Discovery's Paradox

The paradox of discovery fascinates me. Plato named it way before me, of course, but the resolution to his Meno’s Paradox is not the point. It’s the entrance into the paradox that matters. How do you come to know something truly new if you don’t remotely know what it is you will come to know? How do you decide what you aim to learn if you don’t already know it in some fashion, so to aim properly in learning it? 

Plato’s Socrates creates some concoction of memory and recollection to resolve the question. In order to pursue knowledge of something, you must have some recollection or memory of it in order to pursue “it” in the first place. Buddhists would place this felt-sense in a previous life, this sense of seeking to learn something new that a previous you had already known. I don’t have much confidence in Socrates’ recollection or the notion of previous lives, so I’ll have to content myself with the amorphous notion of ‘embodied intuition,’ which, admittedly, doesn’t really help me much with my new quest (to come to know, perhaps even articulate ‘a psychic representation of my reproductive body’). Particularly if I struggle to know what I mean by 'embodied' and what I mean with 'intuition.'

You wanna know the first thing I’ve done in order to listen more deeply to my body’s speech? I went to the university library. I checked out books by Nancy Chodorow and Carl Jung. And they’ve been very interesting reads, as far as these things go. I get the sneaking suspicion that this is not the most germane path of discovery for my particular interest, however. Neither 'embodied' nor 'intuition' seems a focus of a research quest at a university library. Which is not to say they're not active in such a setting, of course. In this case, however, neither word describes my experience of this research.

I have spent a little time reviewing old blog posts and reflecting on the listening ahead of me this summer, however. This journeying really has been going on for quite some time. A year’s explorations of “authentic movement” and a more free-form but circle-practice called “wild heart,” allowing any form of movement, shared space, meditation and more within a covenantal community. Sustained commitment to physical training over a period of a year now, with specific attention to development of core muscles and awareness. A renewal of engagement in ChiRunning, a form-focused contemplative path of running aimed at integrating the wisdom of Tai Chi into long-distance running. I’ve been listening to my core for a long while now, though it’s hard to put into words.

I wonder if that work is what my new friend, Susan, saw? How does one see core or energy-work in a person?

Now I have an occasional evening-art listening practice to accompany my library books. Another new friend, at least while she wasn’t drawing beautiful, large naked women around her Sudoku puzzles, showed me a simple abstract way to express feelings and association on old typing/copy paper needing recycling. A perfect ‘medium’ for ‘end-of-day-listening’ before heading off to sleep.

I’ve also been encouraged to listen more intently to my dreams, which I’ve been a little less successful at these last couple nights. Upon return from some days away, at a 5-day conference in Colorado, the dreamworld felt so much more accessible, for a time. I think I resist it in my normal routines here at home, allowing only the tectonic ‘awakening’ dreams to surface when necessary. Kind of like never cleaning your room because when it gets really bad, the difference into a clean room is so much more satisfying than a daily clean, everything in its place all the time. I tried to convince my mom of that once. She didn’t buy it.

And I’m about to explore a new abdominal massage therapy, apparently. One of the women in one of my circles invited me to explore it a bit, when I told her I needed to pursue a little belly-listening. I wonder whether I’ll reach a point when I can no longer enter into worldviews so completely outside my own? How do we decide when there’s no more to be learned on any given path? Hmmmm…..

At the very least, there’s some snippy bumper sticker wisdom to be remembered here: “If you always do what you’ve always done, you’ll always get what you’ve always gotten.” Perhaps someday I’ll remember who quipped that aloud, but I do love its redress of Meno’s Paradox, which is where we began. You learn what you want to learn by listening to your own yearnings—whether they be recollections, memories, past lives, or not—and trying completely unexpected, new methods entrusted to you by companions along the way.

Perhaps I should just take the books back to the library for now. They’ll be waiting for me if I need them.