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    A Little Book of Unknowing
    A Little Book of Unknowing
    A Little Book of Unknowing
    Ebook67 pages1 hour

    A Little Book of Unknowing

    By Jennifer Kavanagh

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    About this ebook

    What if the facts on which we base our lives are shown to be unreliable? What if our expectations are confounded? What if we let go of those assumptions and expectations? What if we let go of our familiar, habitual ways of thinking? What if we let go of the very need to know? Unknowing is at the centre of spiritual life. It is only by creating a space in which anything can happen that we allow God to speak; only by stepping back that we allow space for that unpredictable Spirit that brings us gifts beyond any of our imaginings... "God dwells only where man steps back to give him room."
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherJohn Hunt Publishing
    Release dateMar 27, 2015
    ISBN9781782799474
    A Little Book of Unknowing
    Author

    Jennifer Kavanagh

    Jennifer Kavanagh gave up her career as a literary agent to work in the community in London's East End. She is a speaker and prolific writer on the Spirit-led life and an Associate Tutor at Woodbrooke Quaker Study Centre. She lives in London, UK.

    Read more from Jennifer Kavanagh

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      Book preview

      A Little Book of Unknowing - Jennifer Kavanagh

      Norris

      1

      Introduction

      There is no certainty, fixity or isolation in nature.

      Iain McGilchrist

      Certainty is a comfortable position. It’s a place to retire to, a protective cloak against the vagaries of the world. We are all drawn to it, but for some it is more important than others. In the sphere of spirituality, those who seek certainty will be attracted to religions with a well-defined structure and clear creedal system rather than what they might regard as the wishy-washy more experientially based faiths.

      Certainty, we learn, is a left-brain quality, associated with rigidity, and an inability to see the wider picture, understand, connect, or empathise with someone who holds a different opinion. The left hemisphere tends to see things in isolation, without the tempering quality that the right brain provides.

      In people with a predominantly left-brain disposition, certainty will be not so much an attraction as a defining characteristic: a shield to repel all boarders. In the religious sphere, this applies equally to the religious fundamentalist and the hardened atheist. A path that cherishes uncertainty will not, of course, be attractive to either.

      The concept of unknowing is best known from The Cloud of Unknowing, a little book by an anonymous fourteenth-century author, but it has its roots in the earlier and influential Dionysius the Areopagite, and in the austere spirituality of the fourth-century Desert Fathers and Mothers. It is at the heart of what is called the via negativa, an approach to God through emptiness, through a stripping away of concepts or images, through an acceptance of the fallibility of the ego-driven life.

      This is not a book about theology or a particular religion. Its frame of reference is a faith-filled life that is available to all, a way that has endured for millennia, and is often referred to as The Perennial Philosophy. Nor is it an in-depth book about mysticism but a little book about a particular way of being in the world.

      The way we run our lives is dependent on what we know of the world, and we have expectations and make assumptions accordingly. But what if the facts on which we base our lives are shown to be unreliable? What if our expectations are confounded? Then, what if we let go of our familiar, habitual ways of thinking? What if we let go of those assumptions and expectations? What if we let go of the very need to know? The sense of release might surprise us. The opportunity is there.

      In this book we will explore what we think we know, and what we don’t know, what we can and can’t know. We will look at the nature of our knowing, and how letting go of a limited kind of knowing will open us to a fuller, richer experience. We will consider how we can lead our lives with an understanding that there is much that we do not know; and how we might be able to experiment with spaciousness and leave room for the creative energy of the Spirit. We will see how by practice and attention we can move into an acceptance of unknowing, and deepen our experience of life, love and the Divine.

      At the end of each chapter are given a couple of questions arising from the text. These may be useful for individual reflection, or for discussion in a group.

      Maybe I should offer some possible definitions that relate to key terms used in the book.

      Spirituality is simply a question of having an open enough mind to see that there are things in the world at large that transcend what we can know and fully comprehend, that are not fully accounted for in a reductionist, materialist account (Rowson and McGilchrist, 42).

      The philosopher and psychologist William James describes the religious attitude in the soul thus:

      Were one asked to characterise the life of religion in the broadest and most general terms possible, one might say that it consists of the belief that there is an unseen order, and that our supreme good lies in harmoniously adjusting ourselves thereto (53).

      And of mysticism Evelyn Underhill wrote:

      Broadly speaking, I understand it to be the expression of the innate tendency of the human spirit towards complete harmony with the transcendent order: whatever the theological order be under which that order is understood (xiv).

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