“Letting go is a journey, a process.”

The mind that is capable of saying, “I do not know,” is in the only state in which anything can be discovered. But the man who says, “I know,” the man who has studied infinitely the varieties of human experience and whose mind is burdened with information, with encyclopedic knowledge, can he ever experience something that is not to be accumulated? He will find it extremely hard. When the mind totally puts aside all the knowledge that it has acquired, when the mind is completely alone, uncontaminated, which means that the movement of the known has come to an end—it is only then that there is a possibility of a tremendous revolution, a fundamental change.

Adapted from The Book of Life

The essential religious experience is that you are being known through more than knowing anything in particular yourself. Yet despite this difference, it will feel like true knowing. This new way of knowing can be called contemplation, non-dualistic thinking or third eye seeing. Such prayer, such seeing, takes away your anxiety about figuring it all out fully for yourself, or needing to be right about your formulations. Thomas Aquinas called this “connatural knowledge” and John Duns Scotus called it “intuitive cognition.” It is a more integrated knowing than mere reason alone. With this access point, God becomes more a verb than a noun, more a process than a conclusion, more an experience than a dogma, more a personal relationship than an idea. There is Someone dancing with you, and you no longer need to prove to anyone that you are right, nor are you afraid of making mistakes. Another word for that is faith.

Adapted from The Naked Now: Learning to See as the Mystics See