Educated Ignorance

A reality, or the world we all know, is only a description.

For the sake of validating this promise Don Juan concentrated the best of his efforts into leading me to a genuine conviction that what I held in mind as the world at hand was merely a description of the world, a description that had been pounded into us from the moment I was born.

He pointed out that everyone who comes into contact with a child is a teacher who incessantly describes the world to him, until the moment when the child is capable of perceiving the world as it is described. According to Don Juan, we have no memory of that portentous moment to compare it to anything else. . .

For Don Juan, then, the reality of our day-to-day life consists of an endless flow of perceptual interpretations which we, the individuals who share a specific membership, have learned to make in common.

Carlos Castaneda, the Peruvian born author, wrote those thoughts in his 1972 book, Journey to Ixtlan. Castaneda’s books are based on the teachings of a Yaqui shaman named Don Juan Matus. The teachings of Don Juan explain a different energetic configuration about the experience we call reality. There is a forgotten aspect of knowing in our ordinary reality. Other realities are part of our existence, but we only focus on one. These other realities are considered negative beliefs by some of us. The thought of being a complex form of consciousness is a very scary idea.

Ideas form our reality. But we block some of our ideas with our personal belief structure. We like to follow the beliefs of others because they feel common and we have been educated to be common. The description of reality has been pounded into us since the day we were born and that description is filled with the hot air of educated ignorance. We teach our children using our own version of ignorance. Our version of ignorance is in a constant state of change so our reality changes with it.

We are moving toward a natural state of grace. That state is an illumination where the conscious mind as well as other levels of the psyche are in balance with the body. It is the spiritual and biological recognition of our wholeness. We sense the power of our inner self and we enjoy the portentous moment when we know who we are.