3/4: On The Scent of Unknown Knowing

I have many habits I’m sure that drive my friends a bit batty at times. One of them I’ve heard about several times from different people is that they never know when I’ll suddenly take a right or left turn – not literally while driving, but figuratively in my thinking or views or plans. It’s hard to know how others experience you. For me this apparently sudden movement makes total sense – it’s like I thought I knew where I was going and then suddenly I’ll catch a scent in a new direction and I just know I have to follow it. Not making the right or left turn would be illogical!

This is what happened September 11, 2004 in New York City. Three years after The Day They Wounded New York, on a day when the city was still very much trying to come to terms with its wounding, the scent of the question about Eros suddenly flared to life under my nose.

I was at a Women’s conference discussing talks from Eve Ensler, Jane Fonda and Gloria Steinem with other women in The Red Tent – the ball room in the Sheraton Manhattan transformed with thousands of yards of red fabric, hundreds of pillows and scented candles. Women from Iraq, Iran, Zimbabwe and Afghanistan told their stories of courage and hope and determination. There was no mention of better sex here ... the vagina was a warrior for respecting each other’s sexual gender and human rights.

And then I found myself at a booth for The Graduate Institute talking to a woman who was promoting a specialized Masters program in Conscious Evolution about my journey with sex and Eros and the dead end I found myself in. I don’t know if she made sense of anything I was rambling on about. I had never heard of conscious evolution and while I could read the words describing the courses in the program, I no idea what any of them were about. And yet I suddenly knew in the clearest possible way that I needed to take this program.

Four weeks later I was enrolled in a full time two year Masters degree that would involve gathering in Connecticut or NYC with 20 other people from around the US and Europe for 3-4 days every six weeks in addition to e-work in between. I had no idea how it would be possible for me to show up, why or what specifically I was showing up for. But what can you do when you know what you know, when the scent is drawing you to turn ‘over here’ even if you don't know where or what 'here' is? You have to go (because I’ve had times when I haven’t and that kind of dieing while alive is far harder for the soul and the body to bear than the risk of listening to the unknown knowing and finding yourself lost or confused or embarrased).

Longing

The morning wind spreads its fresh smell.
We must get up to take that in,
that wind that lets us live.
Breathe, before it's gone.

[Rumi, translated by Coleman Barks]