Dancing With Uncertainty
“My certainty is wild, weaving, for you, I am a child, believing…” - Certainty, Big Thief
Your brain craves certainty. Certainty assures the brain of survival and placates your nervous system’s most primal wiring. You search far and wide to know the truth of your existence, to know why you are here, and to solve the everlasting mystery of it all. But your brain was not designed for this job. To access the deepest knowing of existence requires you to expand at the root of your being, to dance in communion with experience, and to live outside the controls of the survival brain. You are invited to embrace the mystery rather than to solve it, and to water the fertile soil of creation energy within you.
When uncertainty arises, it arises first in the body as an energy. You may not even recognize this if your mind is so conditioned to immediately label this sensation as “anxiety” and repel it with a variety of thought- and behavior-based strategies. But if you recognize and bear with the energetic intensity of this sensation for what it is, you will notice something else happening. With your brain’s reactivity on hold, the energy can actually awaken your being at the root. The intensity of uncertainty can activate your sacred, sexual, creative power and ignite you into full presence of being. It is only when the mind interprets the sensation as dangerous or threatening that your body reacts in kind.
People who speak of thrilling experiences, either by choice or not, speak of the intense presence it gives them. The great free climbers who risk their lives to scale a mountain face without the safety of a harness speak of this presence. Nothing else can be held in mind. From this place, their being is ignited into stillness and to thoughtless action. There is nothing to contemplate, nothing to figure out. All is provided in focus on the next step. You have a choice to resist the intensity of uncertainty or to allow it to call you into the present and to show you the true power of mindfulness.
Of course, you need not free-climb a mountain to come face to face with the power of uncertainty. Some like to artificially awaken the sense of thrill by watching scary movies. However, engaging in this medium is only another form of control to play out your fantasies of death and destruction in the mind, trusting the stories are not real. The mind is naturally wired to think it’s way out of distress, and watching this play out on a screen is no different. You may think of uncertainty as an overwhelming experience that causes you to withdraw, isolate, and seize up. This is not inherent in the experience itself but a result your brain’s strategy for control and survival. The more trauma you carry, the narrower your brain’s tolerance for uncertainty and the quicker it may signal danger or threat.
One way to begin healing and releasing these traumatized parts is to expose yourself, in tolerable doses of course, to the uncertainty of the moment and to allow the scar tissue of your conditioning to be slowly broken open. Through this practice of exposure, you upgrade your nervous system and allow a different source of power to emerge, one not fueled by control but by freedom. From the confines of your brain’s controls, you literally cannot imagine a more expansive future for your life, it is not in your wiring to do so. Whether it is a fear of spiders, a faulty relationship, or a question of your purpose here, you cannot yet envision a greater possibility for your life from within the traumatized condition. It is only from a place of exposure and freedom that you can begin to see, smell, taste, and touch a grander vision take shape. Only once you are outside the fishbowl do you realize what you have been swimming in. From a new vantage point, you are invited to dance in the rhythm of a greater universal unfolding and connection to the source of all things, knowing for certain that you have a vital part to play in it all.
To truly dance with uncertainty is to go beyond thought and beyond the story. You are invited to forget your character arc for a moment and look beyond the current circumstances, tolerating the sensation of not knowing all that is meant for you. This way, you begin to detangle yourself from the mind’s controls and perceived plot points in order to allow a greater storyline to emerge. With practice, you will grow more comfortable without a clear road map of what comes next in the story of your life. You will find yourself able to take action more easily, without hesitation or delay, and without the need to “think through” every step of the way. This does not mean you should act carelessly or impulsively. Quite the opposite. The energy of uncertainty is an invitation to know your “true North” from a compass that belongs to the higher realms of existence and exists deep within you when you align with its natural rhythm. You notice this rhythm when you walk in nature, it is slower and more graceful. The rhythm of the mind is jagged, anxious, perpetually seeking and clawing for safety or achievement. From this deeper, more natural rhythm, you do not act out of cowardice, greed, or lack, but from a connection and service to all things.
In this place of present-focus and connection, uncertainty is more tolerable because you are not bearing it alone but with the support of all life. You are a part of all things and this rhythm of existence flows through you just as it does the trees and the rivers. You recognize a deeper stillness, the kind of stillness only found in the mountains or other sacred environments, and you become more like the tree - a vessel for all creation. You become more of the human be-ing and less of the human do-ing. Learning to tolerate such degrees of uncertainty as they arise offers an expansion of awareness, of possibilities, and of the many paths available to you to flow through life with trust in its grand unfolding. You need not seek out uncertainty, it is all around you if you simply settle in to the moment with curiosity and openness to what will come next. Paradoxically, learning to tolerate the intensity of uncertainty transmutes the idea of fear into the power of conviction. At the root of your being lives the knowing that all is well, all will be provided, and all is ultimately for your highest growth and understanding, even if you cannot see it clearly just yet.