When artists are afraid to offer up their doubt in their art, its presence and resonance cease to announce its appearance. However, the concealment, now our closeted performance unwittingly becomes our darkened vocation. Our soul’s journey and divine quest are quelled and domesticated through the fearfulness of being discovered and shamed. We do not want our ego discovered as a neophyte in regards to the supposed answers plainly displayed in creed, culture, and kin. Our persona and its protective veneer now dull and dismiss our personal cryptic complexities.
But we were meant to feel the frailty of our fictions and continue to submit them to something beyond our limited recognition. When we hide from our personal humanity’s limited ability to grasp it all, we simplify what is meant to be mysterious and enigmatic. Now, our poetry is punditry full of ideology, theory and dogma. We create to protect ourselves from “our truth.” We turn away from the specter of ambiguity, uncertainty and even disbelief and the quest becomes packaged and predictable. Our soul’s journey and seeking are quelled and deadened by the fearfulness of our soul’s pursuit.
Our truth is different than “the Truth.” Honoring our shadowy ruminations and syndromes is not meant to be some spiritual or psychological placation or avoidance. No, this summons is our awareness demanding its rightful place in our experience. How we think and feel compared to how we want to think and feel or are told to think and feel will always remain unresolved. Admission of the inner dissonance is at the least, a humble admission of the journey’s demands. We don’t get to know what we don’t know. An honest continual admission of our position and place in this life is a moving target if a target at all. Who we believe is listening forms our petitions and prayers as well as our distrust and disquiet. We are always in this process of being aware and then unaware. It is a phenomenological challenge. Self-awareness from outside ourselves (I think therefore I am) is a myth. There is fluidity to this thing called awareness and yes, revelation. It is all filled with the glorious epiphanies of ignorance, carelessness, inattention, and neglect. When embraced, they turn our inner eyes away from our beguiling certainties towards the revealing hidden within our ache for heaven and the sense of Someone walking along side. May your doubt become a sacrament.
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