Embracing Uncertainty
“To be in the world but not of it, you must be able to embrace uncertainty and chaos. You must give up trying to know things with the mind, as if mental certainty—something you will never get—will deliver you from life’s inherent uncertainty. You cannot ever know things with complete certainty. An awakened person doesn’t know things with absolute certainty, as if thought could deliver Truth. She is absolute certainty, regardless of any thoughts that may appear. An awakened person enjoys just being with what is and letting the future take care of itself. Wanting certainty in life is like skipping to the end of a novel to find out what happens, or wanting to learn the end of a movie without watching it—only in life, the story never ends, and you miss all the good parts. It blocks your joy of the Now and makes life feel incomplete, like you’re missing something.
Chaos is constant. You cannot predict when things will go wrong. “Wrong” just means chaotic or unexpectedly out of control. Chaotic circumstances are not ultimately wrong, just messy. Life is never going to get more orderly or certain than it already is. If you create order in one place, chaos erupts elsewhere. If you wait for certainty, it will never happen. The awakened life is not completely certain, as the mind might have it. In a way, it is completely uncertain, involving total trust. It is Wisdom. In that sense, it is complete and hence completely uncertain, but only on the level of Being. On the level of the mind, it is out of control. The mind cannot grasp it, cannot comprehend it. Knowledge is necessary for getting by in the world, but it cannot give you certainty. It is the uncertainty and chaos of life that makes it spontaneous and fun. You have to let go of the mind to get there.”
– from Ten Paths to Freedom by James Wood
Svaha 