Knowing Simplicity and Paradox - Untying the Shoe Laces of Certainty

The knowing - aha - realization Paradoxical- path.

There is this… awakening that happens on the knowing path. A paradoxical path created to dissolve the path itself.

Sometimes we have an experience, and from that, we think, “Now I know.” But what if every time we think we’ve arrived at the truth, we’re actually forming another idea to hold onto, another belief that gives us a sense of security?

Eventually, we may realize that our old story, or what we believed to be true, was limited. So we shift into a new way of seeing things. But in time, that too shows its limitations. Again and again, we replace one “knowing” with another, each time thinking we’ve finally figured it out.

Until one day, something gentler happens.

We stop needing to grasp or define every experience. We stop trying to make everything fit into our version of “how things should be.” Instead, we open. We let go.

And in that letting go, something beautiful begins to emerge: a natural, peaceful relationship with life as it is, not as we want it to be. We no longer try to control or interpret every moment. We begin to feel life moving through us with ease, like a deep river we can finally trust.

This is the beginning of a deeper harmony. A return to something original and ever-present. We start to experience life not through effort, but through ease, grace, joy, love and abundance.

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Being held by knowing is like a well-worn pair of shoes—reliable, familiar, and shaped by the contours of our past steps. When we tie the laces we reinforce our beliefs, our conclusions, our layered knowings. When we tie the laces differently we've introduced a new knowing. The way we tie shapes how we move and experience the walk of life. There’s comfort in this structure, in the new structure, a kind of toughness that protects us from the unknown terrain. But when a simple awareness enters—often through paradox—it begs of us and we begin to loosen those laces. Not to trip us, but to free us from the separation we are trying to transcend. To show us that without the shoe we become free. Here is where most of us fall into fear and instead of transcending the shoes, we walk with dangling laces and trip. Then the old knowing becomes reinforced and we retie the shoe. Ram Dass once reflected in a talk, that removing an overly tight shoe is like dying. Akin to how one feels when letting go of the thing that has held one captured. This removing the shoe is the moment when one no longer walks the path by effort, but is carried by it. The shoes fall away. The ground softens. And the one who walked becomes the walking itself.

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This is what happens when we finally stop trying to be the architect of every moment and allow the deeper intelligence—call it Christ, Tao, Shiva, Great Spirit—to live and breathe through us.

It’s the moment the personal self surrenders its constant striving to figure things out, and something vast and loving steps in. Not as an external force, but as what has always been quietly waiting within.

In the Christian mystical sense, this is the indwelling Christ—not a person, but a state of divine presence that takes over not to control, but to liberate. It’s the same essence the Tao flows with, the same awareness that Shiva witnesses from, the same clarity the Toltec seers sought to awaken.

And in that allowing, life no longer feels like something to master.

It becomes something to walk with, hand-in-hand, in deep trust, confidence, joy, and gratitude.

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Sometimes there is enjoyment in the levels of knowing, in peeling the onion, in holding on. And in the letting go there is terror, fear, or/and isolation. There is a certain pleasure—a soulful satisfaction—in the peeling of the onion, in discovering layer after layer of “truth.” There’s intimacy in the search, a kind of companionship with the unfolding of truth itself. The mind clings not always out of fear, but sometimes out of devotion to the beauty of each revelation. Each level feels like a little homerun. A new foothold on the climb.

And so… letting go is not always welcome.

It can feel like a betrayal of the journey. It can feel like death. It can feel like falling into nothingness with no one to catch us.

The terror is not just of the unknown—it’s of being known by something so vast we cease to exist in the way we’ve come to know ourselves. The fear is of emptiness. The isolation is of no longer having the old self as company.

But even this—this trembling—is sacred.

The Toltec might pronounce that you are standing at the edge of the dream, where the eagle waits to take back your awareness. The Shaivite might say that you are nearing the fire where Shiva dissolves your form into light. The Christ might whisper: this is the loneliness before the resurrection.

The Taoist might say that both holding and releasing are movements of the way.

So yes, there is enjoyment in the dance of knowing.

And yes, there is trembling in the unknown emptiness that follows.

And yes, both movements are movements of the divine experiencing the divine.

Maybe.