Hello, dear friend.
Here’s a little reverie on the pathways to knowing. My intention is to offer a gentle reminder that much of what we think we know is often incomplete. And much of what we believe to be unknowable is, in truth, waiting to be discovered.
Let’s wander through these ideas together. But I’ll warn you in advance: I don’t really know anything. What I do know is that an old story inside me keeps whispering, trying to convince me otherwise. That story? It comes from one of those choose-your-own-adventure books that I keep re-reading, trying to turn it into a love song.
Like this:
What love song are you writing with this precious life? Please let me hear it! And share this, if you find it interesting.
Some of you know, I come from California, was raised by Californians, and in my veins is the blood of Catholic North Americans dating back about 400 years. So, of course, it makes sense that my faith in spirit developed as a yogi and really came alive thanks to a couple of dudes—one Indian Hindu, the other Latvian Lutheran.
Regarding this question of knowing, I start with faith, in faith that it will cause a pause.
In the Yoga Sutra of Patanjali, we learn that faith is requisite to yoga’s intention to calm the mind.1 In the Old Testament, we learn that faith is the realization of hope and an assurance of what we don’t see.2 In the Bhagavad Gita, Krishna counsels that the faithful human achieves knowledge and supreme peace.3
Our standard ways of knowing these days—social media, commercial media, a little schooling, and a lot of failure—don’t often offer a foundation for fathoming evidence of what isn’t seen, calming the mind, or directing it toward the heart’s truth.
Likewise, in our 21st-century sensibilities, faith is often treated as a realm where nothing real can be known. It’s amorphous, ethereal, devoid of structure, and expected to arrive suddenly. Personally, I find that pretty funny because the things that do come on suddenly in life are usually overwhelming: layoffs, diagnoses, accidents. And really, nothing in life—including those devastations—truly comes on suddenly.
Everything takes work. Everything has an antecedent.
Faith, too.
We don’t fall into faith without fingers pointing toward the luminous moon. So let’s take a moment to remember the teachers who opened our eyes to know something beyond comprehension—peace, our hearts, the connections between them.
I’ll start.
I didn’t go to Catholic school, and I was morbidly afraid of priests as a kid. My first confession was like a scene from an abduction movie. I dug my nails into the doorjamb, was pulled by the feet, scrambled away to burrow under a table, then begged to be set free.
“I’m six!” I remember shouting. “What terrible thing have I done?”
I didn’t know spirit that day. But in retrospect, it’s sweet to think how spirit knew me—a fighter, resisting, negotiating, appeasing, saving my heart from a lie.
That same year, a trusted teacher opened my eyes. Her name was Mrs. Brown, which was amazing to me at six because, though I was told she was Black, she was, in fact, brown like cocoa. Every morning, Mrs. Brown offered up riddles to the class; when we solved them, she celebrated us as geniuses who would save the world. (I still like to think of saving the world, Mrs. Brown.)
One particular riddle stumped the class, so she ordered us to take it home and ponder it through the night. The frustration got me. I stayed in for recess, pondering. I stayed in for lunch. That was when she pointed her finger toward what could be known.
She said, “Megan, don’t try so hard. The answer is waiting right here.” And she tapped my forehead.
And there it was. The solution to the riddle. As clear as the blue sky I missed that day in favor of trying too hard.
So Mrs. Brown taught me something about faith. It’s waiting, right here—it takes desire but not strain. Also, that faith is a path to knowing—it takes devotion without dogma. Finally, in retrospect, Mrs. Brown introduced me to that spirit within me who would guide me to trusted teachers but never follow their instructions too carefully.
Which brings me back to the ways we might know a thing—whether in the terrain of faith, work, health, or family. All these terrains are tightly interwoven, though we might try to keep them separate.
The Yoga Sutra suggests we learn through three means: direct experience, inference, and testimony. Most of us are pretty good, if not a little stubborn, at acquiring knowledge through experience. This goes both ways, doesn’t it? An experience with Mrs. Brown gives me faith that I’ll find what I don’t yet know. But also, if you haven’t been to Japan, you may feel that you don’t know Japan.
So we start to infer. We might come to know something of Japan through Japanese food, friends, poetry, or art. When it comes to inference, I wonder whether our worldly senses have dulled as we persistently dissect the world through a screen. Still, where there’s smoke, most of us infer fire.
And when we land in the realm of the unseen or unperceived? We know through the testimony of authority.
But whose authority?
Millennia of commentary on the Yoga Sutra suggest that testimony refers to sacred scripture—the words of prophets, saints, and sages. Yet we live in an era where authority is fractured, and wisdom is diluted in a raucous sea of trends, jokes, and derision. Is the bobbing head on a YouTube short revealing the wisdom of the ages or just tossing out practical ideas that may or may not be right for you? Are scientific studies on medical care an unshakable truth, or are they an open field of potential—one that may or may not suit any particular person, depending?
Which is why the commentaries also suggest that we seek out teachers and guides—those who can help us gather the breadcrumbs the holy ones left behind. In this, we return to faith, asking for the ability to see the unseen.
The most challenging way to know a thing may also be the most compelling. We learn to open our inner eyes and gaze toward what is always waiting to be discovered—our hearts, our peace, our patient faith.
And in this knowing—like every worthy adventures toward love, peace, faith—we recognize that it takes mindful practice. We cultivate our ways of knowing and pay attention to the answers that wait so kindly for us. And, if they aren’t waiting kindly, perhaps those inner eyes need to gaze beyond the unseen—toward something even more mysterious.
As long as we look, listen, tune in, and trust, we will keep knowing, and knowing, and knowing.
And, eventually, we may find that the waiting answer is here and now. Or, perhaps, we discover a new knowing: we don’t need to know.
Who points you toward knowing? And who is lucky enough to receive your kind guidance?
If this piece sparked a little something in you, please consider dropping a few coins in the hat as a paying subscriber… or buying me a coffee. Or grab an awesome shirt on etsy and save the world! And maybe you’ll look toward the moon tonight.
Thank you for being you.
Yoga Sutra, 1-7
Hebrews 11:1
Bhagavad Gita, 4-39
Following the connections you have made is so eye opening. Thank you for sharing 🙏🏼