When I Stopped Needing to Understand Everything Before I Could Work With It

For a long time, when something unusual happened internally, one of my first instincts was to understand it.

What is this? Why is it happening? Is there a name for it? Has someone else experienced this? What does meditation say about it? What does Kundalini say? What does Reiki say?

Later, there would be other traditions and other explanations to consider.

Sometimes I found language that helped. Sometimes I found several explanations for what appeared to be similar territory.

And sometimes…

none of them completely fit.

For a while, that could leave me feeling as though I hadn’t finished the investigation.

Eventually I began realizing something.

Maybe understanding what an experience was and learning how to relate to it weren’t always the same thing.

Experience kept arriving before explanation

This happened repeatedly throughout my practice.

I could feel pressure before I knew what to call it. Movement could occur before I had a model for what was moving. A particular internal region could become recognizable before I understood why it mattered.

Later, a gesture could change something before I understood the relationship. My body could respond before I consciously decided what the response meant.

The order was remarkably consistent.

Something happened first. Then I noticed. Then perhaps it happened again. Eventually I might find language.

The experience never seemed particularly concerned with whether I had caught up intellectually.

I began separating description from explanation

This became one of the most useful distinctions I’ve learned.

I can say:

I feel pressure between my eyes.

That’s a description.

I can become quite precise about it.

Where is it? How strong is it? Does it move? What happened before it appeared? Have I experienced it before?

But the moment I say:

This pressure is happening because of this particular energetic or metaphysical mechanism

I’ve moved somewhere else.

Now I’m explaining it. That may eventually be useful. It may even turn out to be accurate.

But it isn’t the same kind of statement.

Learning to keep those two things separate gave me much more room to explore.

“I don’t know” stopped ending the conversation

Earlier in my practice, uncertainty sometimes felt like a problem waiting to be solved. If I didn’t know what something was, I needed to figure it out.

Over time, three words became much more comfortable.

I don’t know.

Not:

I don’t know, therefore nothing happened.

Not:

I don’t know, therefore any explanation is equally valid.

Just…

I don’t know exactly what this is yet.

And strangely, once I became comfortable saying that, the investigation often became better.

Because now I could stay closer to what was actually happening.

Repetition gave me another kind of knowledge

There are things I still can’t completely explain that I know extremely well experientially.

I know where they tend to appear. I know what often happens beforehand. I know what sometimes changes them. I know when something feels familiar.

I know when a particular gesture seems to alter what becomes prominent. I know certain energetic routes because I’ve encountered them repeatedly. I know relationships with particular Reiki symbols because I’ve worked with them again and again.

That isn’t the same as proving what causes any of it. I don’t confuse the two.

But it also isn’t nothing.

There is knowledge that develops simply because you have spent enough time with something to recognize it.

Kundalini forced me to become comfortable with this

When Kundalini entered my life, I encountered experiences I hadn’t anticipated when I began meditating.

Some of what happened aligned remarkably well with language I later found in Kundalini traditions. Some experiences could also be understood through the body.

Attention. Physiology. The nervous system. Expectation.

Perhaps several things were participating at once. I didn’t always know.

At first, I wanted a clean explanation. Eventually I became more interested in a clean observation.

What actually happened?

That question proved much more durable.

Reiki gave me an established map

Reiki was different because I entered a tradition that already had language.

Energy. Symbols. Attunements. Lineage. Methods.

There was a framework available before I began exploring much of it myself.

I respected that. I learned it. I practised within it.

But something from meditation and Kundalini followed me into Reiki.

I still wanted to know:

What do I actually experience when I do this? What changes? What becomes recognizable? Does something repeat? Does my experience match what I was taught? Does it differ?

That question allowed Reiki to become more than information I had inherited.

It became a relationship I was actually living.

Sometimes the body responded before I understood anything

My later work with the body made the order even more obvious.

A head movement. A change in breathing. A posture appearing. A release through the mouth. A gesture highlighting something internally.

Sometimes my body seemed to be several steps ahead of my explanation.

I could spend the next ten minutes deciding what I thought had happened. The body had already done whatever it was going to do.

That taught me something.

Perhaps language didn’t always need to lead. Sometimes observation could follow.

I could participate without reaching a conclusion

This became a significant change in my practice.

Something could happen that I didn’t completely understand…

and I could still work carefully with what I recognized.

Notice it. Move attention. Take a gesture. Wait. Ground. Give it the floor. Do nothing. See what happens.

Then compare that experience with the next one.

Participation itself could teach me more.

I didn’t need to reach a final conclusion before the relationship was allowed to develop.

That doesn’t mean I believe every explanation

There is an important other side to this.

Being comfortable with uncertainty doesn’t mean accepting everything.

There are many extraordinary explanations available around meditation, Kundalini, Reiki, energy and spiritual practice.

Some resonate with my experience. Some don’t. Some I find interesting. Some I remain uncertain about.

I don’t think openness requires automatic belief. And I don’t think discernment requires automatic dismissal.

There is a middle territory I have become increasingly comfortable occupying.

