True Knowing

True knowing does not from the thinking mind nor can it be understood in this way, which only addresses conceptual information. True knowing arises from a place deep within your Being and comes only from your own witnessing experience. This experience exists only in Presence, only in the Now, where all experience and all reality unfolds. Once the moment has passed, so does the knowing, and it is just as important to let it go as to let it in. In moments of true knowing, the experience is happening within. You do not actually experience anything outside yourself. Though you move through life in a variety of circumstances, stories, and dramas, you are only ever directly witnessing an experience within. Therefore, true knowing may also only happen within. You may take in information from wise teachers or books, but these things only act as vessels or invitations for you to experience the frequency of their wisdom within. If a student only learns to repeat the information they have learned from teachers or textbooks without ever discovering the resonant source within them, it cannot be said that they truly know anything. Of course, many individuals can repeat information they discover from others or find on the internet, and they can hypothesize and argue theories of philosophy, but true knowing is beyond the intellectual mind and cannot be argued. In fact, it need not be discussed at all.

Since true knowing is only experienced in the present, it must continue to emerge in every moment for one to continue knowing. Once the moment of truth has passed, there is no more knowing to be found and in its place faith remains. True knowing and faith are two sides of the same coin. Once you experience the knowing, your faith is complete, and once the knowing becomes ever-present - in other words, once you become ever-present - faith is no longer required. Similar to how scientists must continue to examine a hypothesis, resulting in proof after proof of its validity, the spiritual inquirer must continue to investigate their experience in the Now. Relying on past hypotheses or past witnessing experiences may breed strong conviction, but it still only amounts to faith based on experience that is not occurring now. Knowing in the way I refer to it now contains a different level of truth - A truth witnessed, known, and spoken to only in the present.

Knowing IS experience, the two are inseparable. Most confuse knowing with cognitive or perceptual information you take in through the mind, but this information is not experienced as much as it is conceptualized in the abstract. A thought can never be experienced in the Now because to have a thought means you are one step removed from Presence. Even experience through the physical senses and emotions are one layer removed from true knowing. Physical symptoms and emotions rarely convey the whole truth and are often products of a survival-based nervous system wired for danger and threat. These signals can be useful for survival and to clue you in to the state of your body and mind, but they do not contain answers to your spiritual reality. Yes, the physical body is beyond the intellectual mind and may provide a more accurate reading of your present state, but knowing is a reference to the “inner body” as Eckhart tolle calls it, or the energetic body beneath the physical realm.

If a spiritual teacher is speaking to an experience they had 20 years ago, they are not teaching about Truth, they are teaching about past experience. There is nothing wrong with teaching from past experience and the students may still learn something about the nature of reality or themselves in the present, but the teacher cannot be said to be speaking from true knowing unless they are tuning into Presence and speaking from this place. To speak about true knowing, one must allow wisdom to arise from the energetic body, the present state of being and the same place intuitive wisdom arises from. The reason for this is simply because the present state of being is all that truly exists in the realm of Spirit. All else is a game derived from the mind, which may still present “facts” in the way we speak to information through language and understand logically true principles, but spiritual truth is of a different nature and can only be known through subjective inquiry within the self in the Now. All other attempts at knowing are games of the mind based in concept. Eckhart Tolle spoke to the self-concept or identity of “spiritual teacher,” of which he was playing the role as he spoke presently. However, he acknowledged if he were to hold onto this identity as he left the stage, it would quickly become a fiction of the mind and an ego-based identity. True identity, as in true knowing, is based in a present unfolding of function. If you are playing the role of teacher, it is fair to consider yourself a teacher, but outside of this function you are invited to let the identity fall away just as you may let the knowledge fall away that emerged in that prior presence. Be weary of grasping too tightly to what you know as well as who you are.

Conviction happens in percentages and the more witnessing experiences you have, the stronger your faith and belief in the truth. So there is no need to be in a state of true knowing all the time. Faith is a necessary part of the process, otherwise one would rarely have the courage to commit to such a process of knowing without stepping stones guiding you forth. I have strong enough faith in my own spiritual path to continue embodying such truths as I see them, though there are still plenty of doubts, fears, and hesitations that arise in the mind. When I experience a moment of true knowing, I rejoice, and when the moment passes, I do my best to return to faith. Easier said than done of course! Yet, as the witnessing moments of knowing grow larger and more frequent, faith and conviction increases until there is no further need for faith at all and the moment of knowing is eternal. This is what some may refer to as the enlightened state.