Letter 9: The Gap Between Knowing and Being

“We do not think ourselves into new ways of living, we live ourselves into new ways of thinking."

— Richard Rohr

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Dear Future Human,

I can’t imagine what your life is like between you and yourself, and between you and your world. But I would like to share a little bit more about what it’s been like for me.

My life is full of conflicting feelings: sorrow and hope, anger and compassion, struggle and peace—some all at once. For years, I tried to resolve these tensions, to settle into one feeling that made sense. But ultimately, I came to appreciate that life is made of many experiences, each one brings different feelings, and all are valid. Gradually, I learned to appreciate the experience of all of them, and to stay comfortably with them.

One of the things I am still struggling with is how many people seem to be so sure they are right, so certain their beliefs are true. And I understand it. As the letter on perception conveys, this need for certainty is wired into us. It once kept us safe when our world felt dangerous. But now that we are grown, and our world has changed, that same wiring has become a cage. It keeps us from active listening and seeing what actually is in front of us.

What bothers me is that as long as we operate so sure of ourselves, we are not open to learning when we think we already know, and we can’t evolve if we can’t learn.

Today, I will dive into the in-between space. The gap between knowing and being—between insight and embodiment. Between the truth we glimpse and the habits that still grip us. This is about how hard it is to live what we have learned, and why so often we return to familiar habits. I have repeatedly experienced this pattern in my own body—that instant burst of understanding—that Aha!—only to be followed by the gradual return to my old patterns.

My hope is that what I will share with you helps you see the terrain that so many of us are navigating now: the messy, beautiful, and often painful process of moving toward greater wholeness. It’s the path of learning to embody and truly live the slow and conscious work of what we already know.

I’d like to start by distinguishing the two types of knowing:

Intellectual Knowing¹
We grasp this knowledge with the mind—through reading, thinking, or listening. It’s information we transmit in conversation, often with great eloquence, but it remains in our minds. For example, understanding the theory of relativity, or knowing that stress affects your health because you read it in a book. This kind of knowing is not felt in the body or emotionally integrated, it usually remains conceptually abstract.

Embodied Knowing²
We feel and live this knowledge through our bodies. It’s intuitive knowledge that reveals itself in how we move, breathe, and respond without thinking. Imagine the fluidity by which dancers move—they don’t think about their steps. Or consider a person who is capable of remaining calm and constructive in the midst of a crisis. This type of knowledge is built over time through experience, repetition, and awareness.

In other words: Intellectual knowing is reading about swimming. Embodied knowing is being in the water and swimming.

Many of us often believe that understanding something means we have become it. We can speak eloquently about things we have learned—psychology, history, or systems thinking. We attend self-development workshops where we discover our patterns, identify our triggers, and expose our defenses. Yet, we are still unable to apply that knowledge to our own lives. Knowing is not the same as living. It’s easy to confuse insight with integration.

Our central nervous system conserves energy by building habits and generally reverts to our default patterns. The system is not wired for wisdom—it is wired for safety and efficiency.³ And safety, for the body, often means remaining with what is familiar. Our central nervous system will choose the old patterns, even if they lead us into repeating the same argument, the endless scrolling, or the food we reach for even if we are not hungry. Our bodies don’t care if we have read the books. Our bodies care about safety and predictability. And until something new feels safe and true, our bodies won’t change.

It took me some time to appreciate that the knowledge I gained from books and workshops didn’t fully stick. I left many workshops with a new, clear sense that I now understood, and I could change my destructive habits. But there’s a difference between fleeting states and lasting stages—between experiencing momentary states of insight and living in the present moment with embodied patterns.⁴ I have experienced sharp clarity in workshops, felt profound awareness on silent retreats, and have been overwhelmed with awe under starlit skies. But when I returned to my everyday life, those states faded. When I felt triggered or scared—I didn’t respond from what I learned—I defaulted to my old, reactive protective patterns.

That’s why the therapist who teaches emotional regulation can still freeze in conflict with their partner. Why a person who sounds deeply concerned over climate collapse still chooses convenience over behavior change the next day. Why a doctor devoted to their patient’s health may struggle with their own weight. These are not failures—they are indicators of where we truly live. Our minds may believe that we understand, but our bodies have not yet absorbed the wisdom of the words. Until the body experiences the safety of a new insight, it will not release the old pattern.

