The thing about thoughts and words is that they often don’t like each other, especially if the thought is an attempted insight about the human condition. At least this is true for me. Often when thinking in this regard, I am using words in a different way than we ordinarily do. I use them to describe stories and experiences that have brought me to formulate the thought in question. This is a long way of saying, please bear with me.
I want to say something about ‘uncertainty.’ Not the word itself but the energy (experience) to which it refers. Uncertainty is a state of being that might be described as a loss of confidence derived from not knowing or feeling unsure. It is usually not a comfortable state or a welcome one either. There is an openness or ambiguity that we perceive in a situation to which the sensation of uncertainty is a reaction. Already I am bending the rules of sense. Uncertainty is not usually conjoined with the term ‘sensation.’ But that’s the experience I want to talk about – the sensation of uncertainty, that is, what we feel within our mind-body relationship when we feel uncertain.
Sometimes the sensation of uncertainty is confined to the head, like trying to remember someone’s phone number and being uncertain. Other times uncertainty includes the body, for example, when walking into a very dark room that has unseen furniture in it. We tend to react to uncertainty with all different kinds of emotions, for example, fear, anger, frustration, or feelings of inadequacy and helplessness. Depending on the intensity of these reactions, they often include the body, not just the mind – a rush of fear being an obvious example. As human beings, we also grow accustomed to living with distant but perpetual sensations of uncertainly – we are so miniscule in such a vast universe, so many things are out of our control. Not knowing everything is a constant state of the human condition. It becomes part of how we live
This finally brings me to the thought I want to share: The sensation of uncertainty is part of transformation. Or put more carefully but also more obtusely: the underlying energy within the human condition to which the sensation of uncertainty is a reaction is a necessary part of transformation. The energy of uncertainty is not solved; it is absorbed. It must be folded into whatever is changing within us. Think about when you moved out on your own for the first time or went away to college – the apprehension, the angst. We move forward in life not with comfort of certainty, but with an uneasy openness to the expanse of new possibility. If you cannot reconcile these uneasy feelings, personal growth does not happen. Adventure is lost.
Human consciousness has come upon an amazing solution to perpetual uncertainty. We have realized ‘faith,’ an energetic ability to sustain confidence in what’s happening despite the existential presence of an unsolvable uncertainty. Ironically, having faith in something intangible, in something unseen or improvable, somehow harnesses the underlying existential energy of uncertainty and directs it into better living. We relinquish control over the vastness of existence and possibility to a Higher Power and thus relieve ourselves from the burden of direct awareness. The point is that the realization of faith transforms the sensation of uncertainty into more confident, contented living and thus empowers us as human beings.
So what if you don’t have access to this kind of faith? Allow that uncertainty comes with the territory when stepping more fully into your life. Recognize it as a mind-body sensation and do some things to support yourself. Even out-of-the-box things might help, like lying spread-eagled on the floor, opening yourself to the expanse of open space while supporting your spine. Stay patient with all the sensations of change, stay grounded, and keep moving in your life at a slow but steady pace. Enjoy the multi-faceted adventure of transformation.