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The Healing of Uncertainty

By Mary O'Malley  |  April 1, 2018

Many years ago, I was taught a simple but profound meditation.  On your in breath you say 3 times, Clear mind, clear mind, clear mind.  Then, with a long, slow out breath you say, don’t know.

We live in a mind that always has to know.  It tries to figure out, analyze and control life.  This keeps you caught in your head, cut off from the joy of being here for life.  It also generates fear, resistance, judgment, helplessness and even hopelessness. It is the kind of mind humanity has lived in since our beginnings and all you need to do is look at history to see what heartache it has generated.

Don’t know to your mind is terrifying.  I once heard a quote that says, “We chose the certainty of our misery over the misery of uncertainty.”  In other words, we stay in our minds, trying to control life and being afraid of what is going to happen because that is what we are familiar with.  But there is no certainty in our minds, just a constant low-grade struggle.

Maybe uncertainty doesn’t have to equal misery.  Maybe don’t know can open you into the freedom that is always here, right outside of your struggling mind.  If you play with don’t know, you will begin to see the power of cultivating the art of not having to know; of not having to control life; of letting go for a moment here and a moment there and actually being here for the only moment that matters, now!

The invitation is to say don’t know a number of times, allowing it to open you into the healing power of not having to know!  Just feel that place for a moment.  The blessed relief in don’t know invites you into a place beyond the dualistic mind whose deepest addiction is struggling with life. It opens you up into the spaciousness that everything, including your struggling mind, is happening in – the spaciousness that is your true nature.

Don’t know isn’t afraid of life.  In fact, don’t know trusts life at a deep level.  What if you realized that, even with all the chaos, divisiveness and fear that is being generated in our world now, life knows what it is doing?  For heaven’s sake, it brought forth everything that you can see, including you, from stardust!  And at one time you were a cell so tiny it couldn’t be seen by the naked eye and yet it developed into 70 trillion cells that all work together without any input from you!

So, at a very deep level you trust life.  You trust it to bring spring forth after winter.  You trust it to bring day out of night.  Maybe, rather than being afraid of what is unfolding now on our planet, you begin to rest in don’t know.  You will then be able to have moments in which, rather than seeing life through the lens of the dualistic mind which is always turning everything into a problem, you will be able to see through the lens of your heart.

And it is in the spaciousness of your beautiful heart that our planet will be healed.

 

  1. That’s beautifully insightful, Mary. It’s so “easy” and familiar to go along with the mind and its “knowing” with all the chaos and torment that implies without even realizing there is another way to live that is invariably at peace even in less than optimal circumstances. Your books and website open people to that very possibility, which the majority of people in the world, being stuck in the default setting, are simply unaware. Much gratitude for your words of wisdom, as always.

    1. The way I find most helpful in meeting fear is to notice and relate to the part of me that is afraid – it is usually a very young part – and I offer it comfort as if it were a child.

  3. Interesting. I will do this and see the freedom you suggest. I recall being with others and not knowing what they were actually talking about and instead of saying I don’t know I would act like I understood.

  4. just beautiful! Always feel grateful and refreshed after reading your weekly article. I appreciate you, Mary