What We Think We Know

We spend most of our lives chasing knowledge—wanting to understand how things work, wanting to know why we feel what we feel. We search for answers—not just because we’re curious, but because understanding gives us the feeling of control. It seems simple: if I can explain it, I can manage it. But the more I’ve studied, the more I’ve realised this is not how we really grow. All of our learning actually comes from the unknown. And we don’t often stop to ask—where is all this learning really taking us?

In the previous article, I shared something that changed a lot for me. The question: Why didn’t you ask? It wasn’t about prayer as a belief system. It was the realisation that we are always in a state of prayer—always asking, always receiving—but most of the time, we are not aware of what we are actually asking for. Prayer, as the wisdom of Kabbalah shows, is not something we do. It’s something we are. It’s the shape of the vessel that determines what flows to us.

I left that article on the edge of a bigger question too—one I’ve been slowly learning to ask: if we are already asking, already receiving, already moving, how do we become conscious of it? Where does our awareness come from? And how does this awareness relate to the structure of our being?

I’ve come to see that we live between two forces all the time. On one side, there’s faith—the side of the unconscious, the unknown. On the other, there’s reason—the side of consciousness, the known. And most of us never really notice how we’re moving between them, but the way we lean into one or the other shapes how we experience life.

They’re both always here. The only difference in our experience is where we place the weight of our attention.

When our weight is on reason, we live through the conscious mind. We’re trying to understand. We’re trying to build meaning. We’re trying to manage the world around us. And we chase that—it feels like we’re steering something, like we’re in control.

And when our weight is on faith, we live through trust. Not blind trust, but the kind of faith that Kabbalah describes as “faith above reason” (Emuna l’ma’la me’ha’daat). The sages write that faith above reason is the only pathway to adhesion with the Creator—the purpose of every one of us. And to hasten this path, this experience, this existence—it’s the conscious decision to move forward not based on what I can prove, but based on a trust that the system’s governance is good and does good, even when it contradicts what I see.

But it’s the coupling of them that carries us forward beyond what we can currently explain. And we’re always tipping the scale between the two—aware of it or not.

When we think about the unconscious, most of us stop at what’s automatic. It’s our heartbeat, our breath, our body’s quiet work. It’s the emotional reactions and thoughts that rise without asking permission. But what the wisdom of Kabbalah reveals is that the unconscious is not just automatic. It is where the true form of the soul already exists. The sages write that the perfected vessel is not something we build from scratch—it is something we uncover by peeling away the layers that conceal it. In Kabbalah, the unconscious holds the blueprint of who we really are.

The unknown is not random.

It’s not chaos.

It’s where the next layer of what you are being revealed.

When we experience the unknown, it feels like we’re stepping into uncertainty, but actually, we’re stepping closer to our true form—the part becoming what is already whole.

The conscious mind is where we feel our power. It’s where we make choices. It’s where we tell ourselves we can direct our lives. And we run hard toward that. We think that if we can understand enough, we can shape life the way we want. But consciousness has limits. It can only work with what we already know. And in that limitation, we can start to worship the mind itself—believing that the more we know, the more we can control. But the next layer of growth always sits beyond what the mind can grasp.

The sages say that we cannot attain our highest selves through reason alone. Reason is a necessary tool—it helps us function, it helps us build—but it becomes a prison when we rely on it to navigate spiritual development. Without faith, reason becomes self-serving. Without faith, we end up clinging to what we’ve already constructed.

This is why faith is not just a nice idea—it is the only way forward in the spiritual path. Faith, is not about belief in the absence of evidence. It is the conscious decision to trust the system’s upper governance, even when I don’t yet perceive its logic. It’s the willingness to walk in a direction where my conscious mind cannot support me. Faith isn’t passive. It isn’t letting life just happen. It’s an active step toward what I cannot yet hold in reason. The sages teach that all progress is made in faith above reason because without it, we would remain stuck in the same explanations, unable to peel the next layer.

And as we progress in the revelations of faith and reason in our lives, we learn, we taste, we feel that they don’t cancel each other. If anything, they match each other shaping a new awareness to reality, a more complete picture. And so for me, the question moved from choosing between this and that, and became the curiosity of learning how to develop awareness and the observation of inner revelation.

Awareness is the ability to observe where I am placing my weight.

Awareness lets me see when I am holding tightly to reason and when I am stepping forward in faith. It lets me see the scale tipping in real time.

Awareness is me active in the place where learning actually happens. It’s where I can stand inside the tension between the unconscious and the conscious and not collapse into one side or the other. I can notice the resistance to the unknown, and I can begin to feel that the unknown is not something outside of me—it’s the place I am slowly becoming ready to meet.

This is what the sages call “peeling the onion.” They write that we are always moving closer to the center, layer by layer. And the deeper we go, the less we can rely on what we already know. The structure of the vessel—us—becomes simpler, but the work of faith becomes more precise for illumination.

The unconscious holds the blueprint of the corrected vessel. The conscious mind is the tool I use to perceive what I am currently able to see. I don’t create the vessel—I create the shape of it.

The movement between conscious and unconscious is not a back and forth. It’s —what I lean into. And that leaning shapes how I am, how I move, what I ask. This work of conscious awareness shows me that I am always steering—not by controlling the outcome, but by where I choose to lean.

This is the state of being we are building through this series. A state where life is not random, where our growth is not accidental, and where our participation is not just about what we understand—it’s about how we position ourselves within the system’s movement.

Each layer brings us closer to what is already there.

Each moment in faith opens the next step.

And each breath of awareness helps us feel where we are really standing... closer than we think we know.

Bradley J Cleary