience is you.
The path of wisdom is the one that takes you from the surface of your own ocean, all the way to its inconceivable depth. It takes you from attempting to grasp this enormity, to the miracle that is the dance of life itself.
The invitation for you is to pay less attention to the words, and more attention to their underlying meaning. To make it less about the symbols on paper, and more about how these pebbles touch your inner somatic space.
If you have never had the experience of ever being without money, then you might want to consider that the word ‘poor’ for you remains in the realm of the abstract. And so is it ok for you to let your guard down and be humbled, and admit that you understand, but that you are sorry but you do not actually know.
Let us try together, to tease apart the difference between understanding, knowing, and not knowing.
Maybe after that we can take the word ‘Self’, and see if we want to dive into its many layers. See if we are willing to gain a knowledge that only comes from letting ourselves naturally open up and unfold.