I question that assumption.
The hiccup for me lies in the definitions of the words "knowledge" and "power".
The people most prone to use the motto
Confuse "power" with "control",
And "knowledge" with "knowing".
Power is another word for whatever it is that drives the universe.
I look outward and inward into the universe and see an awesome power,
But not a lot of cosmic manipulation or control going on.
Contrarily, I see Allowing to be the general rule.
It seems to me that, in true power, there is no need for control.
Control becomes an issue for much smaller minds,
A strategy adopted by those who feel power-less.
Knowledge is a pile of what we think we know.
Knowing arises naturally and unbidden from awareful, first-hand experience.
Knowledge is understood in the mind;
Knowing is "got", first in the gut, then radiating and infusing throughout the entire being.
Knowledge is disposable:
Knowing is forever.
Knowledge is limited and limiting:
Knowing is fluid and expansive.
Knowledge is cheap and easy:
Knowing can be costly, risky, and needs courage.
Knowledge can be bought off the shelf almost anywhere:
Knowing is available only from within yourself.
Knowing tests your capacity:
Knowledge occupies your memory.
Knowledge is a measure of your ability
To carry dead corpses around with you...
The older, the more revered.
Knowledge is borrowed and adopted.
It has to be proven.
It is a plastic caricature of Knowing,
Knowledge is an assumed decoration,
Without roots or fragrance.
Knowledge is fixed:
It has no life of its own.
Knowing is a continuous growing -- a living process.
It belongs to your consciousness and its evolution.
There is nothing to be proved.
Knowledge, no matter how great it is,
Makes not one iota of difference to your ignorance.
Knowledge allows ignorance to remain intact;
Knowledge simply covers it up with a camouflage of intellectual-ism;
Behind the borrowed words there is no experience.
Knowing dispels ignorance
Like light dispels darkness.
Scholars are learners:
Wise men are seers.
All wise men remain students:
But few scholars become wise men.
Scholars can deceive many people, especially themselves, that they are wise,
But there is no journey in a scholar's life,
Like a pole dancer, he slides and dances around on tiny podiums
Of what he thinks he knows.
There is no exploration of the Unknown or the Unprovable,
No discovery.
The wise man generalises;
The scholar specialises.
He zooms in and acquires more and more knowledge about less and less
Until he becomes an expert about nothing.
Knowledge is a purseful of counterfeit coins,
Of no value outside of its dead weight in raw material;
They sound impressive when you jingle them,
But won't buy you much of real value.
Only something genuine and real can be real-ised.
The wise man dis-owns everything that is not authentically his own.
He cleanses
And meditates.
He becomes aware of, and values the space and possibilities provided by his ignorance.
He discovers his Innocence,
His Inner-sense,
His I-know-sense.
Anything that is not author-ised by you
Is false.
The knowing of another stalls at the level of Belief,
And cannot become your knowing until tested (not confirmed or denied) by your experience.
You have to seek and search on your own.
You have to risk the unknown paths
In trust that, since others have found their truths and lived to tell the tale,
Yours will be available to you also.
Become as a little child --
Wide-eyed and wondering,
Shamelessly knowing nothing,
And experiencing everything
It can be difficult to disown knowledge,
Because knowledge gives you a measure of respectability in the eyes of your peers.
If you accumulate enough great knowledge, it may earn you some fame, framed certificates and perhaps even fortune.
Thousands get to know you --
Everyone except you,
(And the people who have to live with you.)
Superior knowledge is great for your ego,
You get to strut your stuff;
But ego, being borrowed, can thrive only on things borrowed.
There is no author-enticity.
Scholars, by and large, do not discover new truths.
Rather, they sit around like cud-chewing cows,
Hiccuping up and masticating over second-hand ideas about truth.
The perceived validity of the truth
Is measured by the perceived stature of the person who is mouthing off about it.
I'm reminded of Aesop's fable about the five blind men who went to see an elephant.
As I remember it, one man took hold of a leg, one grasped the trunk, one had an ear, another grabbed the tail, and the last one had hold of a tusk. Each was then asked to describe an elephant.......
Even speaking from our own experience ,
We're all in the same bind --
Claiming to know The Truth about something we have only a limited hold of,
Talking with certainty about things we know nothing about.
Armed only with knowledge, we are like --
The blind discussing Light,
The deaf discussing Music
The noisy discussing Silence.
Reputation, respectability and comfort
Are symptoms of a slow death.
Your only saviours will ever be
- Your own realisation of your own truth,
- Your own knowing of the meaning of life; and
- Your own experience, and the insights (not conclusions) you gain from it.
Experienced experience is wordless;
It is a taste, a nourishment.
It fulfills you.
The word "love" is not love.
Nor is the idea of "love" love.
When you have experienced love,
Both the word and the idea-of become superfluous.
To think about water is one thing --
You could get a PhD on your thesis about H2O,
But you'll never quench your thirst on it.
A thirsty wise man goes to a well, not a library;
He does not review all that he knows about water,
He simply drinks it, and is satisfied.
Thinking is a game,
A pastime to titillate you when you do not know.
When you know, thinking-about is unnecessary.
Believing is a game,
Another pastime to titllate you when you do not know.
You believe when you have not experienced for yourself.
The only trouble is,
Your mind can't tell the difference;
It reacts to a belief as if it's real.
What happens in you when you see a glorious sunset?
I catch a thought - "What a glorious sunset"
And the experience dies instantly. Thinking kills it. I'm out of it.
To get it back, I used to turn to the person next to me --
"Look at that beautiful sunset!"
And immediately kill it for both of us.
Words are a barrier to your experience;
They are a commentary, a judgment, an attempt to prove that you are sensitive, a showing-off.... ego stuff.
Nowadays I just..... shut up.
As far as I can in the moment, I be-with the sunset,
And allow others to be-with their experience of it, too.
I just want to Know the sunset.
Maybe we might talk about it later........
Maybe not.
Some things are too precious to blurt about.
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