We live in uncertain times. As humans, this is probably always true. It is talked about in the first truth of the 4 Noble Truths. One of the first phrases I began hearing in Tibetan in India in 1971 was nam chi cha med, there is no definiteness to the time of death. Uncertainty abounds.
Pema Chodron has written a very meaningful book, Comfortable with Uncertainty. We read a page every Sunday and have brief discussions about it.
We are approaching a very important election and for many, whichever side you are on, it feels like there is much uncertainty in the air.
What I like about Pema Chodron’s approach is that she encourages awareness of uncertainty and learning to fully experience it. Very profound. It allows us to appreciate what all beings feel from time to time. Almost all of us from a young age, have learned how to minimize discomfort and anxiety. Technically, therapist call the ways we do this, defenses. We can distract, rationalize, get into our heads, avoid, numb, or deny, and these are just a few of the things we do to avoid feeling discomfort, uncertainty, or anxiety. For dharma practitioners to move through defenses and feel more deeply is actually a significant skill. And In terms of deepening our empathic capacity, being more in touch with our vulnerability is very heart opening.
There is one caveat. This is not for everyone at every moment. Some of us may have had difficulties somewhere in our lives that leave us vulnerable to not being able to tolerate too much anxiety. If we are exposed to discomfort or anxiety, outside of a zone of tolerance we may have an extreme reaction in either our sympathetic or parasympathetic nervous system. The former may look like an anxiety or panic attack, the latter can look like getting very still, zoning out, or in a more extreme form, dissociating—moving out of awareness temporarily. Neither of these extremes is fruitful for our meditative practice and need to be avoided. David Treleaven has written wisely about this in Trauma Informed Mindfulness Practice. Ernest Becker, in a kind of amazing book, the Denial of Death argues if we were free from defenses and fully in touch with the reality of the instability of life, we would all be insane. So as practitioners, while we cultivate a mindfulness of the uncertainty in life, we need to be cautious with our awareness of uncertainty, and instability. We need to know our own capacity.
For many, in diverse circumstances, it is heart opening, and conducive to empathy and compassion to encourage being with the experiences of uncertainty. When we allow ourselves to know discomfort, compassion for self and other can tenderly emerge. For others, or ourselves, under certain circumstances it is too much. In such circumstances we need to become familiar with ways of modulating sympathetic or parasympathetic intensity. We may need to interrupt a sitting/meditation/or contemplation. It may help to talk to an understanding companion/friend/therapist. Some form of physical engagement or movement, breathing, or grounding may be helpful. Certain foods/diets might need to be encouraged, others discouraged.
We are entering a highly uncertain moment in our national history. We all will be faced with our own levels of engagement with uncertainty. It can be a moment of deepening appreciation for the vulnerability of human experience. And we need to be mindful of our own capacity, and keep our experience, if possible, within our own zone of tolerance.