Letting Go: Out of Concepts and into the Flowing River of Experience
The wilderness fast is, at its core, a letting go of the everyday world, and a leaping off the cliff of the known daily routine - into the river of experience in the present moment. We discover, in the process, that much of what we hold to be "true" lives more in concept than in experience. Further, we discover that these "truths" about ourselves are standing exactly in the way of our knowing ourselves.
A Play on Words
Truth is illusory. Words come in families that sometimes shed remarkable revelation and light on the human psyche. Take the word "concept". The family includes concept, conception, conceive, deceive and deception, as well as accept, intercept, except, precept - among others. The Indo-European root carries the meaning of "to take, seize or carry" as found in the Latin "capere". In this etymological content we find the word concept has the sense of holding onto something over time. The concept takes us out of the moment.
It is intriguing that the words for the "undoing" of conceptual knowledge don't directly exist. Or, where they do exist, we attribute an ethical falseness to them. Thus, the undoing of "conception" is "deception", the undoing of "conceive" is "deceive". And, for whatever it is worth, the undoing of "concept" (presumably "decept") doesn't exist (though perhaps we can take some utility in the empathic cousins "except" and "intercept".) It seems our language itself reflects our bias toward always increasing knowing linearly; so much so that efforts to divest ourselves of concepts in order to return to mystery are viewed as deceptive - with its fully negative sense.
The Irish poet AE puts it this way:
Truth
The hero first thought it
To him 'twas a deed:
To those who retaught it,
A chain on their speed.
The fire that we kindled,
A beacon by night,
When darkness has dwindled
Grows pale in the light.
For life has no glory
Stays long in one dwelling,
And time has no story
That's true twice in telling.
And only the teaching
That never was spoken
Is worthy thy reaching, .
The fountain unbroken
(Collected Poems by A.E. R&R Clark, Edinburgh. 1926 p.133)
AE demands that "truth" be detached from the "tried and true" conceptual world. His poem is audacious in the suggestion that there is no story that is true told more than once. And yet, this assertion is essential if we are to take seriously the proposition that each of us is unique, and has a unique life to give birth to and live to its unique fulfillment. As the unknown author of The Cloud of Unknowing tells us, the power of eros can indeed enable us to relate to the mystery, but each of us will have a unique experience of it. Our own "fountain unbroken." And the truth we find will not match anyone else's.
Ironically, if we hold on to the conceptual realm of logos we end up mired in deception through the illusion that these concepts have enduring truth. But, if we do not "retell" what others consider to be the "truth", we are accused of deceit. Damned if we do, damned if we don't. To travel the mystic path, we need to be able to suspend logos, and redeem deception, that is, the undoing of concepts.