Wisdom of Not-Knowing

Description

These essays, most by practising psychotherapists, some of them Buddhists, take as their starting point the idea that not-knowing is fundamental to conscious reflection and the desire to know must always arise in the first instance from the self-awareness of not-knowing.

Sujets

• Sociologie, société et politique
• Popular psychology
• Psychotherapy

Informations

• Publié par: Triarchy Press
• Date de parution: 01 février 2016
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9781909470927
• Langue: English
• Poids de l'ouvrage: 1 Mo

Extrait

Published in this first edition in 2016 by:
Triarchy Press
Axminster, England
[phone]
[e-mail]
www.triarchypress.net
This complete edition © Bob Chisholm and Jeff Harrison, 2016 Each contribution remains the copyright © 2016 of its named author.
The right of each contributor to be identified as the author of their contribution has been asserted under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
All rights reserved.
No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means including photocopying, electronic, mechanical, recording or otherwise, without the prior written permission of the publisher.
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.
Paperback ISBN: 978-1-909470-91-0
ePub ISBN: 978-1-909470-92-7
pdf ISBN: 978-1-909470-93-4
 
 
 
 
 
To go in the dark with a light is to know the light .
To know the dark, go dark. Go without sight ,
and find that the dark, too, blooms and sings ,
and is traveled by dark feet and dark wings .
Wendell Berry
Contents
Introduction
Margaret Meyer ~ Thresholds, Play, and Other Dangerous Things: Liminality and the Therapeutic Encounter
Rosemary Lodge ~ Sometimes We Don’t Know What We Know: The Importance of Emotional or Hidden Knowledge
Caroline Brazier ~ Buddhist Psychology, Therapy and Not-Knowing
Bob Chisholm ~ Known Unknowns
Jeff Harrison ~ Therapy as Via Negativa
Manu Bazzano ~ Planting an Oak in a Flowerpot
Alex Buchan ~ Beginner’s Mind
Mia Livingston ~ Ghosts
Ian Finlay ~ Whatever You Think, It’s More Than That
Andy Paice ~ Collective Not-Knowing and its Innate Potential
Owen Okie ~ The Dance of Knowing and Not-Knowing in Herbal Medicine
Paul Christelis ~ An Ally in the Jungle: Everything I Ever Wanted to Not-Know About Ayahuasca
Jason P. Ranek ~ The Art of Not-Knowing: From Archetypal Encounter to Psychological Integration
The Contributors
The Editors
Introduction
“All I know is that I know nothing.”
Socrates
A collection of essays that is devoted to not-knowing might seem to have limited appeal. If knowledge represents power and makes any exercise of power possible, not-knowing might seem to amount to little more than a confession of ignorance and helplessness and would scarcely seem worthy of discussion. Yet as psychotherapists with backgrounds in Buddhism and existential phenomenology, we often find that the state of not-knowing can be a precursor to moments of rich discovery which possess a dynamic, transformative power that exceeds any prior expectation. Psychotherapy has always been aware that suspending judgement is often essential for therapy to be effective. The psychoanalyst Theodor Reik referred to this as “listening with the third ear”, which is an attitude that allows for hidden and unexpected associations to rise to the therapist’s conscious awareness by abstaining from automatic interpretation. Such listening requires heightened attentiveness by the therapist, yet by definition it cannot be clear quite what he or she will be attentive to. Even so, the sense of dynamic wonder which can animate the sense of not-knowing can often bring about the greatest changes in the course of therapy, particularly if the client can learn to cultivate a sense of not-knowing, too. Carl Jung, whose influence can be found in many of the articles presented in this volume, claimed that in his experience every successful course of psychotherapy hinged on an event that could not have been predicted beforehand. Our experience, which accords well with Jung’s, prompted us to wonder further: could the experience of not-knowing be just as rich in hidden potential in other fields of endeavour?
The essays collected here offer abundant evidence that not-knowing does indeed figure importantly in many areas of life, so much so that we would go further: not-knowing is fundamental to conscious reflection and the desire to know must always arise in the first instance from the self-awareness of not-knowing. What the essays here offer is the testimony of people whose keen sense of not-knowing became the vital urge in their search for and discovery of meaning. While this book presents a wide range of approaches to not-knowing from the deeply personal, even confessional, to the more speculative and theoretical, behind each essay there is an impetus of deep wonder, which is the most essential feature in the dynamic of not-knowing. Perhaps we might even have referred to wonder in the title of this book. But in naming this collection, we took guidance from a remark by Noam Chomsky on the difference between problems and mysteries. Problems are matters that in principle, at least, are available for solutions. But mysteries