The Great Confusion

Transcript

Welcome, beautiful thinkers!

I’d like to talk to you about The Great Confusion.

So something that I think about a lot.

There is this saying, or this phrase, that comes from the Lakota tradition, among other traditions in Native Americans.

They like to use this term to describe divinity.

It’s Wakan Tanka, and this means, well, it can be translated as “great spirit.”

And you’ll hear, for example, this song by Bruno Mansur.

I’m not sure if he wrote it, or if it comes from a tradition.

He said, “Gran espíritu, gran abuelo gran abuela.” “Great Spirit, great, grandmother, grand grandmother, grand grandfather”, where he’s praying, this is like a hymn.

But Wakan Tanka is also translated as “great mystery”.

Because the question is, what is that? What is divinity? We don’t really know.

This is something that brings us into wonder.

So many times in our lives, we might be faced with unusual situations within us or without in the external world.

We don’t know what is going on.

And we begin to enter into a state of existential confusion.

And we ask ourselves, what does this all mean?

Why is this happening to me, like Job facing the loss of his property and the loss of his family?

Why, why this? Why?

And perhaps, well, many times we think about the situation.

And we think about this internal situation, this grand confusion.

And we think that this is actually a problem.

But we don’t necessarily need to look at it that way.

Maybe that existential confusion is the face of God, maybe that is the great mystery, we’re coming very close into contact with something so bizarre and wonderful.

So it’s a marvelous and confusing, confounding, beyond our understanding, and that’s why we feel those things.

Also, I believe, I heard this the other day, and then a Lakota tradition, something related.

When somebody has recently lost a loved one, many people will go to that person for advice, because they say that during that grieving process, that person is close, as close to divinity, as they will be on earth.

Because perhaps, well, I guess there’s many different ways of looking at this, perhaps because they’ve lost somebody and they were connected to that person.

And so a part of them is, is wanting to be on the other side, wherever that might be.

And also, perhaps, just because the experience of grief is so intense, and so confounding that we can begin to see things in a different way.

Losing somebody, losing something very dear to us, we begin to have a much clearer perspective.

To put it another way.

There was a Reddit post from years ago.

And somebody was asking, maybe it was like, “Who is the most grounded person that you have ever met or what is the perspective that keeps you grounded?”

Something like this?

And a fellow told a story about one of his workmates, perhaps the supervisor, or the foreman, the boss.

And he said, “This fellow is always just so calm.”

“Even when we have greatest problem, perhaps the biggest problem, the biggest challenge that we’ve ever faced in the company.”

And this man simply says, “Very well. Here’s what is to be done, simply matter of factly.”

And the employee asked this fellow, the foreman, what is the deal?

Like? How can you possibly be so calm in such a difficult situation?

And the fellow said, “It’s simple. Once you’ve lost somebody who is so dear to you, truly puts everything into perspective, you see, that there’s nothing as important.”

“Every day life becomes that much more simple.”

And, of course, the employee was like, “What?”

He didn’t know what to say to that because that’s a level of truth and intensity, which he certainly wasn’t expecting, that’s the level of truth and intensity, which really would put your life into perspective.

So when we face that, the grand confusion, perhaps we’re really facing the great mystery.

Perhaps we are facing the source of all wisdom.

The source of all.