29 - Knowing What's Unknown

B-RAD with Brad Toews

John Maxwell, renowned leadership expert, New York Times Bestseller List author, well-known speaker and septuagenarian says that as he has matured, the things he truly “knows” can be summarized with the five digits on one hand.

Those are the things he knows that he knows and he can’t be budged on those points. But he has learned to let go of everything else he thought he knew.

I love knowledge, studying, researching, and reading. I'm a learner.

But I wonder if we've elevated knowledge to something it's incapable of providing.

Do we look to knowledge, as a society and as individuals, as something that will sustain, save, and validate our existence?

Two ancient prayer practices brings old-new insight to how we understand knowledge, at least in a spiritual sense.

Kataphatic knowing is the use of images, words and thoughts to guide and cue our knowing. Our senses pick up on what is seen and from that we gain a sense of knowledge or discernment.

Apophatic knowing is a knowing drawn from silence beyond words.

I love how Richard Rohr describes it:

Apophatic knowing is the empty space around the words, allowing God to fill in all the gaps in “unspeakable” ways.

This type of knowing requires access to another set of senses, the ability to perceive reality in ways that can't be formally taught.

I personally enjoy the formal process of learning. But in the silence and the spaces in between the words there is another kind of knowing that can direct and guide me towards knowing what is unknown. Knowing by "participating with" instead of "observing from a position of separation. Knowing, subject to subject, instead of subject to object.

What is required to know what is unknown is to come to the end of ourselves; to know that I don’t know.

Join me in this episode as I get honest about my need to not look stupid, consider different ways of knowing, and visit outer space with Jody Foster to boldly take the journey to the the place of unknowing.

Show notes, video and other links at bradtoews.com