Metaphysics & Mystery

Session 2: Knowledge, Choice, and Uncertainty

The themes of this session are knowledge and choice, the inner and the outer, science and spirituality, and the multiple paths of development. The quest for metaphysical understanding is rarely the product of mere intellectual curiosity. Usually it comes from other, more practical questions. One of these is, How do I live? How do I do this thing called life? In this session, questions like these take the form of an inquiry into how to make choices, what to trust to guide us through life. As usual, we subvert the question and point attention to something else. In addition to the invitation in 2.2, the main session here contains a very powerful practice you may want to implement: to notice and/or recall your state of being immediately preceding a choice. Because, when we think we make a choice, it often is not a choice, but an automatic response arising from a set of circumstances. By giving attention to those circumstances, they begin to change.

Review of This Session’s Invitation

Here you are invited to explore the idea: “A state of belief is a state of being.” First I ask you to revisit something that you believed in the past, something you were so sure about that you would have said, “I know this. It is a fact” – and, which you no longer believe. Who were you in knowing that thing? What state of being co-resonated with that belief? Next, I ask you to look at something current, something you are quite sure about – but sometimes, in certain moments, doubt whispers in your ear. Who are you in that belief, and who do you become in its opposite? In the video I give some examples and suggestions of what to explore in this way. The overarching idea is that understanding of the nature of reality (metaphysics) is inseparable from understanding the nature of the self. Who we are determines what we see.

Audio & Transcripts for This Session

Many thanks to Aaron Grubbs and Patsy Eisenstein for their audio prep, and to Grimm Culhane for his time transcribing this session!

Transcripts:

Session 2.1: Knowledge, Choice, and Uncertainty (transcript)

Session 2.2: Invitation – Do You Know That You Know? (transcript)