‘I don’t know anything about myself’. That’s where to be in life — in this position of not knowing. We are always piling up informations about ourself. We are so eager to. That’s our money. Knowledge is our currency. But see what knowledge has done to us. This constant knowing that I am this, and I am that. This knowledge hurts us, brings shame on us, or regrets, judgement, suffering, hope, belief — it fills us with what we are not. I understand that you so want to fill yourself up, that you fear being nothing. But try it. Try it once — to not know anything about yourself, which is a position of truth. You can know about anything in life, but see that you can never know yourself as an object. If you know something — anything — about yourself, this thing is in fact what you are not.
Therefore know that what you are has to be kept thoroughly empty. Believe me. Don’t fill it up ever. Yourself must be left unknown, pristine. This is from where you can fully watch and listen, from where you may invite anything and anybody in: In yourself — which is not yourself — and which you cannot know. I know, you have been told on other occasions, to know yourself. But they in fact meant: Know yourself as that which is spotless, innocent, untouchable, and absolutely unknowable. Keep it that way. Don’t crowd it with ideas or beliefs. Don’t think that you know it. You can’t. Keep yourself virgin of knowledge, and invite anything or anybody you meet along the way in that place of emptiness, in that clean spot of sacredness. That’s the place to be in, the place which you borrow from God’s being and which you can never know. This is the place of no suffering, of no shame or regrets, of no hope, and of no thing to battle with. This is what happens when you don’t know yourself: you don’t judge, you have no contempt — for you know that the other is as yourself, unknowable.
That’s the beauty of it, that I cannot know anything about myself. I remain free — free of accumulation, free of being something. Therefore open, available, fearless, which means peaceful and contented. But it is not something you should do or stop doing. Just notice it, that you yourself is the only thing in the picture which you cannot know, that you yourself is the unknowable element of your living experience, the one thing that you cannot touch in any way. Anything that you may do about yourself will be a corrupting factor. For what you are doesn’t need to be changed or improved. In fact you cannot, so you might as well not start in the first place. Stay away. Keep your deepest self or being as that unknowable portion of yourself. Leave it as it is: uncorrupted and incorruptible. Experience the space and freedom that you acquire as you take your stand as that deeply cherished and unknowable self. Be unknown to yourself.
.
~~~
Text by Alain Joly
Photo by Elsebet Barner
~~~
.
Suggestion:
Other ‘Ways of Being’ from the blog…
.
The Dawn Within 
A fairly common Vedantic metaphor from the Upanishads is of the 2 birds in a tree…you are probably familiar with it. In this parable, there is a tree with 2 birds on the branches; a “lower” bird that is flitting around building a nest, eating berries, etc., essentially filling its life with the fulfillment of desire, and the “higher” bird that is simply observing. The way this metaphor is typically explained is that the tree is our body, and the 2 birds are our Jiva and Atman. The idea as you seem to have inferred here is that our “work” is to bring our awareness primarily to Atman. To me, this sets up a polarity that brings judgement and tension that cannot be resolved, because as long as we have a body, the jiva will exist (due to the accompanying vestment of maya). The way that I prefer to explain it is that the tree is ME, and I can observe the 2 birds and allow a witness perspective that can maintain a “balance” between the 2 birds that can honor the preferred status of the higher bird as well as the intellectual and emotional capacities of the Jiva without the Jiva feeling “less-than” or attacked in the awakening process. I mean, it’s all Brahman anyway, right? With “me” as the tree, the door is open in my awareness for Brahman to come into my witness place and keep check on my Jiva nature without belittling it, as well as exemplify by example the Vedantic purpose and goal of my existence which is liberation. For me, having to choose between Jiva and Atman is frustrating and unworkable; perhaps akin to what is referred to as “Neo-Advaita”, but allowing both to exist (albeit with a hopeful and practical advantageous harmony) is a better fit with my experience. The tree being my body is inferring that ultimately, only the higher bird is worth our attention, while seeing the tree as ME is inferring that “wave and ocean” (lower and higher bird) are ONE, which feels better to my wave nature, as relatively real and impermanent as that nature may be.
Thanks a lot for your blog. Thanks for sharing your truth.
love
LikeLike
Thank you for your comment! Maybe the bird watching represents Atman, which is a share of pure, undivided consciousness. And the second bird is the part of us that expresses itself as a localised body and its conditioned qualities, but bears no self as such. Being as pure, undivided awareness is the only self in existence. That’s only a guess… 🙏
LikeLike
That is an understandable way to put it. Thank you.
LikeLiked by 1 person