To Grok/ To Stand Under

It would appear that most of the masters and mystics advise us to seek understanding rather than control. Anthony de Mello says that when you understand something, it changes, and to some extent I can see that.

Seeking to understand rather than change a situation might appear to require passivity, but that is a false illusion. Nothing, but nothing, requires more activity than seeking to understand what baffles us. Usually seeking requires a degree of physical activity; moreover, a tremendous mental energy goes into such a venture. The brain fairly smokes from the friction required to think, stop thinking and re-engage enough, and at the right time, to come to a place of understanding, also known as Reality.

I am a lawyer, paper-chasing and immersed in the language contained on those papers. Recognizing that all language is symbol, I often use the mindsmithing device of definitions and word origins to comprehend meaning and make arguments (e.g. a brief should be short or else we would call it a long; I even understand Bill Clinton's "it depends on what is means"). Of course Black's Law Dictionary is where I go for legal definitions, but for non-legal terms I often use World Wide Words.

Understanding is a hard word to pin down.  According to WWW the word was first recorded in the ninth century, but its origin is a little vague because it seems to have originated in a figurative subsidiary (to beneath) sense which is now lost to us, rather like the word undertake.  Now I tend to agree with Thomas Edison who thought that the concept of understanding comes from the two simple words, under and stand, which did not pose much of a problem for him.  I have not seen it anywhere I have looked, but understanding (standing under) looks like a foundation, or foundational, to me.  This makes sense to me and reminds me of how in law school I had to take good notes so I could thoroughly comprehend a concept before I could build on it with new concepts.  The foundation was the underpinning (there we go with that under business again).

I always loved the Martian word grok, from Robert A. Heinlein's Stranger in a Strange Land, one of several books that changed my life.  While the word literally meant "to drink", its meaning expanded "to understand so thoroughly that the observer becomes part of the observed—to merge, blend, intermarry, lose identity in group experience."  This expanded definition comes from how we drink water and the water becomes part of us.  While I am not much of a "group experience" type of person, I am able to comprehend this concept when I say "War Eagle" as an Auburn graduate.  I merge into the group experience and thoroughly enjoy it.  Along with fellow parishioners, I sing "O Come Emmanuel" with great feeling during Advent at my church which is named Emmanuel.  I have a wistful fondness shared by Southerners when I hear Dixie.  I have particular friends with whom I have shared experiences we "get" in a way no one else possibly could.  And at those moments and in those settings, I grok it!  I stand under or am part of a shared foundation!

The mystics and masters do not tell us to grok, but I suspect that they would approve when we are our gardens (I'm the hydrangea, Daddy is the rose, Mama is the impatien, Granny is the geranium, my sister is the Daylily, and so on),  and when we merge with the wind and feel it blow through our hair and sparkle in the sunlight soaking into our skin.  I grok all of that.

So searching for reality is, to me, searching for the foundation, what you can count on and what really exists, not an illusion of what I want my world to be.  I do know that understanding transforms any experience.  Most likely because understanding transforms me.