July 26, 2016 – The wisdom in not knowing

Listen to this post:

My path to being a teacher has been a reluctant one. I’ve come to it haltingly, not easily landing in the authority to share what I know and what I think. The workshop I offer on color, is the only one that has actual curriculum – where I stand and talk (dare I say lecture?) and direct participants to do actual exercises. The rest of my teaching is drawn from me by the student-artists, who are facing challenges in their paintings. You who come paint with me set the agenda, not me. I need for you to tell me what your problem is, how I can provide instruction, guidance, advice. What color should I use? How can I make this leaf look more like it is turning? I can then share what I see and what I’ve learned, that might apply to your situation. But otherwise, who am I to say what someone else’s painting is “supposed” to look like. I don’t know! I also find myself saying “I don’t know” a whole lot – not just in my teaching world, but all over in my life. Even though, I am a pretty capable person (in the ways that I am) I’m still often reluctant to claim it.

And on the other hand, I am a compulsive knower. I am pretty much addicted to looking something up online, when I don’t know. And I really like to know. I always loved raising my hand with the confidence of knowing, I had the right answer in school. And I can get pretty dogmatic about things, even if only in my own head. I can be “right” about recycling and about how something should be cooked. If someone gets something incorrect in what they say, the fact-checker in my head is all over it. There is a sense of power, of solidness in me when I’m sitting in the center of “I know.”

In the past few weeks, I read or heard something that has pointed me to the wisdom of not knowing. I’ve been cruising in my memory banks to remember exactly where – still to no avail. So, I’m sorry I can’t provide proper credit. But the idea is this: knowing is a fixed place. There’s no place to go, no room for new insight, for discovery. This idea brought with it a big sense of relief and even freedom. As long as the “I don’t know” is held without shame or inadequacy, it is a really wonderful place to be. It has me recall and connect to other bits of wisdom, I’ve encountered along my way.

First it is aligned with the left and right brain modes, that Iain McGilchrist lays out in “The Master and His Emissary” – a book that captured my thoughts towards the beginning of the year. It is our left-brain way of being that sees in discrete facts; this mode is attached to knowing. Whereas when we are in our right-brain mode, we are curious and interested in what has yet to be revealed to us. The wisdom of “I don’t know” also brings me to something that I heard Henry Kimsey-House say, during the leadership program I was in the middle of a decade ago. He suggested that we have “no expectations and abundant expectancy.” If I know it causes me to expect things to be a certain way, but expectancy is a place of wonder. Benjamin and Rosamund (Roz) Zander wrote a wonderful book called the “Art of Possibility”, that I read a bit before leadership – when I was in coach training. At the start of the book, they invite the reader to distinguish between “possibilities” and “possibility.” It seems subtle – and it is enormous. Possibilities are distinct outcomes that can be described, predicted. But possibility is a space, a potential that can’t be described – it can’t be known.

Joe and I are in Tahoe – our late-summer trip here with Bo, enjoying the beauty of the lake and the Sierras. I paint a lot when we are here. Yesterday I was on Audible.com looking for something to listen to as I painted, and the title of a talk by Adyashanti called to me: Healing the Core Wound of Unworthiness. I’m not a follower of his, but I’d heard of him. This past week life has handed me a cluster of situations, that have me tapping into this part of me. And in this life, I’m committed to transformation – which means tending to my pain. So I dove in. He explained that what heals our unworthiness, is the redemptive love that the whole universe has for us – regardless of what we’ve done and what we believe about ourselves. And, towards the end of the two-hour program, there it was again. Our unworthiness is fed by stories that we believe to be true – stories seem like our reality. One antidote to this, is to sit in the place of not knowing – to disconnect from what we believe to be true about our lives – past and present.

As I was listening, I was painting the “fuzzy background” of this big painting of apple blossoms and bees. If there’s one kind of painting that takes me out of certainty – regardless of how much time I’ve spent doing it – it is attempting to recreate the out-of-focus shapes, that I see in my reference image – with watercolor! Too much water it goes everywhere, too dry and I have a hard edge that’s a challenge to soften. I have to say that it’s never, ever satisfying in the moment – up close, zeroed in – it all looks a mess to some part of me. I can see that this part of me wants to know, wants for painting this way to become predictable and easy.

Taking a broader view, painting in-focus can also trigger this desire to know – how to have painting be entirely predictable. But this just isn’t how painting is for me. I am almost always adrift, when I’m actually doing the painting – which makes it uncomfortable. The thing that has developed, that I do rely upon, is the “container” I create for myself in which the painting happens. The container is my past experience – all the paintings I have finished, that have turned out ok; it’s the trust that, I have based on all the problems I’ve fixed – problems that at the time were so, bad I feared the painting was ruined. And it’s the reminder that this is just a piece of paper, and not my self-worth.

As I was listening to Adyashanti, it occurred to me that painting – especially in unpredictable watercolor – is a perfect way to practice. I can exercise my right-brain mode and sit in the wonder, the expectancy, the possibility, the not-knowing of the process of painting. Even just this thought, flipped my experience. I’m sure the “I want to know” part of me isn’t going away anytime soon – nor do I want it to, entirely. But I felt a space opening for simply observing my painting process, with a sense of appreciation, for the act of creation happening before me. I can feel how this way of being is just what can heal our sense (that we all have in some form) of unworthiness. As I develop my capacity to observe my paintings unfolding, without so much attachment, I become more free and it becomes more fun. Expanding this to my whole life, brings me the freedom and contentment, I’ve been seeking.

What seemed to me to be simply a lack of confidence in myself as I’ve developed as a teacher, now appears to have served those who have come to paint with me. There is wisdom in not knowing – being open to what might come through – to what is coming through. I’ve said many times, that I am not the authority on anyone’s painting except my own – and now I see how it’s helpful to loosen my authority on my own paintings too. Not knowing opens me to the redemptive love, that mends my sense of myself – and thus my life, which allows me to more and more, be a source of redemptive love to everyone around me. I’m taking on a new practice of this, by letting go of knowing and expecting and allowing redemptive love to flow through me into my paintings, as I paint them. This brings a whole new meaning to me, of what it means to paint our love. Won’t you join me?

With my (redemptive) love,

Cara