June 2023
On the radio the other day, a football coach was saying that he knew it was time to give up his job as soon as he asked himself the question whether to continue doing it. The question itself implied a sense of the answer, or so he thought.
This got me thinking about the thing about asking questions as well as the kind of implicit knowledge we have about certain issues before knowing that we know. I could never answer the question, for instance, put to me by an old mentor of mine, “Did I have any questions I wanted to ask him?” My mind always went blank. It dawned on me, as I was driving home from the beach this morning, that the reason for this was that I didn’t know what I didn’t know and for me to ask a question would be to already know what I didn’t know. I needed the language in order to ask the question, any question.
People come to me sometimes knowing what their problem is and can easily articulate that, but mostly they come expressing a generalized sense of anxiety about what they think they don’t know what the problem is. Knowing somehow, without knowing consciously.
There are several kinds of knowing, but broadly two types: Explicit knowledge and Tacit knowledge. The first is the knowledge we can draw upon whenever we like, and organize according to categories (like, for instance, a plan of how to connect SCUBA equipment in preparation for a dive). Tacit knowledge is the knowledge we have that is difficult to explain; we just have a sense of knowing something (like, knowing just the right time to enter the water). Tacit knowledge increases with experience over time, whereas explicit knowledge must be added to deliberately. Some researchers also talk about Inert knowledge, which is knowing something without understanding it, and there are a number of other kinds and levels of knowledge. I intend to only talk about inert knowledge.
Clients may say, for example, that they know they should be meditating and that they know how to do it. They know that meditation will help their levels of anxiety diminish, and yet they don’t do it. This kind of statement needs be untangled. Sometimes it isn’t a case of actually knowing how meditation feels, but knowing the procedure for getting into a meditative state. Procedural knowledge is like reading a manual and knowing the steps to something, but it’s a knowledge that hasn’t been instilled into experiential and tacit knowledge. It is as though the information is there, but the embodied knowing is absent. In cases like this, I’ll often suggest walking meditation where you put your focus on the sensation of walking over grass or sand, becoming aware of the textures, the dips and rises, beneath your feet, the coolness or warmth of the air around you, the way your jacket feels on your body; in other words, getting your awareness back into bodily experience. You walk slowly, conscious of each and every step. This level of mindful practice becomes a meditation very quickly. Your focus is, and has to be, present with what you’re doing. Sitting meditations can too readily drift off into memories and other distracting thoughts.
Bringing consciousness into that which has been unrealized is a really important tool in the art of healing. Much of this inert knowledge is known but not known. Once the knowledge shifts into embodied knowing, it can alleviate much ungrounded anxiety.
Milton Erickson, a father of clinical hypnotherapy (which I practice, along with psychotherapy and counselling), said this "When someone comes to see you, they always bring their solution with them, only they don't know that they do, so have a very nice time, talking with your client, and help them to find the solution they didn't know they brought with them." It’s the art of coming to know something you know at some level, but haven’t been able to successfully access. It’s the art of using what you know to be able to ask the questions needed for finding your answers.
