Who Knew? - 12/3/11

That our future is hidden from us is considered a blessing to many.  Truly, without foreknowledge of future events, we are capable of experiencing a host of emotions that would otherwise be lost to us.  Wonder, mystery, surprise, excitement, intrigue, suspense, fear, apprehension, anxiety, guilt, joy, love....in fact, it seems the entire gamut of emotion stems from the disconnect between our present awareness and the knowledge of future events.  It's almost like there has to be an element of surprise in order for a significant emotion to come into being. 

If you knew you were going to feel ecstasy at a particular moment in time, the knowledge would mitigate, if not completely erase, the experience of the emotion because it was known beforehand.  Your ignorance of how you'll be affected by a certain thing is WHY you'll be affected by that certain thing.  Remember Christmas morning, when you unwrapped your presents with gleeful, unabashed zeal?  Your elation was magnified a hundred-fold if you didn't already know what was in the box before you opened it.  And so it seems that ignorance is an essential, if not key, element in the creation of profound emotion.

Feelings seem to emerge spontaneously in relation to an experience, a memory, or a projection....all of which exist inside our mind right this very moment.  We can never access the future, nor can we step back into our past, and therefore emotion seems to exist solely out of the present moment's inability to encompass any time that isn't right now.

However, I sometimes think that there are some people on this earth; call them masters, adepts, wizards, gurus, holy men, etc...that CAN pierce the veil of time.  They have the knowledge of both past and future events and can bring this knowledge forth into the present moment.  They are the arbiters of destiny, and as they have the knowledge of both the past and the future, they have complete control over everything.

But with the knowledge comes a heavy price.  These beings are unable to feel the passion, suffering, pain, and happiness that is part of the human experience.  They are foreign to our emotions because their plenary knowledge of the universe renders feeling meaningless.  To them, feeling is an unimportant bi-product of living your life in a state of amnesia, in the ignorance of our true nature.  It is an unnecessary distraction from the Totality of Being, and so they don't concern themselves with such abstract concepts.  Yet, while we've forgotten our grandeur as spiritual beings in human form, they too have forgotten that THEY were once HUMAN.  Subsequently, they've lost the memory of what it feels like to FEEL.

And though these entities may be the masters of space and time, I think we are the richer for our ignorance, since it is because we do NOT know that we are able to both feel and appreciate the joy of discovery.