Maybe We Don’t Need to Know

My therapist said something to me this week that I’d heard before but this time I really heard. He told me, “There are some things you don’t need to know.” I’m a curious person and want to know everything. That curiosity is a key component of being a journalist. It’s a journalist’s job to find out as much as possible about a story. However, truly, there are some things we don’t need to know.

I think we understand this in the context of children. Children are not served by hearing the full details of scary or complex things. We don’t tell them graphic details of war or rape. We may paint with broad brushstrokes or present information in a way they understand, but children don’t need to know everything.

In many spiritual traditions, God or higher power or the divine is parentified. We are usually called divine children of God or a variation of that, and so it follows that perhaps higher power treats us the same way a parent would, as in the universe shields us from information. I’ve said before if I knew all the things the universe had in store for me I would get overwhelmed. That continues to be true. After contemplating I don’t need to know everything about the future, I feel more at ease. I feel more at peace. I feel more trust that it’s not my job to gather as much information as possible and strategize regarding all the scenarios.

We have the saying, “Ignorance is bliss.” I usually think about that expression with wistfulness, wishing I could go back in time and remain ignorant to bad news. Or I utter it with envy, wishing I could be like someone else who doesn’t know what I know. However, maybe I can continue to experience bliss in the form of ignorance by remembering I don’t have to answer every question; that I don’t have to know what will happen next. Maybe it’s OK for me to be in the dark sometimes and trust it’s for a good reason. Maybe I can relax into the knowledge I am still a child and there is still a parent taking care of me. Not my birth parents, although them too, but also an unseen parent, a mystical parent.

My spiritual teacher says it is the duty of the Cosmic Consciousness to look after us, the divine children. He also said this Cosmic Consciousness will do whatever is best for us, that our needs and necessities are better known by this divine energy.

“A child of two months does not know what she requires; her mother knows,” he wrote. “She is solely dependent upon her mother. Similarly, devotees are solely dependent on the Cosmic Father, and for that reason the Cosmic Father has a special responsibility.”

For today anyway, I’m feeling into that more, letting myself be a child. Letting myself swim in ignorance, recognizing the bliss that comes with it. I’m remembering I don’t need to know everything and also that I’m dependent on a power greater than myself that is taking care of me.

I dream of a world where we realize sometimes it’s OK to be in the dark. A world where we understand we don’t need to know everything. A world where we realize there is a force greater than us in the world and that force is here, acting as our parent.

Another world is not only possible, it’s probable.