Sitting in the Denver airport waiting to board my plane for Phoenix on Sunday, I observed a little girl petting a companion dog in training. The little girl said, “I think he loves me.” What a wonderful projection, I thought,” the little girl thinks she is loved.” As I reflected on my internal response to the little girl’s statement, I wondered if that was a wonderful projection to “think” one is loved? Would it be more wonderful to “know” one is loved? For many of us adults a dual awareness exists, which means we understand that when we are speaking of someone else there is a reflection, or projection of ourselves occurring at some level in that dialogue. So as I reflected on the little girl’s projection of herself into the dialogue that she thought she was loved I considered the difference between “knowing” and “thinking”.
“I think” a lot of things, but what “I know” is very different. My sense of “knowing” lives inside my body about 2″ below my belly button and back a bit toward my spine. It is the internal place I am centered from both physically and emotionally. I am centered when I am grounded, and present in this moment. I find it on the top of a horse when I am perfectly balanced with an independent seat! “Look Mom, no hands, no legs,” so no matter what the horse does, my center stays in balance with his center. It is a connection and oneness with myself “to know” to be grounded and centered. It is a balanced connection with my horse when I ride. It is a true connection with others when I am grounded and centered, and come from a place of knowing what is true for me.
Perhaps the little girl “knows” she is loved, and her use of language is not that precise, or perhaps her “knowing” is not clear, or possibly she is already losing her groundedness, her center, and beginning to distrust her sense of “knowing,” and like many of us her sense of self-knowledge, or “knowing” is becoming eroded. For most of us our sense of “knowing” and our trust of that sense of “knowing” ourselves has become vague, it has been reasoned out of us from an early age by our parents, our peers, our educations, and our careers.
What would it be like for that little girl to “know” that dog loved her? What would it be like for her to “know” she was loved?
What do you “know”? What do you “think”? Which do you trust? Where do you make your decisions from your “knowing” or your “thinking”? Consider challenging your thoughts. Consider listening to your knowing. What is different? What do you “know” to be true for yourself? Where are you not living in your truth of knowing today?