I’ve heard it said that understanding is the booby prize when it comes to spiritual growth.
What that means is, understanding is basically worthless.
It is not the real deal.
It is a side quest that doesn’t actually get you anywhere.
And I think there is an element of truth to that.
But it’s not the full picture.
Let me first start with the part of the statement this is true.
Reading a book about spirituality won’t get you anywhere. That’s true.
A good analogy for me, because I love cricket, is reading a book about how to play a cover drive, without actually practicing a cover drive, won’t do anything for your game.
The same is true for spirituality. Collecting knowledge about the subject is just not going to have any effect on your life at all. You might be able to speak about spirituality with people and sound a bit more like you know what you’re talking about, but it won’t get you one iota closer to freedom.
What will help you play a better cover drive is going to the nets and hitting a few balls. What will help you to be more present and loving in your life is practicing meditation and openness.
Ok, now having said that, is understanding worthless?
In my experience, no.
Understanding is both useful and necessary for reaching higher levels of consciousness.
We have to be REALLY clear about how we define understanding here.
Because understanding can be taken in one of two ways.
Understanding can be seen as a simply having knowledge about a subject. That is not the understanding I’m referring to here, as I outlined above, I feel that just reading a book won’t help.
But understanding can also refer to having a deep knowing through our own direct experience. It can refer to realisation, insight and wisdom.
Knowing a piece of data or information doesn’t necessarily have an impact on how we live our lives.
Understanding yourself and how your psyche works through direct experience, almost certainly will. Seeing your own mind clearly, witnessing it and not only that, but recognising what it means for you, personally, will have an impact on you.
It is this understanding that I am pointing to as playing a role in spiritual growth.
There is a difference between having a satori (a direct experience of reality or truth) and then just going about living our normal life and not changing a thing versus having a satori and developing understanding about what that satori means and opening up to the possibility that it fundamentally shakes the ground on which you’ve been standing for your entire life. The scaffolding on which you’ve built your identity. The a priori presuppositions that hold the meaning of your life together.
Seeking this level of understanding, I would argue, is irreplaceable on the spiritual path.