On Uncertainty

It’s all just an approximation. That’s the core issue of the egoic mind. The egoic mind is the mind that wants, needs, to define everything. It seeks complete certainty.

Yet, the egoic mind is a subset of the, well, bigger mind, which itself is just a function of our brains. We are not our brains. We are the consciousness that is aware of our brains.

“Awareness isn’t something we own; awareness isn’t something we possess. Awareness is actually what we are.”―Adyashanti

And, our experience of consciousness? Well, it’s subjective. Meaning, it’s literally not objective. We can’t measure it like we measure grains of sand. I will never know your experience. You will never know mine.

All we can hope to do, maybe, is share an approximation. To communicate something in words that points to our actual experience. But those words do not actually contain the experience. They don’t even tell the complete story. They can’t. They’re an approximation.

Even the words in our own minds don’t convey our own full experience to our own selves… whoa

Which is the core issue of the egoic mind. It needs certainty. It needs to know, well, everything. But it can’t. And so it seeks certainty wherever it can.

Oh well! That’s what it does. So let the egoic mind do its thing. Thankfully, we don’t need to identify with it. We don’t need to let it run the show.

Where do you seek certainty? Is there somewhere in your life that you could embrace uncertainty more?

"Become at ease with the state of 'not knowing'. This takes you beyond mind because the mind is always trying to conclude and interpret. It is afraid of not knowing. So, when you can be at ease with not knowing, you have already gone beyond the mind." —Eckhart Tolle

p.s. My partner and I just started a joint Substack, On The Path of Heart!