A Little Manual for Knowing by Meek Esther Lightcap;

Author:Meek, Esther Lightcap; [Meek, Esther Lightcap]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: General, Philosophy
ISBN: 9781630871772
Publisher: Wipf and Stock Publishers
Published: 2014-02-04T08:00:00+00:00

Part II

Gift

Chapter 5

Encounter

We ended the last chapter of the first part of this Little Manual identifying a logical leap. Indwelling, scrabbling to climb into clues in a subsidiary way, is a bit like taking a plunge. We give ourselves in loving pledge to pilgrimage in the half dark, navigating by a dimly understood, half-hidden star. We are giving ourselves, and at that point we have no guarantee of eventual light. And, in fact, there is no guaranteed link between subsidiary and focal.

But our struggling to indwell the clues in a way that invites the real is itself a strategy to invite the real. And then, although there is no guarantee, we may find ourselves graciously blessed with integration—with insight and understanding.

Aha!

When an integration happens we can experience an “aha!” moment. What we experience in the “aha!” is the requisite shift from focally looking at particulars to subsidiarily looking from them. The puzzling particulars that preoccupied us have moved from our focal awareness to our subsidiary awareness. They have moved from opaque to transparent, opening up a further vista and allowing “in-sight.”

Oh! I see it! I get it! Eureka! Epiphany! This is the moment of insight, a breakthrough. The light bulb goes on. The penny drops. Light dawns. We have arrived. These expressions signal the moment of discovery, the artistic creation, the business or design breakthrough, the getting of a skill such as balancing redox equations or keeping your balance on a bike. This shift need not be momentary, but it may be multiple moments. Or sometimes the light dawns slowly, almost imperceptibly. We wake up one morning and find that we are in a different place.

We all use these expressions. But since we have been stuck in the knowledge-as-information mode we have not seen that they indicate how knowing works. The knowledge-as-information approach hasn’t recognized this integrative shift that lies at the heart of the knowing event. It hasn’t occurred to us to shape our knowing by its guidance, or to invite it in love and pledge.

What we sense in the moment of insight and what it says about knowing

An epiphany is a great feeling. We feel a sense of happy conviction that our integration is right, or on the right track, and that it changes everything. We feel suddenly connected with all that up until now felt opaque: our body, the normative maxims of authoritative guides, the situation we did not yet understand. The feeling is registering a shift in our felt body sense. It counts as our coming to understand the guidance we have received. And it is our richly patterned making sense of the situation. It binds us deeply with the world and opens up fresh vistas.

It’s also a feeling of blended surprise and recognition. Our journey began with our being given some puzzlement or wonder. Also, in our coming to know, we have trusted ourselves to a tiny tacit sense of where we are going, of the yet-to-be-known. We can also have had a sense we are getting closer to it.

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