Path of Unknowing

Path of Unknowing

Beneath the façade lies a cloud of fear. A subtle cloud, usually – more like a barely perceptible mist. Mostly it is unrecognized and pushed out of awareness by the intensity of being in this life.

But sometimes, in the quiet of morning, looking around at the four walls of a dim room, there it is. The cloud, the mist, clinging and unpleasant.

You recognize it by its feeling – a sense of nausea. Sartre wrote about it, that Nausea.


It is the fear that hides under everything you think you know about yourself and life - the fear that none of it is true! That you are completely mistaken, absolutely lost, and existing in a delusional fantasy.

Of course only the very brave or reckless would ever want to face such stuff. Far better to keep that fear stuffed down out of sight and mind; to smother it with the incessant business of everyday doing.


But I have a bit of reckless streak, so watched the nausea floating. Attention distilled it from mist and it coiled like a clammy cold pool in the stomach.

Then I understood. The nausea had a very good point.

I HAVE been completely mistaken, absolutely lost and existing in a delusional fantasy.

Because I thought I knew. About myself and life. I thought I knew what was true.

In that moment we were together, the nausea and me, suffering the delusion, comforting each other in our grief.

But also in that moment the doorway appeared.

And beyond the doorway was an unfamiliar path.

Nothing about it could be known.

What a relief to find

The Path of Unknowing.