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In this episode I talk about the connection between ignorance and wisdom and how it’s the awareness of our constant unfolding of ignorance that frees us from the binding of that ignorance. I talk about how wisdom has to do with understanding what we know and that we mostly don’t know, and that we only suffer at the hands of ignorance when we point the finger and refuse to acknowledge that we are all ignorant. As perfectionists, we are trapped in ignorance that produces fear and shame. Let’s stop using this to slander others and start using this to understand ourselves and extend compassion to our former selves and the rest of the world. Enjoy!
Episode Transcript:
Hello Everyone! I hope your week has gone well. I am finally recovering from being sick, but truly have been blessed by the whole experience. I know, that sounds coo-coo, but hear me out… I went to an incredible conference last weekend and swallowed years’ worth of wisdom and knowledge and infectious passion making my flame burn even brighter, and essentially have been able to have time this week to work on actually digesting what was shared with me and it’s been profound and powerful. I’ve been writing my workbook, so for those of you that struggle with other people’s opinions, this will be an interactive workbook for letting go of other people’s opinions, expectations and agendas, among other things, so you can actually own your life and live it as best as possible. It’s an incredibly important project to me that I know will have a profound and lasting effect in the lives of so many people and I can’t wait to get it out into the world. I am pouring into it all that I have learned and implemented, along with what I am learning, and researching more along the way. I also have had time to ground, be home, and soak in more snuggles than ever from my little guys as we all cough and sneeze together and explore the world, and our thoughts and ideas from our couch, ha.
Alright, today I have a big interesting topic that I can’t wait to dig into. I want to talk about Ignorance. This is such a charged word that so many people throw around, and I have been no exception. But this week has really had me thinking and so I worked out my thoughts, did more digging and am ready to share.
I will do my best to reshape the definition of the word for you, helping you pan out and reassess and find value in this new way of looking at it.
Okay, so for starters, we are all ignorant. Ignorance according to my dictionary is lack of knowledge or information. So, let me tell you what I mean by saying we are all ignorant.
Whether you are the most intelligent person in the world or the least, you hold your own unique ignorance, but your awareness of it varies greatly and thus your ability to use this in your transformation, in moving out of perfectionism and into being totally you, unapologetically authentic.
Ignorance is intimately connected with Wisdom. It is not the knowledge we know that makes us wise, but how we understand the application of such knowledge, and how we understand what we know in the context of what we don’t that can really by transforming; how we see that amidst our knowing, is an overwhelming amount of unknown that affects what we already assert to be true and what we don’t yet understand. In order to be truly wise, we don’t need to get rid of ignorance, but rather transform our relationship to ignorance. This happens when we see ignorance as a constant, and become not only aware of it but both embrace it and utilize it proactively in ways that improve our lives and those around us. Bear with me here…
You see, many people use the word ignorant to mean stuck in what they don’t know. And often that is what happens, often we are confined by what we know, limited by what we understand and not open to what else is true beyond the boundaries we have created by our understanding. What I am saying when I talk about ignorance is stretchier than that. When I say I am ignorant, what I am saying is that there is a TON that I don’t know in the world AND there is a lot that I know very little about and have made incredible amounts of assumptions about. There are a lot of topics that I have formed opinions on, without really knowing all about said topic, and have filled in the rest with assumptions and sometimes unknowingly ignored the rest. We need to take into the account that we are limited by what we can actually understand deeply. We are merely human, lending to the whole idea of being imperfect. You are not supposed to know it all and neither am I. We are supposed to constantly grow, so we learn, try, fail, learn some more and try again.
The truth is, all of us are like this. There is too much information for us to know it all. Until we are aware and accepting of the facts that there is an incredible amount that we don’t know, even within the very topics where we are perhaps experts in; that knowledge continues to inform us and surprise us and grow and evolve, and we can’t know it all… until we actually embrace this, our ignorance is trapping us.
Once we become aware that there is a lot we don’t know AND a lot we assume, and that even what is known is constantly evolving and changing and being proven wrong, we actually can start to truly embrace this fact and feel free to live in this place of imperfect not knowing.
The benefit of learning about history is being able to observe, from this distance how repeatedly, time and time again, people have made assumptions and been wrong. People have learned, formed opinions and made progress and filled in the rest with what they thought and assumed… This is science, right? Learn, observe, generate hypotheses, test hypotheses, observe results and repeat. At the same time, the brave souls who ventured forth with what they understood, paved a way to understand more and dared others to venture forth; questioning their predecessor’s path and building on it as well. History is full of people as well who were so aware that so much was beyond their knowledge and understanding that they were open to learn about what they didn’t know, and open to question what they assumed.
