My Greatest Spiritual Teacher and the Intimacy of Unknowing
There’s a very interesting interwoven parallel journey between my wife and my greatest spiritual teacher.
I had already known Annie for at least six months before it suddenly hit me like a ton of bricks that she was the one.
Annie and I had known of our greatest spiritual teacher our entire lives before suddenly recognizing together that he was the ONE.
I was in a relationship with Annie for years, and yet there was an unconscious fear of entering into the commitment of marriage together.
It felt best to keep the options open and maintain some level of independence in case something went wrong.
I had resisted commitment in romantic relationships for much of my adult life, bouncing around whenever things got boring, mixing it up to keep things more exciting and titillating.
In a similar way, I was keeping my options open with other spiritual leaders and paths. Bouncing around to keep things exciting. The more exotic the spiritual path and teacher, the more I was enthralled.
Like a menu, I could pick and choose whatever I liked from each spiritual tradition that gave me pleasure and avoid anything that felt challenging, uncomfortable, or difficult.
This is very common in the New Age, “spiritual but not religious” scene. You take the stuff you like from each path, and you leave out anything that’s difficult to face.
I could sense moving into a more steadfast commitment on both levels would transform me in ways I could not imagine, the way a caterpillar cannot imagine how it is about to become a butterfly.
Yet it would require a much higher degree of discipline, focus, strength, and resiliency.
Most importantly, in both cases it would require becoming a more mature embodiment of love.
Amazingly, it was right after having the courage to commit my life to Christ that I was clearly guided to commit my life more deeply to Annie, asking her to marry me, moving to the country, and raising a child together.
And yet, that was just the beginning of the journey.
When we commit to deepening in intimacy with another, we often think the goal is to know them completely.
Gather all the data points and details. Observe their predictive patterns until we get to a point where we fully know them and the job is complete.
That is not how it actually works.
Here’s the most amazing thing:
To truly deepen in intimacy with another, one must engage in the mystical process of unknowing.
I love you.
I see you.
I don’t know you.
And I never will.
But I’m willing to discover you anew in each moment.
The more I commit to knowing Christ, the more I realize I cannot know him by just adding more data points and reading more Bible verses.
I only know him more by allowing myself to be re-formed into a new creation, physically, mentally, and spiritually, by his presence.
In a similar way, I find I can only know my wife more intimately, not by gathering more data, but by allowing myself to be continually transformed by her presence.
Intimacy is not the conquest of the mystery of the other. It is the willingness to move deeper and deeper inside that vast unknowability without any end or limit.
True love is not an information-gathering assignment.
True love is a transformative fire.
In my relationship with Christ, I’m becoming closer to my wife, and through my relationship with my wife, I’m becoming closer to Christ.
Through the relationship with both, I move more deeply into the fullness of who I truly am.
Commitment is the doorway to deeper revelation.
We begin to discover the infinite depths of what love is once we commit.
— Brian Piergrossi