The Difference Between Knowing and Identifying

A reflection on how identification masquerades as intuitive knowing, and how genuine intuition carries with it a sense of openness, risk, and uncertainty.

There is an identification with knowing, and it is a knowing that is limited. "I know left is the right thing and right is not." There is this knowing, in whatever form it takes: the knowing that something is intuitive, the knowing that something is loving. It is a form of rationalization, but it is mostly an identification. It is in service of a belief.

Genuine intuition versus dogmatic certainty

There can be a different kind of knowing, a knowing that arrives with intuition. "I know it feels right," but it is less rigid. It is not that you are sure in a dogmatic way. There is more of a feeling to it, and it is genuinely different from the identified kind of knowing.

Over time, you can recognize this difference more and more clearly. On the one hand, there is a certain trust and openness, accompanied by the sense of "I don't know if this is the right thing." That orientation is going to be closer to the truth. It will carry with it a sense of risk, a feeling of mysteriousness, an acknowledgment of uncertainty. On the other hand, there is the stance of "I know this is the right thing, and I know it is going to produce the right effect, and it is going to take me to the right place."

The mundane versus the questions that matter

Obviously, if I am thinking about going to the café downstairs, I know how to get there, and I will be very assertive about it. If somebody tells me the way is out the window, I will say, "No, I am very sure that is not the best route." You could still go that way, but it is not the best way. That kind of practical certainty is not what I am talking about. I am talking about the questions that matter more.

Recognizing conditioned patterns

With time, you will learn to know more of your own patterns of identification. You will be able to recognize, "Ah, this is just coming from that old pain." The sense that "this is the right thing" turns out to be a conditioned pattern based on the past. This is where the work of recognizing what we truly are and the work of living as a human being become the same thing. They are inseparable.