THE TENDER PLACE OF NOT KNOWING
Not knowing is a difficult place to be in. It can feel uncomfortable, unsettling, even stressful.
In a world that is so driven by accomplishment and achievement, it feels like you get kicked out of the tribe and you don’t belong anymore.
When you express your not knowing to others, it easily triggers their own fears around uncertainty.
Not knowing takes a lot of courage. Visually it looks like stripping yourself naked, you make yourself very vulnerable and raw, in front of everybody.
You have to breathe into this space of emptiness, be with that expansiveness. Especially when the ego and the mind wishes to immediately fill in the void.
Emotionally it can bring up feelings of sadness and grief as if you lost something very beloved and don’t know how to bring it back to you.
After the fire I found myself in this place of limbo and feeling paralyzed. A friend of mine sent me a text: ‘when everything changes, change everything.’ At first I loved it, it was my affirmation and then I noticed that it became my curse and it stopped everything because my ambitious little girl inside of me wanted to do everything right in this next chapter of my life.
I kept telling myself I don’t know. I don’t know where to live next. I don’t know if I am on the right path professionally. I don’t know who I am.
It felt like the pause button got stuck and I could not move into action, especially inspired action.
The spiritual experience of ‘I don’t know’ felt like a death. All my concepts and constructs of the ego and mind were dying.
Not knowing became a tender soft space.
It allowed me to stay present with what was.
I learned to stand my ground.
Yes – the earth grounded me and this grounding helped me to trust. I started to connect to ‘ knowing’ from a higher place.
I was reminded to live from the heart.
I was re- programming my system.
It all takes time and certainly awareness.
It takes guts to trust the waiting.
It takes courage to live from the heart.
