Some of us are living times of great uncertainty about their future nowadays. This uncertainty can touch different areas of life and sometimes many areas can be in crisis simultaneously. Very often, our natural controlling behaviours dominate our attitudes and create the inability to leave space for surprises in our life and even with a positive attitude, when you’ve just lost a job or when you face difficulties in your private life, uncertainty can bring a lot of fear and frustration. Just like the temptations sent to the Buddha during his meditation under a tree, our “old devils” come to tempt us and try to make us believe that this uncertainty is a synonymous for insecurity.
Then a thirst to know more about the future emerges from within, with a throng of questionings and the urgent need to find answers. We can then ask ourselves if it’s really helpful for our spiritual growth to know more about the future.
Usually, the last months of the year and the arrival of winter are always suitable moments for introspection and a check up before the fresh start of the new coming year, full of promises and resolutions that we want to bring into our life. During a recent spiritual retreat in Ida mountain in Turkey, I commit myself to let go a lot of old patterns that I sensed to be a weight for my spiritual growth. The main topic on which I focused on to make me move forward and achieve more happiness was to work on feeling comfortable with uncertainty about specific points of my life: a challenge for a medium used to live with insights and guidance about the past or the future.
“I am at ease with uncertainty and I go with the flow of the Universe”…
…I repeated peacefully this sentence like a mantra…over again, focusing on the flow of the river in front of me, enjoying the ideal temperature, the rays of sunshine on my skin and the Nature around witnessing this moment of bliss…It just felt fantastic to be able to reach this state of acceptance and confidence in the Divine timing and to be content without knowing anything about what would arrive around the corner of my destiny… Welcoming the unknown like a possibility to exciting new ventures was like a door opening to a lighter life, far from the ponderings of the mental.
Shifting from uncertainty to total acceptance and feeling comfortable with it, is transforming lead to gold; a real alchemical process. This “path in the middle” is the one which leads us to happiness and contentment, avoiding any negative projections on a possible future which can be very different from what we imagine in the confusion of our mental. It’s very important to experience this state in a personal way; we have to live it from within in order to realize that it is not only words, but a powerful way to be in the essence of things.
Through time, many spiritual texts have insisted on the power of ‘’here and now”: when we manage just to live in the moment, there is no place for wanderings anymore: sufferings from the past, regrets or even resentments such as fears regarding our future, literally vanish in front of our ability to focus on the present moment. We simply “ARE” in the Grace of the moment, suspended…
Disciplines like meditation can help us to facilitate this “acuity to the present moment” where there is no space for discomfort regarding uncertainty anymore, one of the main teachings of Krishnamurti.
Living in uncertainty and in the unknown with being in full contentment and peace of mind in the present moment can be really challenging; it obliges us to settle unconditional acceptance within us and to remember that we are agents of the Divine who will have to trust the plans that the Universe has for us. We can’t imagine how much magical events we can live by adjusting our life to this Cosmic law…until we experience it: and it’s so much worth it.
“We have two eyes to see two sides of things, but there must be a third eye which will see everything at the same time and yet not see anything.” Zen Master D.T Suzuki.
Rita Minassian 