Mercy: Day 5 – Knowledge
It has been said that knowledge is power. Likewise the saying, Ignorance is bliss. They seem diametrically opposed, however both are true.
Having knowledge of something is what brings tranquility to the heart when it is troubled with something foreign. Ignorance of something brings fear, and fear brings caution and sometimes aggression which leads to oppression of ourselves and of the object of our fear. Knowledge can dispel all that. If you fear something learn about it before you cast your first stone. You might find that instead of being held captive by fear, you will be liberated by what you know. In that, knowledge is a true mercy.
At the same time knowing some things can be very detrimental to our well being. Certain things are hidden from us and will never be known, like the moment when we will leave this world for the next life. And in some part what life is like beyond the veil of the unseen world is also a mystery. Having knowledge of that moment would only bring angst and worry as it approached. The spectacle of death is not something easy to experience. It is well known that people will die in the manner that they lived. Live a wretched life and death will be the same. Live a graceful life and death will mimic that. I have witnessed a person who showed patience in life come to their end in the most dignified and patient manner. I know of an angry and ungrateful person who died in a manner where he went out with a blaze of profanity emanating from his tongue that would embarrass even the most brazen of people.
Ignorance of the state in which we meet our end and when we meet it is mercy as well. Not knowing that and knowing that would, I hope, encourage us to be the best of people in the interest of dying with dignity.
To attain dignity in life become a person of knowledge – know things. Not just information, that false enlightenment served up in our modern world under the guise of knowledge. To know something is to know it intimately in the heart. Think about somthing that you know inside and out, something that you could teach someone without having to find a reference for or look up in a book or on the internet. That is true knowledge. It empowers, enables and endows the knower, bringing peace and tranquility to the heart and is a mercy to the knower and the one seeking to know.
Lifting The Veil
Till tomorrow, Peace.