This is the birthplace of humility, of peace, of embracing one’s life and finding true fulfillment, is living in that space where ignorance meets wisdom, with the awareness and acceptance of this concept on a constant basis, time and time again.
I remember when my eldest was just a baby, and I had an abscess grow to the size of a golf ball under my arm when he was just 5 weeks old. It was so painful and I was terrified to go to the doctor. I had experienced struggles with my health in my early twenties, and when I had researched and learned more and dove head first into many things health, the knowledge I gained resulted in me forming beliefs about the medical field that created so much fear inside. I was afraid to go to medical doctors. This might sound insane to you, or perhaps you can relate.
Actually, as I bring up this topic, it is still an area where I have work to do on my thoughts. I still have a lot of beliefs that I have yet to question. Questioning our beliefs doesn’t mean they are wrong, or that we are turning our backs to what is at our core. It means we are open and willing to accept that we might not know all there is to know about something. It means that we are accepting that there is a lot we have filled in with our own with assumptions, and we are owning the fact that we don’t know it all and we never will. We can’t be sure we are right pretty much most of the time. But so often we have thoughts about what it means to be wrong so we cling to what we know as the end all be all, and that traps us. You can look around the world and see how this is playing out in the political arena, in religion and any other major hot topic that generates powerful emotions at the mere mention of the topic.
This is what I did to the umph degree when this emergency arose. Now, I ended up being fine. I ended up going under anesthesia to have this abscess dealt with, but the level of stress I had over the course of those few days was overwhelming and I truly believe aged my body about 3 years. I was consumed. I was constantly crying. I could not take a deep breath. I was petrified. I had beliefs and because it was black and white; because I needed to do it perfectly in my mind; because of all of this fear from all of these thoughts, it was just blown way out of proportion.
If you think of someone you know that you find incredibly wise, you can probably see that it isn’t often the intelligence of the person, although often wise people do tend to have a lot of intelligence, but it’s that they are aware and accepting of what they don’t know. They’re curious. They’re insightful but they are often seeking to understand. They are humble and confident.
When I watch or talk to my sister about anything, I always gain insight. This is because she has an amazing ability of being devil’s advocate for all perspectives. She is incredibly humble and always asking questions that are hard to ask so that she can see what she does not know. She constantly does this openly and honestly, and being involved in her exploration of thoughts and beliefs and ideas is one of the ways I was inspired to really open up to what I didn’t know. It is one of the ways I have learned to lose my fear of ignorance, and actually become aware of it’s constant presence in my life.
Anybody that has been married or has had kids, or heck even been in a long-term relationship can likely relate to this. How hard it is when faced with blatant oblivion on something you thought was so simple. Relationships are not easy. Nothing is black and white, and learning to own your imperfection and embrace the fact that not only do you not know everything, but you make a lot of assumptions and always have and always will, despite how much you learn; Embracing this fact will feel like a thousand ton weight is lifted off of your shoulders and you will feel like you’re wearing new glasses every day, seeing things in lights you never thought you would.
This awareness of our own ignorance, and of the way we are ignorant is a practice. It’s a habit and a skill and one that will render more fruit in our lives than any other. It is the birth place of thought work, because in thought work we are questioning what we think, dissecting the thought, combatting our beliefs and ideas and looking for the other side. We are giving space between what we think and believe and our reactions to those thoughts so that we can not only just be aware of what we think and believe, but see the choice in all of it.
Ignorance is an idea that so many people fear and use to slander. For so much of my life, I looked at ignorance through a lens of negativity. It was something I didn’t want to be. We need to embrace the fact that we are ignorant, that this is a part of our human experience, and that our entire lives are an unfolding of this ignorance, and so if we can sort of do ourselves a favor and choose to practice becoming aware of our ignorance every single day, the way we will grow will significantly increase.
Fear and shame come from ignorance. They come from listening to thoughts, ideas, beliefs without question. Giving no space and being trapped in a bubble, afraid of what is on the outside of the bubble.
So, it’s time to stop fearing ignorance; it’s time to Embrace the fact that we always possess ignorance, but working not to stay inside the bubble created by that ignorance, and instead to proactively go out and pop our bubbles so that we get to see everything with grace and compassion. It also is about learning that we cannot process all that is going on, and forming intentional helpful bubbles, by way of boundaries to protect our minds, to protect our hearts and our thoughts, to protect our time and better the world and our lives.
