Understanding

 

Understanding is not always a prerequisite to experiencing. 

So many times I hear people working so hard to understand why this happened; or, why that happened.  ‘Why am I ill?’  ‘Why did that person hurt me?’  etc.  Myself, I spent years worrying about the answers to such questions.  But now, my response to people still asking those questions is “Have you ever considered that it is not important to figure these things out?”  “What is the point?”  I now take the position that, when dealing with Spiritual Law, no matter what the problem, no matter what the circumstances, the solution is always the same? (ie. a better connection with my Higher Power.)

If I want to travel from New York to San Francisco in a timely fashion, I could take a plane. Before I fly, I  feel no need to understand the nature of flight.  It is not necessary for me to go to university and become an aeronautical engineer.  It is enough for me to know that planes meet my need.  They have worked for others and they will work for me.  In fact, being an aeronautical engineer does not seem, in any way, to improve the experience of the flight! 

If I want to fill a dark room with light, is it necessary to first become an electrician or an electrical engineer so that I understand the nature of electricity?  No.  It is enough that I flip the switch which creation has provided for me.  Gaining detailed understanding of the "why?" or the "How?" does not make the light shine brighter! 

Understanding is sometimes touted as a necessary precursor to knowledge and progress.  Perhaps in applying man's laws it is (Think Tanks use expertise from a variety of unrelated disciplines to help think outside conventional thought processes).  I offer, however,  that in Spiritual matters, understanding is unnecessary and, in many cases, impossible.  The how or why of the processes and principles described herein cannot be "proven" in the conventional, scientific sense. Trying to do so is but a time-wasting, frustrating, exercise.

Given that God is unbounded, as a child of God, I am unbounded.  Attempts by my limited human intellect (my ego) to understand unboundedness, no matter how brilliant, are doomed.  If I insist on scientific proof and understanding at each step, my journey may be lengthened or even denied ... for what human mind can begin to comprehend the unboundedness of the infinite Higher Power.  But, as in the cases of the airplane or the light switch, if I simply proceed "acting as if" certain statements are true, the results will be automatic and the knowledge gained supplants my need for intellectual understanding. You can know the truth by the fruit it bears.

In this Spiritual sense, it can be said that knowledge is the precursor of understanding. Acting "as if" gives me direct access to experience and knowledge which, when obtained, supplants any need for me to understand.

Having the Spiritual Muscle to "act as if" these notions are true is all that is required to do a magnificent end-run around the whole issue of proof and understanding otherwise required by my ego.  The other option (as was my personal situation) is to be experiencing so much emotional and physical pain that (out of acceptable alternatives and feeling like I had nothing to lose) I tried it as a last resort.

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