Knowing
I was writing up a rampling tale about Truths and wanted to reference the prior one on Knowing, but I reviewed all my previous rambling tales and discovered that I had never written a section on knowing. Go figure! I made up a list of all the rambling tales as I checked them and put it at the end of this series. My own experience has been that God always insures taht I know what I need to know, but that is not necessarily all that I might want to know. In most cases, when I need to make a choice I can figure out what the right solution is by relying on my past experience and my best judgment. I understand that God gave me a brain so that I could use it and in most cases that tells me everything I need to know. In some cases, there are not clear indications of what I ought to do. In those cases I often let fate / chance decide what to do. I will choose a particular event that could go either way (it is possible but not a sure thing) and let it decide what I should do. For example, in 2009 I am having trouble finding work as a computer programmer. I am not sure whether I should retrain as a social worker (get my MSW). My decision will be based on whether I get offered good work as a computer programmer before the start of the fall semester in 2010. There are also rare cases where I simply know what I need to know; a thought will occur to me and I will get a deep conviction that it is true. I can't really say where the thought or the conviction comes from, but I have learned over time that these 'truths' comes from my highest self and that the result of following those convictions will always be the best possible outcome. Of course I have also learned that the truths which come to me in this fashion are not always factually correct, but rather they are what I need to believe at the time. That sounds pretty confusing, so I will explain by an example. There was one time when I was talking with my brother about a potential trip to visit him and my mom. He mentioned that he had gotten a 'hit' (or spiritual guidance) that our mom would die within a year and that it was important that I visit her now while I had the chance. When he said that, I got a firm conviction that it was true and so made arrangements to visit them. It was a wonderful trip and I was able to resolve some issues that I had had with my mom, making our relationship even closer, less stressful for each of us. However, it turned out that my mom lived well beyond the next year, so in a certain sense the conviction was factually in error, though I am sure that it was important that I resolve those issues with my mom at that time, it has improved each of our lives and was the right thing to do. The result is that I have concluded that such convictions are only really useful to help me decide what to do when I have a choice to make and can not be relied to predict the details of the future. While it is certainly true that my mom will die at some time and that it was important to resolve those issues I had had with her at that time, details like exactly when my mom will die remain unknown to me and I really have no need to know them. In truth I have found that life is much sweeter with a certain level of ignorance of what will be. I can more easily appreciate the present when I don't know all details of what the future will bring. Click here to see the next rambling tale.This page was last updated on December 30, 2009