Not Knowing What To Do: Uncertainty And Doubt

Doubt has a way of camouflaging itself. It comes sometimes with tremendous authority about what we're doing; questioning it, doubting it, not being able to commit to it, thinking there must be another way, there must be something else, not this. And when doubt is really strong, we don't do those things that are sometimes healthy or beneficial for us.

Transcript

So last week we spent some time with our emotions and getting to know them as embodied experiences.

You know embodied experiences can take a while to actually be felt,

To actually feel something in the body and to be able to to name it.

Like to feel fear and to know the felt sense can can actually be just the right amount of mindfulness for us not to react to it.

And this is a training you know.

So there's one emotion that I've been experiencing a fair amount of and so I thought I would use it as a topic of practice today and maybe you'll be able to relate to this emotion and that's the emotion of doubt.

Doubt has a way of camouflaging itself.

You know it comes sometimes with tremendous authority about what we're doing and questioning it and doubting it and not being able to commit to it to things in our life.

Thinking you know there must be another way.

There must be something else but not this.

And when doubt is really strong we don't do those things that sometimes are healthy and beneficial for us.

So from a practice point of view doubt can be the most detrimental because if we doubt our practice or doubt ourselves in the practice we can give up.

We can leave meditation altogether and stop meditating.

So the word doubt you know maybe another way of relating to it is the word uncertainty.

Like we're uncertain about what's to come.

We're uncertain about what to do.

We don't know what to do.

And if we're caught in doubt those thoughts they spin around you know questioning and doubting and uncertainty.

And I think it's very useful to distinguish between doubt that hinders and doubt that questions.

So there's doubt that's healthy.

You know questioning things like is this really true what I'm hearing right now?

You know I don't know about this.

Let me question and reflect and see if this works for me.

Like is this true for me?

So that's kind of a healthy version of doubting.

Doubt that hinders disconnects us from experience.

What happens is we pull away and we shut down.

So it creates a veil in our ability to see and be present for something.

There's confusion.

So doubt and uncertainty it just comes up in our life and in our practice.

And when it does it's as valid a focus as anything.

It's just as valid as sort of stepping back and clearly recognizing any emotion.

Oh this is doubt.

This is indecisiveness.

This is uncertainty.

And with that recognition to keep a kind of relaxed and openness.

And what happens when we're open to it is that there's a little bit and sometimes it's very small but there's a little bit of freedom.

We're not so entangled with it.

It's just an emotion and maybe it's taking up a lot of space right now.

But this metaphor of stepping back and stepping away.

This is a useful practice in our emotional life.

Look like kind of looking at where stepping back and seeing it from an objective distance.

It helps us to not become so entangled and caught in whatever the emotion.

It's kind of like the metaphor that I've heard from my teachers and one in particular that he talks about.

It's like if you're in a group of people who are all arguing and you're part of that group of argument.

And everyone's talking at once and there's a lot of participation and a lot of thinking around it and a lot of energy.

And for some reason you have to step away.

Maybe you're gonna go get a drink of water.

And you turn and you look back at the the participating group of argument.

Now you're away from it and you're watching it and you might be like oh wow look at all that energy over there.

Wow they are really going at it.

They're really caught up.

And it feels kind of nice to be away like in the fray of it and just watching and looking at it.

Maybe you really care about the argument.

You're not being aloof.

But by stepping away you can clearly recognize oh maybe maybe there's too much clinging there.

Or oh doubt is happening.

Look at that.

This is doubt.

Clear recognition you know.

So as I work with this in my own body right now I'm reminded that one of the significant causes for the arising of doubt and uncertainty is fear.

And part of our path of mindfulness is to learn to become very familiar with how anxiety and fear works for us.

And that takes a willingness to stop and to look.

One of my teachers said it would be great to print a bumper sticker that says I stop for fear.

I liked that a lot.

That would be a good sticker to have.

Stop and look and get to know it.

Because the one way to become free of fear that I'm learning and ongoingly learning.

We become free not because fear is absent.

But we become free because we're no longer caught by it.

It can still be there but it doesn't limit us.

So fear can come up as doubt.

And there can be fear about how we are going to change or not going to change by some experience.

So when there's doubt we often have to be willing to look a little deeper.

You know there's often a history or a story and we don't want to look at that.

Sometimes we're afraid to look at that.

I think one of the powerful things to do when there's anxiety and fears instead of dismissing them or trying to fix them or solve them or talk your way out of it is just that simple turning towards it.

There it is.

This is fear.

This is doubt.

This is uncertainty.

And the felt sense,

What it feels like in my body,

For me it lives right between my eyes as pressure.

And my breath is generally more shallow.

And my belly is tighter.

And I'm not able to focus as well.

And I've said this many times in practice and I really I can't hear it enough so maybe you can't either.

And that is what our emotional life really needs.

All of our emotions.

Doubt,

Uncertainty,

Fear,

Happiness,

Joy.

All of them.

What they need from us is they need to feel safe.

Our task is to help emotions,

Even these challenging emotions,

Feel safe.

We're not trying to fix them or get away from them.

I'm not embarrassed by my doubt or my fear.

It's okay.

It can be there.

And we're not even trying to overcome it.

Although I have to say that where I get caught is often in that trying to overcome it.

But realizing my uncertainty,

My fear and doubt is not going to feel safe if it doesn't feel like it's wanted.

It can be there.

If it feels like it's wrong,

It's not safe.

So to really help our emotions feel safe,

One of the images that my teacher offered was to hold doubt in the soft palm of mindfulness.

So find where in the body we feel the sensations.

Whatever that sensation is for you.

Maybe you don't work with doubt.

Maybe it's something else.

But find it and really recognize the physical aspects of it.

Where does it live?

Is it between your eyebrows or is it in the gut?

Is it in your throat preventing you from speaking?

And just coming with this soft holding of awareness.

Helping the doubt,

The fear feel safe and feel welcome.

One of the great mantras that I do is to say it's okay.

It's okay to be afraid.

It's okay to feel doubt.

I'm here with you,

Doubt and fear.

It's okay.

And something lets up a little bit and it starts to feel safe.

And something in my body begins to thaw and relax and unwind.

And you can experience it.

It's a direct experience.

You'll know it.

Some of the problems that we have in our lives,

Like some of the things we're afraid of,

I don't necessarily think they need to be solved.

But rather they represent things that need to be dissolved.

You know,

We're always trying to solve.

And what happens in this solving of problems and and changes and make trying to make things more certain,

Is we don't allow for this deeper process of dissolving to happen.

It can happen when we get out of the way,

While at the same time just holding it in this soft palms of awareness.

So I encourage you to experiment with with these teachings.

And I thank you for your consideration this morning.

Reviews

♥️🙏

Very good 👍

Thank you so much for sharing! 🙏🏾💕💕💕

Thanks

Wow, just what the doctor ordered. Thank
You x 100. “Let doubt rest in the soft palm of mindfulness”. Was that it? Love it.