“One of the conditions of enlightenment has always been a willingness to let go of what we thought we knew in order to appreciate truths we had never dreamed of.”
– Karen Armstrong
This quote reminds me of something my best friend once said. “I love when my assumptions are proven wrong,” she told me. I am working to let go of my preconceived notions about the world, and appreciate new truths as they become revealed through insight, discernment and wisdom. My best friend and I grew up together in a cult-like religious community. This group started in Ann Arbor, Michigan as an evangelical outreach to students at the University of Michigan. It grew and became more and more restrictive. People began to interpret scripture literally. This rationalized interpretation of religion has resulted in a very modern phenomenon: fundamentalism. My best friend and I saw fundamentalism first hand. Men were not allowed to change babies’ diapers; women had to submit to the will of their husbands. Many women in this group gave the authority of God to the men in their lives as their “spiritual leaders.” I confidently rejected this fundamentalism and all that came with it.
To accept dogma on someone else’s authority is “unskillful.” We must gain our spiritual understanding through our own quests, rather than giving that power away. Midrash is a concept meaning “to go in search of,” “to investigate,” and “to go in pursuit of something undiscovered.” There was very little midrash in the cult-like group we grew up in. Midrash requires constant reinterpretation and the ongoing, never-ending process of revelation. We need to be open to new revelation and work towards constant reinterpretation of truth, and we must direct our insights to the needs of the present day. We need midrash in our religious and scientific communities. I believe that discovery is ripe in the modern day scientific community, while our religious communities are frantically nailing down myths as truth. St. Augustine believed that whenever the literal meaning of scripture clashed with reliable scientific information, the interpreter must respect the integrity of science or he would bring scripture into disrepute.
I came across an interesting story about a teacher and a student trying to understand Brahman. The teacher told the student to put a lump of salt in a beaker. The student waited overnight and in the morning he could no longer see the lump of salt. Yet, the salt was still present throughout the water in the beaker. This is Brahman – the inner self in the world. Yajnavalkya, a seventh-century sage, explains:
You can’t see the Seer who does the seeing. You can’t hear the Hearer who does the hearing; you can’t think with the Thinker who does the thinking; and you can’t perceive the Perceiver who does the perceiving.
What is this Brahman? What is this unseen Seer? I rejected the fundamentalist religion of my childhood. I have assumed that I know certain things about the world.
While in school at the University of Michigan, I worked at a Middle Eastern restaurant. My bosses gently but passionately hoped that I would come to believe in Islam. I listened to them with great curiosity, but have not been able to accept any specific religion due to my upbringing and exposure to fundamentalism. Karen Armstrong writes about kafirun aka “infidel” or “unbeliever.” This word has been misunderstood in its modern day usage. The root of this word, KFR, means: “’blatant ingratitude,’ a discourteous and arrogant refusal of something offered with great kindness.” I wonder if there is something out there, something like an unseen Seer, an unheard Hearer, and an unperceived Perceiver that is being offered to us with great kindness. I am trying to let go of what I thought I knew in order to appreciate new truths.