Stay close to what I’ve actually experienced. Let everything else remain proportionate to that.

Crystals are a good example

My relationship with crystals is very experiential.

When I touch certain crystals, I feel something I experience as their frequency. I can sometimes move into that relationship very quickly. Different stones feel distinct to me.

That is real within my experience.

Do I need to use that experience to prove a universal mechanism for crystals?

No.

I can simply say:

This is what happens for me.

Then continue exploring.

That doesn’t weaken the experience. If anything, I think it protects it.

I don’t have to inflate what I know in order for what I experience to remain meaningful.

Angelic Reiki brought me back to this question again

More recently, Angelic Reiki introduced another language around territory that, in places, felt strangely familiar.

There were ideas I hadn’t worked with before. There were metaphysical explanations. There were names for relationships I had never felt particularly compelled to name.

My instinct wasn’t simply to accept everything. It also wasn’t to dismiss it because the language was unfamiliar.

I found myself asking the same questions that had served me for years.

What have I actually experienced? What am I being taught? Where do those overlap? What is interpretation? What is new? What remains unknown?

I could allow the tradition to show me its map…

without immediately pretending I had already travelled every road on it.

Sometimes several explanations can remain in the room

I’ve become increasingly comfortable with this too.

A bodily experience may have a physiological dimension. An attentional dimension. An emotional dimension. Perhaps something I experience energetically.

One description doesn’t always have to destroy the others.

Sometimes one explanation eventually becomes clearly stronger. Sometimes several remain useful. Sometimes I simply don’t know.

I used to think that left the question unfinished.

Now I think some questions are allowed to remain open while the relationship continues developing.

This changed how I used language

Eventually I realized that many of the terms I had developed didn’t need to function as declarations about what reality ultimately is.

Internal atmosphere. Internal Transit. Field Form.

Later:

Threshold. Drawer.

These terms could do something much more practical.

They could help me recognize a relationship.

If I can name something carefully enough to find it again, the language has already done useful work.

It doesn’t need to become a claim that I have discovered the final nature of what I’m experiencing.

The experience usually came before the name

Looking backward, this pattern appears almost everywhere.

Something happened. I noticed it. It repeated. I became familiar with it. Eventually I needed language.

That order became important to me.

Because the reverse can be surprisingly powerful too.

Someone gives you a term. Explains exactly what it means. Then you begin looking for the experience you’ve been told should be there.

Sometimes that may be useful.

But I wanted Arrival Field to be careful about that.

I didn’t want the map creating the territory.

This is where recognition-first came from

Arrival Field eventually became explicitly recognition-first.

Not:

Here is what you are experiencing.

Closer to:

What are you already noticing?

Then perhaps we can find language. A relationship. A way of returning. A way of exploring movement. A structure that helps.

One of the simplest phrases we eventually found was:

A map for what you’re already noticing.

The order in that sentence matters enormously to me.

You’re already noticing something. Then the map arrives.

The architecture has to remain smaller than the experience

This is also one of the safeguards I think Arrival Field needs.

The architecture has become detailed.

Portal Glyphs. Ritual Pathways. Thresholds. Drawers. Field Forms. Internal Transit. Continuity.

There is enough coherence now that it could easily begin sounding like a complete explanation.

I don’t want that.

The person’s experience should always remain larger than the architecture.

Arrival Field can help orient. It can offer relationships I’ve found useful. It can give language to something difficult to hold.

But it shouldn’t overrule what someone actually encounters.

The map has to know that it is a map.

This is also why I speak the way I do publicly

I’ve noticed that many of the phrases I naturally use when discussing practice come from this same position.

For me… What I noticed… Over time… In my experience… I still don’t know exactly why…

I don’t use those phrases because I’m afraid to take a position.

Quite the opposite.

I can be very confident about something I’ve repeatedly experienced.

But confidence in my experience doesn’t automatically give me authority over everyone else’s explanation.

Those are different things.

Willingness became more useful than certainty

There are relationships in my practice that probably never would have developed if I had required complete certainty first.

I needed enough willingness to encounter something again. Observe it. Compare. Participate carefully. See what happened.

Sometimes understanding followed. Sometimes better questions followed. Sometimes the mystery simply became more detailed.

That was okay too.

I began realizing that willingness could come before certainty.

And participation could sometimes come before conclusion.

Looking back

I spent a lot of years looking for explanations. I still do.

I love understanding things. I love finding language that suddenly makes an experience clearer. I love discovering that someone centuries ago described territory that feels remarkably familiar.

But I no longer need every question closed before I can continue.

Some of the most important relationships in my practice began with very little understanding.

Something happened. I noticed. It happened again. I became curious. I stayed near it. Eventually I recognized something.

Sometimes much later, language arrived. And sometimes it still hasn’t.

There is a freedom in that I didn’t have earlier.

I can be precise about what I experience…

careful about what I claim…

open to what I might learn…

and completely comfortable saying:

I don’t know.

Because I have learned that uncertainty doesn’t always close the door.

Sometimes it does something much more interesting.

It leaves enough room for the next experience to teach me something I hadn’t already decided.

— Jason