You Gotta Be Will­ing to Ask

Some years ago, I was hang­ing out with my super­vi­sor and ther­a­pist, Glo­ria Tay­lor. I had just come through some major issue or another, and we both thought I was ‘done’ with it. I said, “Well, I feel clear and con­tent. But I sure wish I knew why it hap­pened in the first place.” Glo­ria replied, “Spend six months not knowing.”

Now, being the smart guy that I am, say­ing “I don’t know” was pretty scary for me. I thought I was almost betray­ing myself by utter­ing such heresy. I made myself very uncom­fort­able over this whole idea, while at the same time intrigu­ing myself. I decided that I would give it a try, and am still doing it, eleven years later.

So, what, exactly do I not know?

I do not know ‘why’ things hap­pen. I do not know ‘why’ I react to some things and not oth­ers. I do not know any­thing about any­one other than me, and I only grasp the edges and cor­ners of me.

I sup­pose you could say that ‘enlight­en­ment’ has every­thing to do with explor­ing the inner work­ings of our mind, in a gen­tle and focused way. In other words, to look at our look­ing, to see our see­ing, all with­out attach­ing mean­ing to it.

I recently read a line that went some­thing like, look at the work­ing of your mind instead of judg­ing the exter­nal object or the sit­u­a­tion. ‘Nor­mal’ is pre­cisely this: to put the respon­si­bil­ity for my think­ing, feel­ing, and judg­ing on what is hap­pen­ing out­side of me, and who is ‘doing it’ to me. What hap­pens is that my mind then fills with imag­ined sto­ries, I feel hard done by, and noth­ing changes as far as find­ing peace goes.

From this, I con­clude that my work is to gain self-experience (learn­ing to watch my mind with­out attach­ing to what it is doing,) and then to com­mu­ni­cate my expe­ri­ence to oth­ers (only if they ask) so that they might be encour­aged to self-reflect also.

Bud­dhism makes much of the idea of empti­ness. West­ern­ers hear that word and get upset, equat­ing it with anni­hi­la­tion. The con­cept actu­ally refers to being empty of desires and aver­sions, def­i­n­i­tions, expla­na­tions and other mind-games. In Zen, this is accom­plished by learn­ing to sit still, shut up and to watch one’s thoughts flit by, aris­ing and depart­ing from no-where.

‘I don’t know’ is an inter­est­ing mantra. I believe that peo­ple make it dif­fi­cult to adopt because we think that liv­ing and relat­ing is about hav­ing pat expla­na­tions and defenses for their own real­ity, while pre­cisely read­ing people’s minds.

For exam­ple, cou­ples often fight about what isn’t hap­pen­ing. Typ­i­cally, I hear, “That isn’t what I wanted. After eight years, you should know what I want.” Thus, it appears peo­ple think that love some­how equals psy­chic abil­ity. And the person’s mind fills with a whole load of ‘hard-done-by’.

Here is an exam­ple of how this hap­pens: a woman, in col­lege, meets a series of men, and in each case, when invited to go out, ends up either fight­ing the guy off, or hav­ing sex, begrudg­ingly, with him. These expe­ri­ences are both­er­some, so she pops up into her head, exter­nal­izes the expe­ri­ence (mak­ing her­self a vic­tim), and devel­ops a belief: The only thing men want is sex.

Some years later, a male friend invites her over, or out to din­ner, or what­ever. Because of her past expe­ri­ence, she assumes the guy wants sex. So, she refuses the invi­ta­tion, and tells the guy off for ‘propo­si­tion­ing her.’

OK. Something’s a lit­tle odd here.

Let me try an anal­o­gous idea. You learn to drive. You approach a cor­ner, and you have the right of way, and the cross traf­fic has a stop sign. Time after time, the cars with the stop signs stop their cars. Now, ask your­self, would you there­fore make a rule: “All cars always stop at stop signs?”

Not if you want to avoid acci­dents, you wouldn’t. Your rule would be: “Stop signs mean stop. In my expe­ri­ence to date, peo­ple have always stopped. I will there­fore assume that they will stop, but will also approach each inter­sec­tion with cau­tion, in case this sit­u­a­tion is different.”

What this means is that I do not dis­count my experience—I accept it for exactly what it is—a store­house of past behav­iours and impres­sions. What my expe­ri­ence is not is an infal­li­ble pre­dic­tor of future events.

We want infal­li­bil­ity because most peo­ple hate uncer­tainty. Change, dif­fer­ence, is scary. So, we tell our­selves sto­ries about present events, and try to fit them into pat­terns we have already established.

Back to our other example—the woman with the invi­ta­tion. What, specif­i­cally, does she know about the inten­tion of the per­son ask­ing for a date? Pre­cisely noth­ing. Now, the goal here is not to dis­count her past expe­ri­ences. Rather, she needs to remind her­self that “I do not know” about this expe­ri­ence. So, (if she is wise,) she will ask.

It is really not all that com­pli­cated. “I have some reser­va­tions about going out, and I’m curi­ous as to your inten­tion in ask­ing me.” In other words, rather than sim­ply assum­ing, she can ask, and also estab­lish her frame­work for the evening.

The work here is to rec­og­nize that the sto­ries we tell our­selves in our heads are not true, right, or accu­rate. They are ‘just sto­ries,’ and we con­coct them all the time. Silli­ness is this: think­ing that just because you think some­thing, it is actu­ally ‘so.’ Your story says vol­umes about you, how you see your­self and your world, and has absolutely noth­ing to do with what is actu­ally going on.

Dar­bella and I have been together since 1982. I would say that both of us are pre­dictable regard­ing using good com­mu­ni­ca­tion, being rel­a­tively unflap­pable (in Bud­dhism, this is called equa­nim­ity), deal­ing with our own dra­mas, etc. So, for exam­ple, if Dar comes home look­ing ‘off,’ my ques­tion to her is, “So, you look to me to be a bit off, and I’m won­der­ing if any­thing is up for you.” I can make edu­cated guesses as to ‘what’s up,’ but really, why bother? She’s right there, and I can ask her.

Ask­ing Dar­bella about her life-experience does not mean that I don’t love her (or what­ever other horse shit peo­ple shovel around ask­ing ver­sus ‘know­ing.’) I ask because, at the end of the day, I really haven’t a clue as to how her day has gone. How could I?

I sus­pect the real rea­son we don’t ask is that we are afraid of look­ing stu­pid, or we are afraid of the answer we might get. So, we make guesses, and, hilar­i­ously, get mad at peo­ple for not agree­ing that our guesses are what’s really up. This ploy is all about try­ing to per­suade some­one that I know more than he or she does about what they want or need.

I would sug­gest that you watch your­self around this one. Notice how often you plunge ahead as if you know some­thing, when you haven’t a clue. Any time you have been all-knowing (as opposed to curi­ous,) you are clue­less. Admit it.

So, be open. Tell the per­son you are com­mu­ni­cat­ing with that you are guess­ing some­thing about them, based (always!) upon your expe­ri­ences. Tell them so that they get a sense of how you process your cur­rent expe­ri­ences. Then, ask the other per­son what’s up for them. Give them space and time to reply, and then let them know what you think about their actual request, or thought, or intent.

In other words, oper­ate from “I don’t know, and I am will­ing to ask, and hear your response.”