What is epistemology? How about metaphysics? Ontology? Deontology? Do these topics represent anything we should be concerned about? In the broadest terms these topics represent questions concerning a] how we know and what we know and what is truth; b] what is real or reality; c] what is ‘being’, particularly to any and all human beings or what does it mean ‘to be’; d] what are values and what is the notion of should or right. So, why am I asking these questions?

Have you ever wondered what is behind your familiar phrases: ". . . well, I know. Or, "I think." Or, "but, I believe." Or, even, "but the important thing is." Or, "that is good and that is bad."?

What is your conception of what ‘the world’ is? What is your conception of what ‘life’ is all about? Do you have a idea of what you are here for? Can you articulate your answer to these questions? Can you put them into words? If so, how did you come by these ideas? What experiences, people, information, etc., influenced your formulation of answers to these questions? Are you able to address these questions at all? When you think about the fact that your life will end at some certain but unknowable date in the future, what is your reaction to inevitable death? Do you have a belief system that provides you with that answer? Do you cling to that belief so as not to have to consider alternatives, some of which might undermine your security? What impact does your belief about death have on your ideas about the purpose of your life? Do these ideas have any impact on the way you feel you should live your life? Does that have any impact on the way you actually do live your life? How do you feel about questions like these?

How do your ideas of what ‘the world’ and ‘life’ are about relate to your ideas about what knowledge is or how we come to know anything at all? Can you question your own ‘processes’ of knowing? Can you question ‘the processes’ of knowing for humans in general? Can you consider the possibility that you have based important beliefs about the world, life, and how you should live your on faulty assumptions about these processes of knowing?

Where do you think your preferences, tastes, values, and such came from? Is there a difference between what you ‘feel’, what your physical sensations are, and your more ‘mental’ preferences, tastes, and values? What if something influenced your preferences, tastes, and values other than your own raw pleasant and unpleasant feelings and physical sensations? Could there be ‘intellectual’ preferences, tastes, and values that are not grounded in sensations and feelings and even run counter to them? Where would these come from? How did you come to have these ungrounded intellectual preferences, tastes, and values? If yours differ from those of other people, how do you decide whose is right?

Are you still reading this? Are you frustrated or confused but still motivated by curiosity? If you have been wrestling with these questions, you have walked boldly onto ‘the ground of being’. You are standing on the edge of the frightening, de-cultured, naked earth as a naked being. Take a step back and you are on solid, familiar, albeit fabricated ground and the myths that protect us from the terror of naked being on a naked earth. Take a step forward and you are once again on the edge of the abyss. There may be nothing to hold onto there, no familiar moorings, no clichéd beliefs or stock formulas for living, no supportive groups to validate your existence. Stepping out from under the veneer is stepping into an existence that is raw, alone, unadorned by conventional and acceptable, but nevertheless counterfeit and inane, platitudes. Adorning the veneer, we are made to feel secure by those monotonous and reassuring stock phrases. Take that step forward toward the edge of the abyss and you empty yourself and become as nothing. Take that step over the edge to the awaiting, lonely abyss and you are no longer ‘of’ this world, even though you are still in it. Take that step and you are in a world of ultimate vulnerability, but you clearly see things that had been constantly before your eyes, but never really seen. Like awakening from a deep sleep or a blind person suddenly receiving sight or a deaf person suddenly receiving hearing, it takes a while to absorb this new perspective and new way of being. Now, what is your take on the questions: "What is being?"; "What is truth or knowledge?"; "What is reality?"; "What is value?"?

If you are there, beyond the edge, and can prevent yourself from being influenced by the uniquely human needs for acceptance, approval, or security, then you are in a position to engage in genuine self-examination. This is the great and awesome injunction of Lao Tzu, Socrates, Jesus, Kierkegaard, and many of the greatest thinkers of all time. They do not give you a road map or formulaic content to guide you on that path. When you step over the edge, there are no guideposts or paths, there are no gurus, pastors, teachers, therapists, parents, or peer groups to coddle or coerce you and ‘show’ you the correct, safe, and cool ways to be in the world. Now you can begin an odyssey of the mind. The ‘its’ of the world are perceived unmediated by what they are supposed to be. ‘It feels good’ or’ I like it’ came from mediated impressions. You took the ‘it’ in the way you were supposed to. You incorporated all the ‘its’ you experienced in the way you were supposed to rather than the way they would have been had they been incorporated without the instruction from your culture how you were supposed to feel or experience or what it was in itself. To see the bird without its name and to regard it in terms of its way of being in the world and its unmediated characteristics is to respect its ‘being’ as it is for itself rather than for what it is supposed to be. To recognize the bird means to know its name. With unmediated seeing, you begin to see the bird in terms of its own unique way of being in the world, its own way of flying, mating, nesting, feeding, and expressing itself and experience it in terms of your own unique reactions to the way it looks and sounds and how it makes you feel as you enter the process of unmediated regard. In this new way of being beyond the edge you can come to know your own sensations, feelings, ‘seeings’, reactions in the same way that you sometimes did as a child before the process unmediated perception began to distort them. You virtually pick up where you left off. If you like to smoke, you may begin to remember that in the beginning the smoke could hurt your nostrils, smell odious, and make your tongue feel strange and somewhat anesthetized with foods losing their original delightful taste.

If you stepped over into the abyss, you know that you are alone and, paradoxically, you know why in some sense you always felt lonely but also felt that you were not ‘supposed’ to feel that way. When you know you are truly alone, that that is the nature of being human, you can become aware of the fact that all humans are alone and fear loneliness. In fact, now you are one with all humanity. You need not fear it. You need not run away from it because you can not. Paradoxically, you understand that while everyone is running away from it and desperately seeking someone to make the feeling go away, it is the running away that perpetuates it. In the running away and toward, you are never with yourself, you can never know yourself in the way those spiritual giants of the past enjoined you to. You see the motive behind the desperate need to incorporate what the culture says you are ‘supposed’ to. You see the quest to ‘be somebody’ as an otiose quest leading you astray from an authentic odyssey.