Knowingness

"Knowingness arose before knowledge. It is a more ancient layer within, the bedrock of my connection to Self and the Universe. That means we can recognize it by its depth and solidness."

I found this reflexion on Knowingness as I was skimming through past material, looking for texts and illustrations to use in the five-month online journey of "Re-Imagining Pulse Listening". It was "hiding in plain sight" in a folder I created for the Dubai class "From Knowledge to Knowingness" in April of 2019. 

The shift from knowledge to knowingness is key on a practitioner's path. No longer reliant on "mind only", the practitioner gradually steps into a fully integrated practice. 

In the excerpts below you may find some useful and timeless hints in that direction:

FROM KNOWLEDGE TO KNOWINGNESS

An Introduction

”Knowledge can be useful, and sometimes necessary. And yet, when you’ve acquired a certain level of knowledge, and even a certain technical mastery… if that thing you are doing and working at mastering is an art, a living art – an Art of Living perhaps – or even more so, if it is called the Art of Primal Aliveness – or Creator’s Art – through Sentient and Compassionate Human Being, something else needs to step in. Knowledge needs to shift to a deeper, to a more deeply grounded level – that which we call Knowingness. 

There needs to arise at some point your personal connection to how the knowledge you have acquired makes sense on cell level, makes sense on soul level, heart level, is fully resonant with your own experience, where you are it!

FROM KNOWLEDGE TO KNOWINGNESS

A look at ”Now Know Myself“

Mary Burmeister exhorted us to ”Now Know Myself“. The sentence was strange enough to confuse the western mind, and at the same time it was also vaguely enticing. It sounded spiritual somehow in its call to self-knowing and its strange use of the imperative in the first person.

Mary also used ”Now Know Myself“ as the headline to the only handout she ever created for class. That sheet is widely known as ”the Answer Sheet“, and in it, she claimed, one could find ”all the answers to all the question you could ever have about Jin Shin Jyutsu“. Really…? But what exactly is meant by ”Now Know Myself“?

Ah, but then as Mary introduced the phrase, she would sometimes go ahead and play with numbers. The western mind was immediately reassured as the numerological value of each letter came into view. It now had something to hold on to, could do some adding-up and assign a numerological value to each word! The mind loves meaning! As long as there at least appeared to be some explanation, in the comfort of conceptualizing, the actual invitation of the enigmatic three-word phrase could disappear behind mind play. Our quest for fixed and certain knowledge often serves to take us away from the mystery of wonderment…

To me, what was to be gained from Mary’s musing on numbers lay in the playfulness she displayed in doing so, not in any result or end it brought her to. To me, the invitation isn’t mysterious; it is simply quite disarmingly literal: 

NOW Know Myself. 

NOW. That precludes falling back on previous knowledge and prior opinions. It points to Knowingness. It points to inquiry in the moment, to feeling myself in the moment. To looking again… And again…

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Knowingness arose before knowledge. It is a more ancient layer within, the bedrock of my connection to Self and the Universe. That means we can recognize it by its depth and solidness.

Knowingness was there before Knowledge. That means it can be gotten back to. We can recognize it as a feeling, as an inner home.

Knowingness is more patient than Knowledge, and less self-enamored.  That means we can recognize it by its tone. Knowingness affirms nothing, and it defends nothing. It just knows, and its knowing anchors and echoes in the body. The body will tell you, step by step, when you are there. It takes a little remembering of how to tell. But Knowingness cannot be swept away.