January 3, 2021
It has only been a little over 3 weeks since I’ve done a What I Know. But I feel an emergent clarity since I revisited my original prayer from a year ago.
As much as this world wants to convince me that nothing is certain, certainty does exist. I know these things with absolute, unequivocal certainty.
I know that I am in pain. Though I have finally silenced its most excruciating manifestations, I am more sensitive to the various subtle pains which pervade my entire life. Intellectually, I have connected the dots: all of this is pain, even the fleeting joys and pleasures. As long as ‘I’ exist I will be in pain, but I can manage it by stilling my conceptual and perceptual environments.
I know that I am lost. I don’t know where I am. I only know what other people have imagined, and I only imagine them. I am familiar with this daily routine of waking up and ‘being here’, but that doesn’t mean I know where ‘here’ is.
I know that I do not want to be here. I am lost in a place of pain and suffering. This is not where I want to be. I want to escape.
I know where I want to be. I have experienced the place I want to be several times, and I’ve spent years trying to find my way back. I have four decades of traveled roads to unscramble, but the path and my conviction are more clear than ever: I will escape. The only way out is to descend.
I know that prayer is the path I must follow. Frequent and regular prayer, with these convictions in mind, helps me stay on the path of descent. My prayer has evolved. The ‘centering’ and ‘haloing’ that I have increasingly experienced over the past half year is no longer a mysterious by-product; I can activate it by focusing on my observer point. And I know that observer point is the timeless self of now, or God who is always with me. He will guide me Home.
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