The Unfolding Now by A H Almaas

Author:A H Almaas [Almaas, A H]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780834825574
Publisher: Shambhala
Published: 0101-01-01T00:00:00+00:00

As you have seen, much of the inner work consists of seeing through all our identifications, our structures, our beliefs, our positions, and our self-images that we have taken to be real. For example, we believe that we are this individual with this history who is interacting with other individuals with their histories. We believe we’re physical bodies that move through time and space, and we take that to be knowledge because it can be scientifically verified. But through the work of inner realization, we recognize at some point that this is a learned knowledge, which is really a learned ignorance, an accumulated ignorance.

We come to recognize that what we take to be true is false, is not the whole truth, or holds a meaning different from what we think it is.

INNATE IGNORANCE

The other level of ignorance is more fundamental, more subtle, and more difficult to deal with. It is called innate ignorance. But we cannot even recognize it as ignorance until we work through much of our learned ignorance. Unless we become much more illuminated about our beliefs, ideas, positions, and patterns, our innate ignorance will be hard to identify. But at some point, it becomes clear that no matter how much of our learned ignorance we work through, the realization arising from that process does not bring us to the clarity, openness, and immediacy that we have experienced when we are more directly in touch with reality. This is when we begin to recognize what is called innate ignorance, which is also referred to as primordial ignorance. This is the ignorance that we share with all animals. It is not learned; we come into the world with it.

Learned ignorance is directly connected with development of the mind and the ego—with all the structures and representations, images, patterns, beliefs, and ideas about oneself and reality. But the development of that learned ignorance is based on a more fundamental ignorance—the ignorance of our True Nature.

We come into the world not knowing our True Nature. We don’t know who we are. That doesn’t mean that we don’t experience True Nature. It doesn’t mean we don’t feel it. It doesn’t mean that we don’t perceive it. It means we don’t understand it. We don’t know what it is. We don’t know its meaning, its significance. We don’t know that it is what we are.

Animals are their True Nature, but they don’t know it. Very young babies are almost purely their True Nature, but they don’t know it either. When we are infants, we might feel it, sense it, taste it, but we don’t know that it is what we are. To know the significance of it, to be able to discriminate it in an insightful way—to recognize, “That is me! That is the nature of the world. And that is the truth”—we first need to develop learned ignorance.

So to clarify the relationship between learned ignorance, innate ignorance, and our True Nature, we can say:

Learned ignorance is based on innate ignorance; without that innate ignorance, we cannot develop learned ignorance.

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