Knowledge is Power
I've been giving a lot of thought to knowledge lately. More specifically, hidden knowledge, knowledge that has been kept from the masses, knowledge that causes tension with some of our strongest belief structures. Knowledge that reserves power to the select people who possess it, and empowers anyone with enough fortitude to find it.
Why has there been such an effort over the centuries to eradicate knowledge? Sometimes even in the name of the divine? For example, the Spanish burned nearly every piece of Aztec scripture and codices during the Inquisition. If the truth has nothing to hide, why has there been such an effort to hide certain truths?
Did you know that the Vatican has a library estimated to contain 53 miles of shelving, as well as a private archive comprising 35,000 volumes? It wasn't until 1881 that the public was allowed in, and today, only academics and researchers who have been explicitly approved with adequate documentation are permitted inside. One isn’t even allowed to browse the contents; they must select articles from catalogs in which items are handwritten in Italian or Latin if they want to use a source. And there is a three-source-per-day limit. Why are these resources so inaccessible, so shrouded in mystery?
This rabbithole really started with astrology, and my relationship to it. In religious contexts, astrology is often viewed as forbidden, evil, or demonic. After over a decade of study on the subject, in my own pursuit of God, I tried for months to reconcile this, to understand why my creator reviled astrology so. And there was a brief period where I surrendered to what I thought He wanted, abandoning all the truth I had found in the cosmos.
What I eventually concluded was the same intuition I had when I first started getting closer to the divine: that not everything is always so cut and dry, good and evil. That it is how you use something that defines the fruit it will bear. In the case of astrology, using it to manipulate your reality and play God, for example, can be seen as an abomination to Him. However, understanding the context in which you live, knowing what is happening in the world around you, can help you navigate it more effortlessly and enter into the energetic flow of things. If anyone looks deeper into religious texts, they can see this; they can see the threads of the cosmos interwoven throughout the words and teachings.
Perhaps before this dilemma with astrology, my experience radically healing myself using CBD provides another rich example of the power of knowledge. Knowledge of the human endocannabinoid system has been strategically omitted from medical programs, health treatments, and nutrient recommendations for the past 100 years. However, in the case of many medical issues, such as PTSD, depression, and anxiety, it is the endocannabinoid system that gets disrupted, and phytocannabinoids that provide an immense amount of true healing to an individual. This, of course, is the alternative to staying sick forever and only masking unpleasant symptoms with various Big Pharma chemicals.
Looking at where we are in the world today, perhaps that which we don't know does kill us in a way. How can we be expected to navigate a terrain without knowing what it authentically looks like? When our perception has been constructed by a select few data points to guide us in a calculatedly narrow direction? Why are certain areas considered “evil” or forbidden from exploring if they are the truth? Is knowledge not a basic human right?
I have thought about the contrary in my pursuit of God, that knowledge in and of itself is limiting when compared to the All. That we, as humans, cannot possibly know everything there is to know, and that this privilege is reserved for the divine. I also understand that knowledge can be used for both good and evil, properly and improperly, and that there may be a protective element in keeping certain things private. Like your parents letting you believe in Santa Claus, so as not to crush your spirit.
We, however, are not children. Man does not reserve the right to decide what is “allowed,” or shared amongst other men, and what is not. That is far too much power for one mortal to have, far too corruptible a responsibility.
If we are truly to be self-masters, we must advocate for our own ability to discern what knowledge we need and what we don't need, as well as how we use or don’t use certain truths. We must constantly question, scrutinize, and test our knowledge and ourselves. This path is narrow, but it is what we were made for. We were not made to live in bondage, inside the shackles of ignorance and blindness. Don’t let anyone tell you what is and is not true; seek and find it for yourself, letting the light lead the way.
