Your Birthright of Ambiguity, Uncertainty and Not Knowing

So many classes about to begin, new people to work with, ideas popping right and left, projects underway….

….in my mind yesterday I suddenly thought “it’s too much, I’m forgetting things, it’s going too fast, I need to narrow it down, too many emails to reply to, something will get missed, this class needs to start a week later, that one needs to get postponed, must finish book proposal for awaiting editor by yesterday, focus is scattered”.  

It’s like looking at a gorgeous Victorian home that has not been lived in for 40 years. You inherited the house two years ago and began making plans, hiring the architect, getting blueprints, sorting out how to restore and improve this beautiful building from the studs up.

But you don’t exactly have thousands of dollars to draw from to put into this place. So it’s taking awhile.

But the plans are in place, you’ve had lots of good experience, you’ve imagined with joy what this will look like.

And yet, in one moment “this will never get done”.

Followed by a feeling of deflation. The air went out of the balloon and there is a little wrinkled bag of rubber in its place.

The party’s over.

And then, depending on the magnitude of the loss….perhaps a relationship that you’ve worked on for several years is really ending, perhaps the house will go into foreclosure, perhaps you’ve been binge-eating like this for two decades off and on…

total despair.

This will never get done….I’ll never get there. 

Time for The Work.

Is it true?

I don’t know. But with this feeling of giving up, feeling hopeless, wanting to quit, throw in the towel, bag the whole thing…..it’s likely.

Can you absolutely know it is true, that you’ll never get there? That this vision you have will never come to fruition? That you won’t accomplish “x” or have “y” in the way you dream of?

No. Not true. I just Don’t Know. That’s all.

How do you react when you believe something will never happen that you’d like to have happen?

How do you react when you think that Not Knowing whether it will happen or not is somehow SAD?

I demand to KNOW.

I think knowing what’s going on is better than not knowing. I don’t like all this open space.

I have visions of saying “I quit!” to the universe. Shaking my fist at the ceiling.

I believe that what’s happening is chaotic, too much, not right and disappointing. I’m pissy.

But who would you be without the thought that what you are hoping for, what you want, what you envision will never get done, you will never get there, it will never happen?

Wow.

I’d take another step.

In the story of the Hobbit there was discouragement, disappointment, terror, hopelessness….but no one ever sat down in the middle of the road and said “I am not going any farther. I give up. It’s over.”

They definitely thought it. They had their moments.

But without the thought that it will never happen and you will never get what you want, ever….

….this moment becomes fresher, more alive.

Without the belief that I will never get THERE, I feel excited. I look around this room where I sit.

My favorite loose cotton tangerine yoga pants, a cup of herbal tea with honey and milk, seasoned raw zucchini strips just brought by a good friend on the table beside me, a cardboard box cut open across the room on a desk, the sun beaming through window slats and making all the crumbs under the dining room table glow.

This moment.

“As human beings, not only do we seek resolution, but we also feel that we deserve resolution. However, not only do we not deserve resolution, we suffer from resolution. We don’t deserve resolution; we deserve something better than that. We deserve our birthright, which is the middle way, an open state of mind that can relax with paradox and ambiguity.” ~ Pema Chodron

Could it be that this place of not knowing, of not having an answer, of seeing what I want and yet feeling ambiguity, failure, striving, possible loss…

…could it be that this here now is the most wonderful place of all?

What if never getting there and never having it get done is fine, OK….even good, advantageous, perfect for me right now.

How exciting! Joy can be here, now….without whatever it is getting “done”.

With much love,