The point is to acknowledge the problem, be open to the struggle. Own the choices, but also appreciate yourself at each stage in your life. We have to learn to look at the past versions of ourselves with grace and kindness. I feel like something that is easy to do, which I have done all too frequently, is to learn incredible lessons, and then look on the former self who was ignorant to that knowledge now gained without empathy and compassion. AND without gratitude. It is in being the person you once were that allowed you to find the growth that you found when you found it. It reinforces for me that God’s love remains constant despite my choices, because it was never about my choices to begin with. If we can look back at our former selves, in every single situation and every single experience with relentless gratitude, and understanding; then real love and real grace are born and all of the work we are trying to do to love and accept ourselves becomes a natural byproduct of this new found perception.
Socrates wrote about this very concept as Socratic Ignorance, or my understanding of it, and said that it was his awareness of ignorance, not just his own but also other people’s ignorance that made him the wisest person in ancient Greece. He is connecting his wisdom, not to his knowledge, but to his awareness of his lack of knowledge and understanding, or to his ignorance. He is equating his wisdom with his awareness of his and other’s ignorance. From my standpoint, when we are coming from the place of a learner constantly; from a curious investigator, sort of scientist mindset, we are not looking at the world with preconceived notions, or we are looking at the world with an understanding that all we know are simply that, preconceived notions; so we have free reign to learn from the wealth of deep and valuable life changing truth that exists in the world. We are not closed off to truth and we are able to have unconditional love and acceptance for everyone.
So starting from this understanding, it is incredibly important to start looking at yourself with this new lens… to add this to the toolbelt we have been crafting during our time together. I recommend writing yourself a letter.
First, apologize to yourself for your lack of attempted understanding. Apologize to yourself for judging or comparing. For allowing the inner critic domain over your thoughts so that you were essentially on your own forging your way through the world. See yourself with the awareness that you were doing the best you could with the way you saw things; with what you knew, and what you didn’t know; and without the awareness of the fact that everything you thought you knew shaded the rest of the world and made it harder for you to see what you now see, or will one day see. Acknowledge your current and previous ignorance, but not in shame, rather in gratitude as you begin to understand that this is a part of the human experience. This also links you to those around you who have similarly struggled with understanding and awareness of whatever they have struggled with, and you can have compassion and empathy, because you have been there, and know you will be there yet again. That it is a part of the process.
Then you also need to forgive yourself. Forgive yourself for not being perfect, recognizing you never were supposed to be perfect to begin with and yet recognizing that you have held against your former self with judgements and shame that have kept parts of you stuck and closed off.
Lastly, thank your former self. Write about all that you were able to learn because of what you thought you knew, and then how things unfolded. Writing this out, even if ever so briefly, will help to work on beliefs you have held in your mind even if you didn’t know you had them. Seeing your former self, at every stage of life with compassion, understanding and love makes it nearly impossible not to start to love and accept the current version of yourself, and as a result, the people in the world around you. You can start to see that everyone has filters and blind spots and triggers, and so many of them are unaware of it. You see without the judgement and arrogance that we all have had at one time or another, because you, again, are aware of your own ignorance and the stages of ignorance you’ve bounced to and from throughout your own life.
Next, make it a practice to continually question your thoughts about the world and what you are doing when you have internal strife and struggle. This is the whole idea behind thought work, but working these questions into your awareness will build for you the foundation to actually start to see real momentum. You can use questions I will share, or you can think of some of your own. Write the ones that feel the most profound and powerful on a sticky note and post them to the wall. Often times the thought or idea that you are working on might change the type of question that you will use, although the questions that Byron Katie uses in her work (I highly recommend you check out her website and her work at thework.com), they tend to be most often universally helpful, or so I believe them to be. I will start with the questions she begins with and then I have various other questions that can be helpful:
Is this true? Can I absolutely Know that it’s true? How do I react and what happens when I believe this thought? How would it feel or who would I be without this thought? Can I think of a thought that is reverse of this one in some way, that is at least as true, if not truer than this one?
If I hold onto this belief, how does it serve the world? Does this belief spread love and acceptance or fear and shame? What will my life look like in 20 years if I hold onto this belief or thought as true?
Where did this thought come from? What influenced me to believe the underlying thought to be true?
What kind of proof would I need to render this thought untrue?
What kind of proof would I need to render this thought true?
