In our modern world we are taught at a very early age that knowing is much more attractive than not-knowing. When we know we often get respect and praise and feel very good about ourselves. Not knowing is often viewed as a sign of stupidity or some inner personal flaw.
Knowledge flows from those who have
information to those that do not. Those who have information are considered to have power. Individuals such as teachers, heads of corporations, doctors, parents and scientists all seem to have a lot of information at their disposal and are therefore attractive for their “brain power”.
Another reason to fill our minds with information is that not having this power is viewed as weakness and weakness is undesirable so we work very hard at filling our minds with knowledge to emulate those that know.
However in this quest for knowledge and power have we ever looked at price of knowledge? It seems that everything in this world contains both a benefit and a price.
What price do we pay for seeking to have information fill us?
Knowledge helps us deal with ever-changing nature of world. It helps us to view circumstances and organize our thoughts around these circumstances to navigate our lives.
However, since inescapable truth is that whatever knowledge we posses represents only a fraction of all knowledge that actually exists. What we don’t know is considerably bigger than what we truly know.
So, why do most of us walk around in this seeming state of knowing?
Because living in know is much more easy to control than accepting that we don’t know. It is control that we like. Control keeps us safe (or so we think). But this control is an illusion and keeps us from seeing other things in our life.
When we come from a place of believing we know things (for possibility exists that what we think we know in one moment can change in next as new information is discovered) our brain and nervous systems become editors of reality’s information. When we are committed to knowing something our brain tell our senses to only accept information that conforms to this reality. Then, all we see, hear and sense becomes limited and our experience of life lessens.
When you decide you know something all of what happens in your life must fit within this knowing. For make no mistake about it, each of us creates our own version of reality. What we think and believe we know has been created from our past experiences. Past experience shapes our current experiences and influences our future considerations.
The danger in knowing is more you know less you can freely respond to your life. Because more you know more you need to remember that “this is way things should be”. When life presents itself to us in ways that do not fit into our neat pattern of thinking we often look at event, as something is wrong here instead of looking at ourselves and questioning our thinking.
