I think I get this.

It's been my contention that the truth is known--utterly known--to everyone. But the truth *appears* (I stress that word) to be ominous. So, the coating over reality--usually called "ego"--takes charge so as to quell the terror of even basic existential reality. Notions, for example, that we die at some given point, or that the physical universe looks to be apparently infinite, or that we really DON'T know what God is, or how the hell we wound up encased in physical bodies that behave on their own accord (we don't pump our own blood, or make our hearts beat, etc.)

The comfort people look for is inevitably ephemeral and people also know this truth as well, (deep in their own heart-of-hearts.) Personally, for me, existential awareness was somehow "forced" on me. I don't know how or why, but it certainly was, because I lived a good deal of my life in raw terror. No kidding.

Now, after all of these years, I do find a comfortable place in the not-knowing. I find it, in fact, that it somehow eases me. One of my other contentions is that pure, raw, existential awareness is STEP ONE on the path to awakening with a capital "A."

I think I got off topic there, but the idea got me going...