Anne Linden Steele

What I Don’t Yet Know

It is the soul’s work that forces/pushes/reminds us of what we came to learn. Each person has learnings specific to present time. When we are willing to learn, the wisdom gained collaborates with life. When we are unwilling to learn, we begin a journey that encounters only obstacles.

Our next lesson starts with a nudge, an inner voice, a recurrent thought. Some are simple; others engage our resistance. If we ignore this early signal by turning away from it, it will become louder by adding pain of one form or another. If we ignore the pain or try to treat it through medication, the pain will not subside. Rather it will become more acute and large events such as crises, accidents, tragedies and intractable circumstances will occur. It is an astonishing organizing force designed to grow new capacity in each of us.

Alternately, the moment we agree to difficulty as a signal of growth ready to occur; the moment we become willing to learn what we don’t yet know, the organizing forces of pain, tragedy, crises and accidents recede, we receive an infusion of creativity and we feel connected to a supportive, invisible force. The responsiveness is in fact reliable, reproducible and always present. There is no secret formula, set of rules or prayer; rather it is the potency of nature bringing us back into its unending fold.

Beginnings

As infants, we need rest, food and bonding to grow. We cry when we need any of these needs; our mother’s entire being is designed to respond to our cries and to provide for these needs.

The early absence of rest, food or bonding “sets” or wires our nervous systems’ expectations of life. Interaction, dependence, and autonomy must be experienced in order for meaning and connection to occur in our lives.

We arrive open to life, growth, food, stimuli and tenderness. As we age, we develop ways of closing off. When resistance to growth meets openness to growth, an intensely personal confusion specific to each person arises. It is inside this realm of confusion that we begin to recognize through its responsiveness, our soul’s specific path.

The benevolence of difficulty

This personal confusion does not go away until we have agreed to grow through it. The benevolence of difficulty in fact brings us further into creation, echoing the experience of the birth canal and ultimately opening us to wisdom and a deep well of understanding.

Once we remove the premise/illusion that difficulty and suffering are optional while alive; once we agree to grow, we open to the fullness of life and its complexity. Inside each of us lies a specific combination of instinct to stay alive, emotion to evoke relationships, imagination to bring in the new, thought to develop and build what is new, soul to create meaning out of difficulty, spirit to guide us through love and body to coordinate, function and house all potential.

Life on earth is very complex – toward what end? If we look outside to ourselves, we see nature’s common denominator is growth. Life on earth seems organized around growth. We are both part of nature and in essence, no different from nature. We grow each day of our lives. Much of growth comes easily. Other growth events occur because a collision or disruption has brought them into view. This can happen through trauma, arguments, physical pain, recurrent disappointment or some form of brokenness.

I will use the term soul as the keeper of the growth and understanding. We accumulate growth each day, each year, each lifetime, all pouring into the present moment which gives us the essential choice to choose growth or to avoid it.

When we turn toward growth’s pain/difficulty, all levels of pain lessen. When we turn away from difficulty, pain becomes more intense.

“Teach me what I don’t yet know.”

We live on earth to learn more, to gather our complexity, work within it, and emerge with enough stillness that disruption becomes increasingly less necessary and growth begins to occur in the medium of less and less suffering. We become able to recognize an obstacle, open to its teaching and grow further. We all know the limitations of self-pity. It stops growth and increases our unhappiness.

If we are ignoring instinct, emotion, imagination, thought, soul, spirit or body, it is a sure bet that our unconscious will push us into the absent element’s proving ground. This is true in families – the one who is missing will unconsciously dominate all family members by limiting the family’s growth – and in individuals – the aspect that is ignored or underutilized will become over-active until we turn toward it with interest in learning what we don’t yet know.

We accumulate, remember and draw from what we have learned – not only day to day but lifetime to lifetime, which can explain how infants seem wise, children are all forms of prodigies, and adults, while very capable in one area will choose an unknown area as the focus of their life.

Toward what end is growth? It may be communion with the elements of nature: water, air, earth and fire. It may be absolute love. My experience is not yet wide enough to know; I do know that growth is always active behind the scenes pushing into the soil of our complexity. And that we settle in a collected way when we agree to growth’s terms.

“What I don’t yet know” opens our willingness to learn and grow into a realm of wider connection with life and with others.

Original aloneness

Even in company, a sense of imminent aloneness is a quality that can be cultivated. Aloneness does not need a desert, or a broad ocean, or a quiet mountain; human beings have the ability to feel the rawest most intimate forms of aloneness whilst living closely with others or beset by the busyness of the world: they can feel alone around a meeting table, in the happiest, most committed marriage, or aboard a crowded ship with a full compliment of crew. 

To feel alone in the presence of others is also to understand the singularity of human existence whilst experiencing the deep physical current that binds us to others whether we want that binding or no: aloneness can measure togetherness even through a sense of distance.

by David Whyte from Consolations

In conclusion, we walk in the world accompanied by and interacting with growth, our life’s deepest and most responsive partner, mother, father, lover, child. It will fill in the empty spaces as we follow its urgings and give us passage off the bus of blame. With our essential needs of being having been met, we are then able to value the people in our lives in a way that demands less and affords generosity more. We are, each of us, held by what is both larger than all and at the same time so specific to each.

 

Anne Linden Steele