What people say
I can honestly say that, for the first time in 50 years, I’m learning how to just be. How to relish the present moment, which, magically and mysteriously, unlocks the door to the treasure house that is the rest of my life.
- Jennifer Green, Salem, Oregon
From the moment Jon and I connected, I had this deep experience of loving presence and complete trust. Something bypassed my mind and my ability to figure things out, and communicated directly to my heart and soul that I was safe and in the right place. There was a creation of power in our relationship that he honored and witnessed as being mine. It was my power. I had the experience of being wonderfully, beautifully powerful, in the most loving, energized way.
- Laura Lind-Blum, The Idea Midwife, Waterbury Center, Vermont
Jon can help you recognize where you are, and become more clear. My work with him has not been about plotting out my future, it has been about helping me come into deeper relationship with myself so that next steps unfold easily and effortlessly.
He creates a safe, spacious container for you to go as deep or wide or high as you’re capable of in any given moment. It’s a matter of him being able to see the facets and help me make them real in me.
- Sandra Leader, Carmel, CA
My feelings changed from, “Quick, fix me, I can’t stand how I feel, make it better, hurry,” to, it’s not about hurry, and it’s not about fixing, it’s about staying where you are and getting more and more and deeper and deeper sensations that this is okay. You’re fine, this is okay.
It helps me reframe experience. I don’t see anything that’s happening quite the same as I’ve ever seen it before, because my viewpoint has been enlarged. There’s more, there’s peace, there’s joy, there’s love, there’s health, there’s everything.
- Layne Young, artist, Salem, Oregon
The Simplicity of Not Knowing
February 23, 2010
From the time we’re toddlers, we’re taught that knowing is important.
In school, not knowing means failure.
Likewise in your career, when you don’t know — you fail.
So from the time you were a small child, you’ve been taught to avoid not knowing at all costs.
Yet your attempts to escape not knowing can leave you feeling panicky and uncertain in situations where it’s actually completely appropriate for you to not know.
And that leaves you scrambling to figure things out as quickly as possible — which is often too fast for real understanding to unfold and allow you to see what’s most true for you.
When I ask my clients to simply be with not knowing, they experience a sense of relief and relaxation. Often I’ll hear a deep sigh as their body releases into this new spaciousness. As they speak to me, the pace of their words slows, and the pitch of their voice drops.
And then from this spacious place of not knowing, natural curiosity arises.
What if it was really, truly ok to not know? What would change for you?
Here are some steps along this “not knowing” path.
Be where you are
Are you struggling to know?
Can you stop — just for a moment — and see that you’re trying to know something that you can’t know yet?
Perhaps it’s a choice — one of those life choices on which it seems like everything depends. Or maybe you’re wondering what’s happening for someone you love.
You can’t ever know ahead of time what the “right” choice is. You can’t know ahead of time what will bring happiness or success. And you can’t know what anyone else’s experience is or will be.
Just stop. Stop the struggle to figure it all out. Stop, and give yourself space to breathe and be, right where you are now.
Let “I don’t know” be real
As I’ve said, not knowing is frightening to your mind.
But from this place of stopping, can you let yourself really feel “I don’t know”?
Just sit quietly for a moment. Sit quietly, breathe, and be in your body, not your mind.
What does “I don’t know” feel like to your body and your heart?
One client told me, “It’s only scary when I hold it at arm’s length. When I let it in — when I say to myself, ‘Yeah, I don’t know!’ — it’s weird — the fear falls away, and all of a sudden I’m excited about the possibilities.”
Allow curiosity to arise
From this place of stopping and not knowing, curiosity naturally arises. As my client discovered, it brings with it a sense of wonder and excitement. Possibility is suddenly real.
Let your curiosity come out to play. It’s hard to feel fear and insecurity when your curiosity is engaged.
Welcome the energy
The energy that’s released when you stop resisting not knowing can be surprising.
Let that energy lead you to new ideas and new perspectives — and the natural unfolding of what’s real for you.
Not knowing is amazingly simple and amazingly powerful. It will — paradoxically enough — allow you to realize things about yourself and what’s really true for you that the haste to figure it all out can never discover.
“The only thing that makes life possible is permanent, intolerable uncertainty; not knowing what comes next.” Ursula K. LeGuin, 1929- , American fantasy and science fiction author.
“The best way to live is by not knowing what will happen to you at the end of the day...” Donald Barthelme, 1931-1989, American journalist and fiction author.
“Living is a form of not being sure, not knowing what next or how... We guess. We may be wrong, but we take leap after leap in the dark.” Agnes de Mille, 1905-1993, American dancer and choreographer
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