Being with Uncertainty.

We discover through mindfulness and meditation practice that uncertainty need not be a problem, a cause of anxiety or self-doubt.

A life without uncertainty is impossible and a demanding quest to avoid or eliminate it will not produce an abundance of safety or satisfaction.

In our practice we learn that it is okay to rest with uncertainty. We trust a process of mind and body that is nothing to do with our restless, clamouring, conscious mind. The process requires trust, compassion and kindness, particularly to the self. It requires a certain stillness, and a steady patience.

The uncertainty is not something we try to push away or get rid of. It is something we acknowledge fully, accommodate and view as a necessary feature of the human condition. We see, observe, that this uncertainty is not the whole of what we are. We rest in the understanding that, like everything else, uncertainty is not a permanent state.

We wait for solutions to emerge. They do this without any forcing, nudging, prompting. They do not require constant rumination.

In East Coker, T.S Eliot wrote, 'Wait without thought, for you are not ready for thought: So the darkness shall be the light, and the stillness the dancing.'

In Shakespeare's Twelfth Night, Viola, finding herself in a complicated, confused mess says, 'O time, thou must untangle this, not I. It is too hard a knot for me to untie'.

To be uncertain is far better than to be 'certainly wrong'. To abide steadily with uncertainty is one of the joys of mindfulness and meditation. We see it as light, not darkness, as movement, not stillness, as a dance without a dancer, a puppet show with no one pulling strings.