If you are just learning to live in the present moment, it takes a while to get the hang of leaving the past and the future alone. It's the ego's for confusion.
Learning to Love Not Knowing
Hi Everyone,
I thought you might enjoy this excerpt from my friend Gina Lake's book
Anatomy of Desire: How to Be Happy Even When You Don’t Get What You Want. More excerpts from her books are on my website: http://www.facebook.com/l.php?u=http://www.radicalhappiness.com
Love & Light
Earthangel9250
Rene
Learning to Love Not Knowing
We
torture ourselves trying to know things we can’t know—and we get angry
because we don’t know. Most of all, we want to know what’s going to
happen in the story of me? Will I get what I want or not? Wanting to
know what’s going to happen is very intimately tied with our desires:
We want to know what’s going to happen because we want what we want to
happen. Sometimes we want what we want so much it hurts, and sometimes
we fear what we don’t want so much it hurts. We suffer immensely over
our desires and wondering if life will ever be the way we want it to be.
Underlying
all this desiring is the assumption that we can get what we want or
ward off what we don’t want by thinking about it. It’s not that our
actions don’t contribute to creating our future—they do—but there are
so many unknowns in any situation that we really can’t be sure if we
will get what we want or don’t want until we do or don’t.
Nothing
we do can give us that surety, not thinking, planning, or dreaming
about the future, not even wanting something very, very strongly. There
is a magical side to us that secretly believes that if we wish
something strongly enough it will come true, as if wishing, itself, has
any power. This is one reason our desires become so strong—we believe
in them. We believe they have some ability to make our dreams come
true.
Our desires are not powerful at all. Instead, they
weaken us by focusing our attention on thoughts rather than on what’s
coming out of this Mystery right now. Perhaps essence is trying to
co-create something much better with us, but it can’t get our attention
because we are dreaming about something else. This happens all the time
actually, and essence waits patiently for the opportunity to present
its intentions and agenda. Sometimes it gets through and sometimes it
doesn’t. Many structure their lives according to the ego’s dreams and
desires without ever realizing that another more fulfilling life is
possible. Essence allows us to do this because this is how we are
learning to be creators.
To discover what essence intends, we
have to fall in love with not knowing and with the quiet and stillness
in which essence appears and communicates. As long as we want to know,
we will be in the grasp of the ego because the ego promises knowing,
even when that isn’t possible. As long as we are in denial about the
truth that we don’t know, we will turn to the ego for answers and
believe it has them because we want to believe that.
We want
to know so badly that we pretend we can. We join the ego’s world of
make believe, where our dreams and ideas about the future seem real and
important. We try to squeeze some juice out of them, but they always
disappoint us because they are only ideas. Ideas may entertain us for a
while, but they never satisfy. Only what is real can satisfy, and for
that we have to return to the moment and stay there long enough to
experience it.
We are programmed to want to know, and we are
programmed to believe the ego, so we have to remind ourselves
repeatedly that we don’t and can’t know when we find ourselves trying
to or pretending to. This tendency has to be seen again and again
before it loosens and we begin to accept that we don’t know. Then it
may take a while before we actually fall in love with not
knowing—before we actually see that true knowing comes out of that
space that seems so empty of knowing. We learn to listen to the
stillness and wait to catch knowing when it does arise. This is a new
way of living—a very new way—and it takes some getting used to before
it becomes second nature.
Wanting to know something before it’s
time to know keeps us in a state of discontentment. No matter how good
our circumstances are, if we are wanting something—even just wanting to
know something—this can keep us from being happy and grateful. Since
the ego is always wanting to know but unable to, it’s never content
with what it does know. It focuses on what it doesn’t know and remains
discontent.
One way out of this dilemma is to appreciate what you do know. What do you know
for certain to be true right now? Do you know that the sun is shining
(or not)? Do you know that you are breathing? Do you know that you feel
relaxed (or tense)? Focusing on what you do know will bring you into
the moment and out of your mind, where you can feel some relief from
the ego’s discontentment and drive to know.
Gratitude for what
you do know can be extended to what you don’t know. Yes, you can also
be grateful for what you don’t know. Essence is. Essence loves the
unknown. It’s juicy and exciting to not know. The ego doesn’t focus on
the deliciousness of not knowing, but it’s there. Not knowing makes
life interesting: What’s going to happen next? When you don’t take life
so personally, waiting to see what will happen next is exciting.
This
attitude requires a certain level of surrender, which the ego isn’t
capable of. The ego is all about control, which is why it suffers. It
tries to control what it can’t. It doesn’t accept (surrender to) the
fact that it isn’t in control of life. When you surrender to this fact,
you can enjoy the ride life is taking you on. Essence is co-creating
this life with you. You can give it some more of the reins and enjoy
it, or you can try to take the reins yourself and not enjoy it.
Surrender is really only giving up the control you never had in the
first place. It’s admitting you never were in control. So relax, and
enjoy what happens next. You can be sure something will.
Exercise: Falling in Love with Not Knowing
Notice
all the things you don’t know: You don’t know that the sun will rise
tomorrow. You don’t know that you will be alive even another hour—or
minute. You don’t know what will happen. And yet, you assume a lot
about life. These assumptions keep you out of touch with the truth—that
there is an alive Mystery here, unfolding unpredictably. What fun!
Notice how the mind assumes it knows what’s going to happen, not only
in the next moment, but tomorrow, next week, even next year. This is
how it keeps us out of the freshness of the moment.
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