REFLECTING ON WHAT YOU KNOW

By

Bill Cottringer

     I think it is good and purposeful to stop and reflect upon what you think you “know” every once in awhile just to make sure you have not wandered (or wondered) out on a limb too far from home. We learn and grow in plateaus and when we have reached one we somehow know it; these are the times and places to validate and purify our knowledge and wisdom. 

     This refelction time-out is a good idea, knowing how the brain can trick you into believing things that simply aren’t true , and also the reality that being certain about anything you know from any source is really a huge leap of faith. After-all intuitions can’t be validated and even physical sensory perceptions can be deceiving, proven by the plethora of amusing online optical illusions.  

     Here’s what I think I know about the most important aspects of life, at least at today's plateau. God created the universe and everything in it with a purely playful motive and did so with two voices—one of complete unconditional love and acceptance (grace) and one of encouragement  to learn, grow and improve the quality of our awareness and being and to help others do that too by modeling it (salvation).

     God’s two voices imaginatively created two seemingly distinct half realms of existence that made up the whole thing: (1) the material realm of existence for our conscious minds to play in—full of warring dualistic opposites to keep us entertained and striving to become better; especially good vs. evil! and (2) the spiritual realm for our souls to get nurtured by finding the hidden secrets and clues about natural laws of how the game of life works, our roles and purposes, and ways to be most successful with other “brothers and sisters” in play. This spiritual realm even has a magical secret of meditation to get in touch with your true inner self to be able to transcend the annoying and disruptive this and that of everything, from a centered wholeness and oneness.

     The object of course, is to discover, or perhaps better said, to remember, the operating laws, purpose and role, and success clues hidden cleverly in the paradoxes of the spiritual realm, secretly planted in our unconscious minds. I believe the main physical organs of such “knowing” are the mind (reflection) and soul (direct knowing), with the heart being a walkie-talkie between the two (intuition). (This “trinity” isn’t much different than early psychologists with the id, ego and superego or later as the child, parent and adult parts of our personality)

     Like most other writers, I sometimes have an idea mysteriously flow into me and then I write about it, often without even really knowing the potential profundity of it, only to later discover its deeper meaning and application as I go on and experience the idea in living. Phew, that was a long sentence!  But it represents a powerful awareness.

     In my latest book I expose 6 questions which all employees want answers to on the job to be able to perform their best. At this point I think these are our most fundamental questions about life itself that we should all be asking and and trying to answer. The questions are:

1. Why am I here?
   
2. What am I supposed to be doing?
   
3. How am I supposed to be doing it?
   
4. How do I know if I am doing it right?
   
5. What’s in it for me?
   
6. Where do I go when I get into trouble?

Bill Cottringer is a writer from Bellevue, WA. He is author of You Can Have Your Cheese & Eat It Too, The Bow Wow Secrets, and Threading Your Needle With the Rope of Life. He can be reached at (425) 454-5011 or bcottringer.pssp.net