Here’s another installment in a series of emails that took place between Michael and one of his senior students beginning the Summer of 2009. May you find the exchange interesting and enriching.
October 7, 2010
Student: Are knowing and loving the same thing?
Michael: Loving is the felt-sense of total release, of complete surrender. Knowing something factually, or finding certainty, is basically just a hiding place for the ego, where attachment can build. We might call this small knowing. On the other hand, Big Knowing, or what I have called “capital-K knowing,” is a state of openness that offers us the felt-sense of total release that we know, once again, as love.
Student: So theyre not really the same and theyre not really different?
Michael: Thats a nice way of describing this experience.
Student: Big Knowing is Big Loving?
Michael: Bingo.