are things that must lie beyond rational understanding. A good example of a problem in Chomsky’s sense is how to bridge the gap between quantum physics and classical physics. This is, to be sure, a formidable problem to solve, but most physicists believe it will be solved in time by scientific methods. A good example of a mystery is existence itself. That we exist is not a mystery, it is a fact; but why we exist cannot be answered by any rational investigation of any amount of factual evidence and is thus a mystery. Wonder plays a vital role in addressing both problems and mysteries and we would be the first to admire the wonder that impels science to make its truly wondrous discoveries. But in this book we are concerned with mysteries rather than problems and unlike the wonder that drives science, the wonder with which this book is concerned can never result in hard, factual conclusions.
‘Then why bother with such things?’, many might wonder. Daniel Dennett, the philosopher and resolute materialist, for example, would certainly dismiss the reflections offered here as mere ‘deepities’ dispensed by what he calls mysterians. A deepity Dennett defines as “a proposition that seems to be profound because it is actually logically ill-formed. It has (at least) two meanings and balances precariously between them. On one reading it is true but trivial. And on another reading it is false, but would be earth-shattering if true.” The vapid expression “love is just a word”, is often cited as an example of a deepity. But Dennett also ridicules the theologian and former Archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams’s description of faith as “silent waiting on the truth” as a mere deepity. We admire the robust way with which Dennett scorns hollow pseudo-profundities, but we confess that even as non-Christians we are in sympathy with Archbishop Williams. Although silent waiting on the truth can never stand as a principle of scientific verification, it expresses beautifully the suspended judgement and the quietening of the mind that are necessary for many authentic spiritual experiences. Moreover, in Dennett’s views we find a certain hostility that rejects as fraudulent or deluded anything that can’t be shown to be based in hard, scientific fact. We believe such brutal positivism will always remain deaf to the call of spirit and blind to the possibilities of not-knowing.
As we began to invite contributors to this book, we knew the theme of not-knowing would leave the door wide open to virtually anything. Our main interest was to find writers who knew from their own experiences and insights how rich in potential not-knowing can be. Psychotherapy does figure most prominently in this collection; but these essays have little technical or instructional content and speak for the most part from the personal experiences of the psychotherapist writers. What we found in their writing is what we ourselves find in our own therapeutic practices – not-knowing features far more often and far more importantly than most theory would suggest. Buddhism is also a strong influence in this collection as one contributor is a Buddhist monk and two others are former Buddhist monks. Moreover, many of the rest of us are lay Buddhists and are dedicated practitioners of Buddhist meditation. This is not, however, a book that promotes or purports to be about Buddhism, for it takes a much more inclusive approach to not-knowing. Indeed, if we had wanted, we could have drawn from a number of different spiritual traditions – Buddhist, Hindu, Christian, Jewish and Moslem – to demonstrate how intrinsic not-knowing is to spiritual and mystical experience in general. But nor is this a book about not-knowing as a prelude to mystical insight. It is about not-knowing as the experiential ground from which dynamic wonder arises. Thus, in the articles that deal respectively with herbalism, initiation into the therapeutic use of ayahuasca and a chance encounter in a Norwegian village, we see not-knowing as the vital element at work in various, yet always mysterious, processes of discovery.
As many articles draw on the work experiences of psychotherapists, not-knowing must be a consideration in our presentation, as well as the main thematic interest of our book. Perhaps no other relationship demands the confidentiality that psychotherapy requires, so we have made sure that the identities of all the clients discussed here have been safely concealed. Details of clients have been changed so comprehensively that only the author may know who he or she is actually discussing.
When we began this project we could not know in advance what the final result would be. But as we began to work closely with our collaborators we became increasingly confident that the book would meet the hopes we had placed in everyone’s efforts. We have organised the essays so that various theoretical ideas about the nature of not-knowing precede testimonials of how not-knowing figured in a writer’s personal experience. The contrast can be seen most sharply in the essays of Jeff Harrison and Ian Finlay. Harrison opts for a cool, analytical approach, whereas Finlay’s highly personal reflections resemble an a