Unlearning

Enlightenment is not so much knowing as unknowing; it is not so much learning as unlearning. It is a second and chosen naivete, without forgetting all the contradictions and complexity in between. It is more surrendering than concluding, more trusting than fixing and all gratuitous grace, for which you can only give thanks. You cannot get yourself enlightened by any known program, ritual or moral practice. This drives the religionists crazy, but as Jesus said, the Spirit blows wherever it pleases. All you can do is stay on the journey, listen to its lessons, both agony and ecstasy, and ask for that most rare and crucial of gifts: true openness, which Jesus called trust or faith.

All we can really do is to keep our ego out of the way and ask that we will recognize the secret doorway that God opens out of complex consciousness. That door is usually some form of suffering.

-Richard Rohr