When we say someone has a limited understanding, it sounds pejorative—as though the word “limited” meant "not enough." Yet this is not the meaning of the word. To be limited means to
exist within boundaries; and to that extent, all understanding is limited, since no matter how much understanding expands, the human ability to understand is always limited.
There is a paradox between understanding within boundaries, and understanding that boundaries do not represent the end of understanding. Being able to discriminate and understand the difference here is a critical element. For the most part, our understanding that boundaries
don't represent the end of understanding is theoretical. We acknowledge it intellectually; but only the experience of enlightenment, that is, the entry of the Real into Being, can ultimately make this clear. This action is not an intellectual experience; it is accompanied by organic and emotional realizations that are, for the most part, devastating to an intellect which has up until then presumed only its own authority.
In the search for Being, I always want it to take place within the boundaries, the limitations, of the schools, ideas, philosophies, or opinions I have encountered and adopted (i.e.,
imitated.) These range from extremely constricted to enormously expansive; yet my search always takes place within them. And I don't see this. Either I insist that the constrictions are necessary conditions; or I believe, in a form of what is actually very weak thinking, that the expansion is so vast it includes everything.
I model what I think Being ought to be within these parameters. I may sagely advise myself and others that I know the parameters aren't actually sufficient; but this is just a position I take. The ordinary self is not able to think, operate, or experience outside its own boundaries or limitations; and it attempts to do so almost exclusively by imitation, which sometimes takes on remarkable forms in its effort to project originality.
But there is nothing to imitate here.
I attempt to become open to a force that is quite different. It is possible to form a living connection to God from within the inner self; and all the bets are off here. Such a connection speaks without any words, and informs Being, in that it forms it inwardly, in an entirely new way. The ordinary self has a limited understanding; yet the Self
is understanding.
And if so many who have been touched by this parse it out by claiming there are no words, who can blame them? It is a poetry understood only by what is not written within the form; the action of sensing what has not been said, what is missing, is the action within which the understanding arises, and it does not identify itself within limits, because it is not a location; it is a search.
This living connection has a quality of manifestation that creates its own rationale for action and Being. It is not mine; and I don't direct it. This inwardly formed connection to God forms the relationship to outward life, and the participant is nothing more than a mediator. An observer who should facilitate. Every action that attempts to interfere is one that degrades or lessens this influence which attempts to reach life; and hence the ego, which always begins with good intentions, becomes the great destroyer.
In our modern world, and in our limited understanding, the ego takes the blame for this action; but it can't help it. Like the scorpion who wants to cross the river on the back of the dog, the sting is in its nature. With the action of God, this can be seen: even my own ego deserves compassion. A true seeing of this reorganizes the inner attitude.
Only a living connection that reorders Being can truly begin to bring this attitude of non-judgment toward one's own self. Such an attitude must become a permanent fixture, so to speak, within the self, in order to help facilitate the emergence of the real Self, which does not express itself in the ordinary conditions of negativity and adversity which prevail. These appear to be inner conditions; but discrimination will reveal that they aren't. They are outer conditions, expressed inwardly, and this is a quite different situation. Discrimination and intimacy help me to understand the difference.
My original intent in this post was to explain the difference between focusing on energy within the body, and the inherent limits of understanding it in terms of channels in the way that traditional yoga does; but I didn't get to it. Things take their own direction; I follow.
Mea culpa.
May your soul be filled with light.