Spiritual Aspects, Part 7: Approaching The Unknown

I've been having trouble addressing this topic for a while now. I left off the series of Fully Exploring The Known posts by saying that "knowlege is independent of language." Well, that's great, but it by defintion doesn't leave much to write about. [Not that that will stop Me, of course.]

One way to apporach things that are very difficult to talk about becasue of the tautological nature of knowledge and human thought is to, for lack of a better word, "meditate" on certain thoughts, ideas, etc. Not with the goal of extracting "meaning" from them, necessarily, but to clear one's mind and just let the words wash over. Several times. One often finds that going forward, "meaning" presents itself, often much later, almost surreptitiously, when one is engaged in doing/thinking/talking about something else entirely.

There is no way to explain what I refer to as The Unknown. By its very nature it is opaque to rational explanation. It can be experienced and described, but only in its effects, not in its underlying nature. In some ways it is like the best poetry in that regard -- if can affect us in startling, inexplicable ways. So it seems appropriate for the first meditation to be on one of My favorite passages from poetry.

We shall not cease from exploration
And the end of all our exploring
Will be to arrive where we started
And know the place for the first time.
Through the unknown, unremembered gate
When the last of earth left to discover
Is that which was the beginning;
At the source of the longest river
The voice of the hidden waterfall
And the children in the apple-tree
Not known, because not looked for
But heard, half-heard, in the stillness
Between two waves of the sea.

--From "Four Quartets" by T. S. Eliot