Is there something that I am unsure of that would be helpful to look into to understand this situation from another standpoint?
Could I be struggling with this idea because it conflicts with other beliefs I have? What belief would that be?
Being introspective, if I sit and just ponder this idea, what is my inner hero telling me in response to this thought or belief?
Are there other ideas and thoughts that could be just as true or truer than this idea, thought or belief?
Is this belief absolutely 100% true? Is there another way to look at this?
Is this thought based in fear or shame or is this thought based in unconditional love and acceptance?
There is an incredible amount of helpful questions out there to guide you in dissecting your thoughts and opening up to this idea of Socratic ignorance; understanding that you don’t and will never know it all, and that what you know might not be 100% accurate either. Knowledge is never complete.
Lastly, I would encourage you to work to get to know the narrations in your mind. Kind of get to know the stories being told on both sides. Start to recognize when the hero self is speaking; I see this as God talking to my heart, speaking from love; or when your inner critic is talking, trying to trap you in fear and shame so that you act in accordance with the lies perpetuating that fear and shame and proliferate it in the world around you. A really helpful way to do this is simply sitting in silence and just breathing. Your thoughts will never stop. That’s what our mind does, it is constantly thinking. So just be aware of the thoughts and instead of mindlessly being carried off by them and reacting in emotion, hear the thoughts and recognize what emotion the thought is attempting to prompt within you. Then recognize which story this is, which voice is talking. Is it the voice of the helpful narrative, or the voice of the bully. Try to understand why your mind wants to believe this thought.
Doing this for even 5 minutes a day will make you conscious of these thoughts and allow you space to see how powerful these thoughts are. Once you see this power, you get to choose which thoughts to believe and to water and which thoughts to be aware of and starve, meaning, you recognize and acknowledge them but you call out the truth to them anyway, and go spend your time with the empowering thoughts of the ally. The bully doesn’t leave, but the power of the bully’s voice will weaken as you spend more time with your inner hero. Whatever you want to call that voice, you all know what I am talking about. And you will recognize it more and more as you go about your day.
So, what happens when we gain ignorance awareness, or Socratic ignorance; embracing that we are fully and completely imperfect, and that we can learn but can’t know it all and are constantly growing and changing? When we embrace the idea that even what we think we know will likely constantly evolve and change because we don’t understand it all? We start to become truly honest with ourselves inside and we are utterly humbled. We are stripped to our most authentic selves, and we find the peace in just being human. We become more interested in wisdom and understanding and embracing, than in knowledge accumulation alone and appearing intelligent. The perfectionism starts to loose it’s grip. Knowing all the right answers doesn’t appeal to us, but becoming more of a sponge and seeking to understand becomes more of the norm. We will have grace for ourselves and everyone else more because we see that nobody is the same as they were even five minutes ago, and that we are no exception. We become unconditionally compassionate and recognize that intelligence is a tool to be used for good, not to simply accumulate as a trophy or competitive edge. Without wisdom we are absolutely very limited by our intelligence, because again it can trap us in a bubble and cause us to form assumptions and beliefs regardless of truth because we fear our bubble being burst.
Many people in the world right now are so stuck in trying to call out why other people are wrong. When we recognize that we are all often wrong, then we don’t point the finger so much and we start to clean our own homes and find that the work we do has a much greater impact, because much of the mess of the world takes place because people don’t want to clean their own homes (metaphorically of course). Again, I am one of those people. In order to clean the world, let us work together on recognizing the natural dirt and mess of our own homes and clean them. Work to accept that we are all growing and love and accept people; seeking to understand, rather than blame and to work to solve problems with curiosity, and open learning. We can work to gain understanding that nobody is going to be where we are at in our lives. We are all on a different path with different bumps and that’s okay. I have messed this up a ton and will continue to, but will keep working to point myself toward Socratic ignorance and understanding that I don’t get it all and never will, but wrestling with my own thoughts is a great way to gain perspective and true compassion for myself and the world.
I hope this helps you as you go out into the world this week, and as you work to gain freedom from the thoughts that keep you trapped feeling and acting in ways that don’t align with where you want to go and who you want to be. I hope this helps you to understand that you don’t need to do it all right and hold it all together. I am on this journey with you and am so grateful that we get to do this together. You make this an incredible journey and I thank you for being open and continuing to work with me here. Please share this with anyone you think would find this helpful. Have an amazing day! Until next week, this is Holly Ann Kasper.
The radical Imperfectionst