We often mistake understanding for change. We think that once we recognize a pattern and can name it, we’ve moved past it. But knowing isn’t the same as becoming. Insight alone doesn’t change behavior.

You can know you’re a people pleaser and still say yes when you mean no. I’ve done this many times—not because I was insincere, but because my body hadn’t yet caught up with what my mind understood. My mind needed to consciously intercept my old reactivity and practice new responses. Over time, with repeated practice, I learned to discern that I am safe and to integrate the wisdom of abstract knowledge.

True, lasting change happens gradually, in the ordinary of everyday life. It’s built slowly, breath by breath, in the invisible realm: when I pause to feel before I speak, when I connect to and speak from what is true for me.

The challenge is that we live in a world that does not often reward that change. Our society rewards certainty and confidence—not weakness or honesty. Our deep need to belong—to fit—makes it extremely difficult to be vulnerable—to tell the truth. Because beneath the yearning to grow is an even older yearning to belong.⁵

Choosing to discern what I genuinely knew from what I needed to embody was not easy. Initially, it cost me socially and economically—I lost friends and jobs. I often cried alone, breathed deeply through the fear when speaking up and showed up when every cell in my body wanted to disappear. This is the patient work required to become whole.

Over time, with intention and conviction, I discovered how courageous, creative, and impactful I am and can be. In the process I developed deeper, more honest relationships with the kind of people I truly want in my life. Every time I intercepted my need to know—to have it together—and instead shared from my authentic self, I became someone truer. I trusted myself more. I didn’t need to fix or prove myself. I just practiced applying the insight and knowledge to my daily life—allowing it to sink deeper into my being.

And so, dear future human, I don’t have the answers—only the map of the terrain I have been walking and still walk. A map discovered through experiences shaped by tears, laughter, silence, stumbling, and getting up again and again. A map that whispers: You don’t need to know more. You need to become more.

And that becoming happens slowly, with attentiveness and love.

True evolution requires us to discern between intellectual and embodied knowing. We need to practice repetition, relational feedback, train our nervous systems, and create new environments that support the deeper change.

Most of our issues are deeply ingrained in our bodies—we carry the neural circuitries of unspoken grief, suppressed fears, and stories of injustice and betrayal. We compartmentalize the vulnerable parts of ourselves that threaten our sense of safety. These imprints don’t go away just because we have “done the work.” They surface when we are tired, or alone, or scared. Until we meet them in the body, they will continue to shape our lives.

None of this makes us failures. It makes us human.

We live in a world that rewards performance over authenticity—a world that celebrates fame and glitz more than being honest and real. But real transformation is not glamorous. It’s subtle. It’s slow. It happens when you choose to stay in the conversation when it is extremely uncomfortable. When you take a deep breath instead of blame. When you pause long enough to feel, rather than fix.

It’s saying “I don’t know” when you are expected to have the answers. It’s sitting with your child while they rage—holding space for them to express their pain. It’s willing to cry in front of others without shame—letting your own sadness be held. These moments don’t look like breakthroughs.

But they are. Because in those real moments the nervous system is learning a new way of being. intention—strong motivation—and great effort, but over time it rewires embodiment.

I have learned to live from a new stage of being by rebuilding myself from the ground up—not just what I think, but how I respond, how I breathe, how I hold myself in the smallest, messiest, most ordinary moments of life.

And this is why the work is hard. Because we are creating a new mindset—a re-patterning. We develop a new relationship with fear, with truth, with time. We move slower, become tender, trusting. We become more real.

We stop chasing more insight—more knowing—and begin to let the insights and knowledge we have already touched inform us, change us. We absorb, marinate, and digest them long enough for them to become not what we know, but who we are.

We close the gap. Not by knowing more—but by being more.

With humility and courage,

Ronit

1. Mark Johson PhD, “Embodied Understanding,” Frontiers in Psychology, June 2015.

2. Western Governors University, “Experiential Learning Theory,” WGU, June 2020.

3. Ronit Herzfeld, “The Neurons that Fire Together Wire Together,” Dear Future Human, June 2025.

4. Integral Agile, “States, or States of Consciousness,” Integral Agile Journal, accessed July 2025.

5. Ronit Herzfeld, “Longing to Belong,” Dear Future Human, May 2025.

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