“Try to listen as if you were listening to something new—not comparing other things you know or think you know.”
— G. I. Gurdjieff
We tend to think by comparison perhaps me even more than most. When we come across a new concept, we try to understand it by comparing it to something we already know and make a leap towards understanding it based on how it is similar and how it is different. This can add in a small way to understanding a new concept but it doesn’t bring us to its essence. Essence cannot be understood by the intellect but by a deeper part of ourselves whether you want to call it the intuition or mystical sense.
We understand the essence of another when we can look into their eyes and see their heart. I don’t mean an intellectual knowing but a feeling that tunes us to another in a way that is beyond words. Imagine if we could do that with everything we came across. Treat it totally as if it were something new something we could learn not by understanding but by a learning. It would be a pearl beyond any price. Of course to do that we have to forget or put aside everything we knew so that we could experience it as if it were for the first time.
Blessings, G
Stranger in a Strange Land by Robert Heinlein is one of the most amazing novels I’ve ever read. It tells the story of Michael Valentine Smith, as a child lost on Mars then found a few decades later. The novel explores many aspects of what it means to be human and also how our world may be seen through the eyes of a stranger. It most importantly introduces the word grok and the concept of groking. I use the word quite a bit because I don’t know that there is a current word in the English language that expresses the idea as well.
To Grok something is to understand it so fully that it becomes part of you. To grok a chair for instance would mean that you understand the very essence of what the chair is, what its purpose is and how well it performs its purpose. To Grok a concept means that you understand it so fully that you can inhabit it and vice versa. Something that is often lacking. To Grok a person means that you get them on every level possible and carry them within you.
At various times in the novel Michael Valentine Smith talks about groking something or someone in their fullness. That is total and complete understanding and empathy. He talks about waiting and sitting with something before he can grok it in its fullness and won’t speak of it except to ask clarifying questions until he does. I only wish that I and many others I knew had the patience to sit with something or someone until groking in fullness came. Do you grok groking?
Blessings, G
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Thoughts Falling like Rock and Rising Like Butterflies by G A Rosenberg
“To acquire knowledge, one must study; but to acquire wisdom, one must observe ”
— Marilyn Vos Savant
How much of your knowledge do you own? By owning of course i mean the same as Robert Heinlein meant by the term ‘Groking’ in his book Stranger in a Strange Land Do we espouse lines of thought merely rented…they sound good so we present them as conviction but we have yet to gain true understanding? Quite often I see people, including myself at times espousing and identifying with viewpoints they don’t fully Grok (own). When challenged, rather than being willing to look at another viewpoint which at the least will enable them to understand their own better they fight tooth and nail to avoid that critical thought.
Many people believe that everyone has their truth and that they are all equal. Is there a difference tho between true understanding and beliefs that we espose because they feel good to us?
Just a few questions rolling through my mind these days.
Blessings, G
Accessing the Web by G A Rosenberg 
Shax (#44 in Goetia Series) by G A Rosenberg 
