The Gift of the Unknown is to Play in Reality as It Truly is

The human brain is wired for certainty. This doesn’t mean that anything is really certain, just that the brain and the human condition prefer habits, patterns, knowns and certainty so that it feels safe. Much of “civilization” is our collective effort to make the uncertain certain, the unknowable known, the unpredictable predictable—even if it is all a collective mind game.

We humans internalize layer upon layer of collective illusion, label it reality, and create rules, laws and regulations that reenforce the illusion of certainty.

But nothing is inherently certain, except perhaps the illusion of death—a topic for another time.

The illusion of certainty is the plaything of past and future thinking, which are themselves a plaything of the self-reflective mind. The past is a game of evidence mining, and the future a game of prediction based on evidence from the past.  

But life, and existence itself, are inherently uncertain, and thus, fundamentally unknowable. No matter what evidence you use to predict the future, what actually happens is always a crapshoot.

When you rest in the unknown, when you can be open to the learned terror of the uncertain, you become free, if just for a moment, of all the rules you’ve lived by and the evidence you’ve gathered. You are free to experience and navigate the moment from the thrill of the unknown, like a kayaker on a fresh set of river rapids, or a surfer on a towering wave, or a toddler learning to walk.

Far from the scary place of monsters and madness, the unknown is where you find life’s magic, new possibility, and your own magnificence.

It is where your deep unknown being reveals itself to you, and invites you to explore beneath the surface illusion of certainty and the games of past & future thinking.

The unknown is where the adventure of life lies.

To play in this field:

1) Shift your attention from the noisy mind into the quiet heart, and breath the silence into your whole being.

2) In the silence, notice what is without mentally evaluating it. Simply be.

3) Notice what the experience is, free from all your thoughts and emotions about what it is, without the rules you use to evaluate good from bad, right from wrong.

4) Listen for the inner stirring about how to respond, and follow its flow.

Over time, as you practice being in the unknown, this inner stirring becomes louder and easier to notice, and flowing from your deep wisdom in the unknown becomes your new reality.