Real life is not by the numbers; it is impossible to “know” and to grow at the same time. Yes, one can have a formula for a prescription drug or a recipe for a good green salad, but there is no system of thought that can stand up to the ever-shifting changes of real life, let alone meet those same changes fearlessly. The self that knows itself only through thought can never develop beyond the content of itself any more than a math equation can suddenly outgrow the pile of figures responsible for its form.

One of the reasons we want to know—in advance—how to do certain things, spiritually speaking, is that we want to save time in our spiritual search; we want to cut to the chase of how to end the conflict we have and arrive at the contentment we’ve imagined. We want to be at peace.
Among the many hidden contradictions in approaching the inner quest from such a mindset is the following: the more we try to save time—find a shortcut to higher consciousness—the more we actually create and slave beneath a false sense of time. We become further identified with the level of consciousness that creates the prison of time from which we hope to escape.

The truth is, we can’t know what to do in advance of any given moment. Trying to meet life with predetermined ideas about to handle what unfolds before us—before it does—is like a downhill skier wanting to know where he will make his turns before he reaches the mountain he intends to ski! Add to this idea the fact that whenever ideals or systems of ideas go before us as measuring sticks, they are soon turned into a judge’s bench from which we dispense some form of punishment on others (or upon ourselves) for not doing as we think ought to have been done… [to be continued]

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