Stepping into the Unknown
Connie Burns • Black Mountain, NC

The dark days of Winter are approaching, time for going in and germinating seeds. It’s time for finding sparks of light in the darkness and spreading laughter in the cold. I always think about hope at this season, and about its role in my life.

This year I’ve been learning more about being present and being in the present, about not letting my thoughts about the past or the future keep me from experiencing this moment, this interaction as fully as I can. I can’t always do that so well, but at least I’m becoming more aware of when I’m not doing it.

One of the things I’ve become aware of is how my thoughts about the future polarize my emotions. Sometimes I have moments of hope that we’re somehow going to pull ourselves out of the miasma of narcissistic destruction we’re perpetrating on the planet and find a way to live in peace with all the beings living here. Ahhhh, I sigh with relief. More often, however, I find myself in grief and despair about how many of the miraculous beings that are living here we’ve already destroyed.

Recently I’ve become acutely aware of how much time and energy I spend trying to envision the future, trying to figure out what’s going to happen. Then I feel hope or despair depending on which picture I focus on in the moment.

I have many friends who encourage me to stay in hope and visualize peace. That feels good and I know that it is a powerful contribution. Sometimes I can do that and feel completely at peace with it. But there are other times when it feels like I’m sticking my head in the sand– that in order to stay there I have to refuse to hear or see information that tells me that we are consuming more and more of the planet and with the human population continuing to grow as it is…

I have company in other folks (and lots of books I read) to sink into my despair and work through the pain of realizing that we probably have already gone too far for the planet to continue to support us. From there I simply hope that we leave enough of her intact so that once we’re gone, life can renew itself here. Once I go through the grief, there is a certain relief and peace in my acceptance of that.

Lately, I’ve had the radical thought that I really just don’t know what might happen. Not only do I not know what’s going to happen– the truth is I can’t even begin to imagine all the possibilities of what could happen! And all my efforts to imagine and visualize and manifest and know are really just my Ego seeking some security. After all, better to be prepared for the worst (or part of helping to manifest the best) than to be caught drifting in not knowing!

It seems to me that as a culture, we have a peculiar horror of not knowing. Maybe it’s a part of our belief that we are the apex of evolution, and that our brains and our knowledge are the ultimate expressions of consciousness. Whatever it is, it seems to me that this trying to know keeps me from staying present to the Now, to this moment when I cannot know what the future holds, only what is here right now. I can’t know all the possible consequences of any choice I might make. After all, horrifying as the thought of war is to me, maybe going to war with Iraq will create a chain of events that lead to a new consciousness of peace. I can’t know for sure, can I? All I can do is be true to what feels right to me in this moment and act from there, and continue to do that as each new moment unfolds.

I’m not suggesting with this idea that we shouldn’t try to think things through or use our minds to look at the possible consequences of our choices. I am suggesting that as we do that, we keep in mind that our minds are too small to be able to see the whole picture. That it is part of our obsession with control that we pretend that we can envision the best possible future. After all, the alternative is to accept that we really don’t know, and my guess is that that’s pretty terrifying for most of us. We rely on using our brains to figure things out to give us a sense of security.

Many times we stay in abusive or inappropriate relationships, jobs and situations because we at least know what to expect, awful as it is. The idea of not knowing can feel even more terrifying than continuing to put up with the abuse– after all, through being in it, we’ve learned a lot about how to deal with it and who we are in that kind of relationship. Who would we be if we stopped? What might life invite us or challenge us to?

Not knowing who we might end up being or what our lives might look like is often the biggest obstacle we face in making change, even when it’s a potentially positive change. All of the what if’s begin to show up. What if I’m successful and no one likes me anymore? What if I fail and no longer have this dream to hold onto? What if I become a different person and no longer value the things that are important to me right now?

We want to change our lives without risking moving into the unknown, and we want to change the world without taking the very same risk. The truth is that we don’t know what other people are going to do– we don’t even know for sure what we’re going to do in the future, so we can’t know what the future of humanity looks like. We can certainly put our intentions out there, but they are moving into a space filled with the intentions of many other beings, and we don’t know what the interaction of all those energies will create.

So what’s the benefit of going into not knowing? Why do that when it feels better to stay in hope? One benefit is that it allows me to be more conscious in each moment of what is actually happening so that I can respond to it clearly. If I’m holding on to my pictures of "how I want it to be," I am less able to stay open to what is– especially if it contradicts my vision. This may keep me from acting in some of the places I need to act in order to be in integrity.

I’m also aware that I cannot begin to know all the possible ways that things could turn out– maybe even better than I can imagine. If I’m holding on to my picture, I may fail to respond to the opportunity to participate in something even better! Being in not knowing keeps my mind open. If I don’t know, I have to keep looking, I have to stay aware and keep seeking opportunities to bring more love, peace and compassion into the world.

For me there is another reason for learning to sit in not knowing. I have found great power in discovering that I can continue to love, continue to open my heart, continue to fight for what I believe in, even when I have no guarantee of getting the results I want. Staying in not knowing breaks my heart. I have to let it be broken open again and again. I have to get bigger and bigger in order to be able to hold the contradictions of my hope and despair, my feelings, my intentions and my dreams of what could happen within the context of not knowing. It feels like that expansion is a part of my purpose in being here.

I don’t know if not knowing is a part of your spiritual journey or not, but I hope that in this season of darkness, you’ll be open enough to look for stars where you didn’t even dream they’d be.

Connie Burns is Creations’ Managing Editor as well as a psychotherapist in private practice, teacher and workshop leader. She will be be co-leading the P.E.E.R.™ I Training, Awakening the Emotional Body, March 15-16 on Long Island. Contact her at (828) 669-2348. For a brochure about the training, call (888) 745-PEER.