Uncertainty: how and why it messes with our minds
As we were getting ready to drive to the Lakes recently, I experienced a sudden sense of uncertainty: how would the fuel crisis (due to a current lack of skilled lorry drivers in the UK) affect our plans?
Uncertainty is powerful and arresting. From its initial stirrings it can quickly gain ground and ‘go viral.’
I stood back and watched the questions gathering intensity in my mind:
Would there be enough fuel in the tank for the journey?
Would there be fuel stations to fill up on the way?
Could we get stranded on the way back?
Should we just cancel the whole journey?
I could feel the spontaneous impulse to blame someone or something - the effect of which was a ramping up of emotions and tension in the body. My heart rate went up, there was a sense of outrage at our plans being obstructed, and despondency at being subject to factors beyond my control.
As a meditator you learn to recognize these reactive patterns. So I ‘backed up’ in my mind and took stock of what was happening.
“Where am I? When am I? And who am I?”
At that moment, my mind wasn't present, it wasn't peaceful, and the future felt anything but possible.
I knew that if I assented to this view of ‘reality’ - and emotionally engaged with the thinking and reacting - things would get worse and not better.
As it turned out, we did have enough fuel, and we were able to fill up on the way. The roads weren’t too busy, and the journey went off without a hitch. We arrived in good time to sit down for a lovely early evening meal - and even enjoy the sunset.
So upon rising the next morning, two questions arose in my mind:
What does this ‘certainty’ thing actually mean?
And what is there that we can be truly certain of?
When uncertainty goes viral in the mind you become hell bent on re-establishing certainty as quickly as possible. That’s what anger, frustration, and anxiety are.
But that desperate quest puts you in such a state of reactivity that the real sources of certainty become inaccessible.
When uncertainty was hijacking my mind the day before, nothing adverse had actually happened. I was safe and warm in my house with an infinite number of possibilities before me.
There was only one new variable: the experience of uncertainty itself.
What this proves is that I wasn’t actually feeling the effect of ‘the situation’ - but just the effect of my own default thinking and reactive patterns.
This is important because in general we’re all seeking something we can be certain of - we all crave a safe place to stand, and from which to move forward.
But in truth, the only real ‘certainty’ available is that which is accessed by stepping outside of the mind-made structures of our habitual thinking and reacting.
Most of the time, the ‘certainty’ we’re relating to isn't real. We put our trust in ideas like status, wealth and reputation, or in projections like made-up versions of future events - narrative storylines that we feel we’re somehow ‘moving towards.’
These ideas can give us an illusion of security for a while - but ultimately set us up for disappointment, for the simple reason that they aren’t real.
Doesn't it make sense therefore, to try something different? To seek certainty and security where they can actually be found?
Where can they be found? Only in the ‘here and now’, and only our deeper nature of peace, presence and possibility.
And therein, finally, lies a fascinating paradox: you don’t need to do anything or get anywhere to be secure.
Why? Because real certainty is always already there.
Real certainty lies within - in an appreciation of your real nature, and in the stillness of the present moment.
Your deeper nature of peace and presence is the real ‘safe’ place to stand. And the state of abundance which that gives rise to is the best way to ‘move forward’ - into the future a limitless possibilities.
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