“We are all of us getting a doctorate level education in living with uncertainty and ungroundedness.”
~Jillian Pransky
Are you like me? Do you wish to control your environment? How is that working out for you? During these times of rapid transition, when seemingly the world is on fire, how are you dealing with this uncertainty, this sense of finding no solid footing anywhere? I find myself constantly searching and grasping for advice from professionals, looking for new tools which I can use to bring myself out of this seemingly endless spiral and searching for something I can control..
There must be an answer, there must be some help, there must be some guidance! I am praying, begging, searching…. All of this is exhausting. And I feel as if I am not accomplishing anything. Which makes me more frustrated. Which sends me searching and spiraling into further depths of doubt and agony.
Do you relate? Even as I write these words, I paused to google the following quote, feeling that I need someone else’s words as reinforcement.
“I have been a seeker and I still am, but I stopped asking the books and the stars. I started listening to the teaching of my Soul.” ~Rumi
What will it take for me to stop searching outside of myself? At my essence, I KNOW that the answer lies within me. How do I trust that? How do I trust that this internal knowing is enough?
This is the realm of my spiritual practice. And you notice that I use the term “practice.” It is not “spiritual perfection.” Or “Spiritual Knowledge.” This type of inner exploration will always be practice. Of course, my hopeful, illogical mind keeps telling me that someday I will figure it all out and then I’ll live happily ever after. Do you have this type of mind as well? Yes, that is what it means to be human.
In my searching for solutions, for answers, for the end of the searching, I keep coming across the assertion that this is what this “Aquarian Age” is really all about. At this time, we are being asked to shift from thinking and doing to believing and trusting. Our task is to transition from living in the mind to listening to and trusting our soul. Looking to our essence, our deeper self which knows so much more than the mind.
My mind takes objection to this shift. It asserts, no, it screams, “I have brought you this far. I have never steered you wrong – I have kept you safe! If I hadn’t kept you safe, you wouldn’t even be here right now. Just the fact that you are currently here on earth, still alive and breathing means that I have done my job!”
Yes. That, exactly, is the job of the conscious mind. My favorite image of the so called “rational mind” is of a sophisticated computer. It records and categorizes everything you have ever thought, said, heard, read or encountered. Then it uses these records of past experiences to project into the present and the future.
Yet most of us have the idea that the conscious mind is who we are. We allow this “rational mind” to direct not only our thoughts, but our actions and feelings.
My practice, currently, is to return home to my gut, my essence, my soul, if you will. Over and over again. As often I find myself in awfulizing mind, spinning, searching, I redirect my awareness to my breath and to my inner knowingness. To that sense of, “This is who I am.” And I let it be enough.
