The Beautiful Mystery Of Not Knowing

Hi,

This is Brooks and thank you for joining me.

Today's class is called the beauty in not knowing.

And by not knowing what we're really talking about is we really don't know what's gonna happen in the next moment.

Although we might feel like we do,

Like we might have a sense,

Oh yeah this is gonna happen.

You know,

Expectations due to like well things have happened like this before so of course they're gonna continue in this way.

But all we have to do is really look back at our entire life and see that there's been a tremendous amount of change and there's been plenty of times where things have gone in a way that we you know that was completely unexpected.

And so this talk is really about a willingness to be open to the idea that we don't know what's gonna happen in the next moment.

There's a part of this that wants stability and stability means we're not surprised.

What happens next is oh yeah I'm prepared for this I'm expecting this I'm not thrown off and that's a desire and of course that makes sense you know if that was possible.

But the truth is life is vast and unknowable.

Life can change in a dime.

We've again we've experienced that in a number of times something happens and you know we're really throwing for a loop like I wasn't expecting this at all.

We kind of dazed you know and stunned.

And then we all have this innate adaptability within us.

It happens.

Whatever happens in our life we adapt to it.

After a period of time it's different for everybody's something becomes normal.

So even if something really wacky happens we're built to adapt to that.

And I say that because that can give us some comfort if we really never know what's gonna happen in the next moment.

We had this innate ability to deal with that.

Whatever it may be no matter how surprising or startling or scary or intense.

We're biologically built to adapt to it.

Now the nice thing about this the nice thing about having a willingness to it to be open to anything can happen in the next moment is that it makes us more open to that flexibility.

And it helps remove that feeling of resistance or at least lessen that feeling of resistance that often comes when something very intense and unexpected happens.

The resistance we know the existence when we have that feeling this shouldn't be happening.

This is wrong.

The universe is out of order.

And it doesn't help the situation.

It's funny.

It's funny to talk about it retrospect but what it's happening and we feel like what if something's happening and it's a total surprise and we don't like it there's this feeling of this shouldn't be happening even though it is.

And that's the real suffering in life when we deny what's actually happening.

Because that totally inhibits our ability to adapt to what's happening.

This innate ability that we have to when something drastic or something intense or completely different happens that we're not expecting.

We have the adaptability to deal with it.

But if we resist it this shouldn't be happening.

This is wrong.

Why is this happening?

Why is God doing this?

Why is life doing this?

This shouldn't be happening.

Then we can't adapt.

I know this guy who had he was working on his car and the car was the ignition was on the keys were in the car and he had the hood up and he was working on he was working on the engine and somehow or another the car slipped from neutral into drive and the car started moving forward and he told me that he automatically put his shoulder into the front of the car to stop it and as a result he dislocated his shoulder.

So that's really what happens.

That's a really great metaphor of resisting change.

Of denying the actual happening of something that that we don't like.

Truly it's the resistance to life itself.

But life is truly vast and unknowable.

You know we may have expectations about what's gonna happen in the next moment or later on in the day or tomorrow or a week from now or even a year from now we may have like oh yeah this is this will probably happen.

But those are all those are truly fantasies.

They're fantasies.

And again we look back at our lives and we probably come up with a handful of things where something happened we were completely unexpected and maybe we loved it and maybe we hated it maybe we resisted it maybe we accepted it.

Either way it happened.

And based on the evidence of that it starts to become easier to be more open to life.

Because that's what we're really talking about here is an openness to life.

If we have expectations and like oh yeah this is gonna happen this is gonna happen then we're really closed off.

Parts of us shut down and we become more rigid.

And it doesn't allow in new ideas.

It doesn't allow an intuition,

Inspiration,

A creativity.

The idea of imagining what's gonna happen in the future as pretty much a continuation of what's already happening or has been happening is stagnation.

There's a dullness to that.

Imagine if you were watching a movie and you knew what was gonna happen every moment in the movie.

Like oh yeah this is gonna happen this person's gonna jump out and scare someone or this person's gonna be in danger and then they're gonna react this way and then in the end it's all gonna be okay or in the end this person's gonna die or whatever.

You know just imagine how boring that movie would be.

You know it's like you want your money back.

Walk out of the theater tell everybody don't go see that movie.

But then you know sometimes in our own lives we can want that movie to always know to never be surprised whether it's good or bad to have stability.

And this is really about really looking at life looking at how life actually is.

Like for instance COVID-19 I wasn't expecting it.

That totally came as a surprise to me.

I know there's been reports in the news before that where they said there was the potential eventually for maybe something like this happening but I think for most of us it was a surprise.

And the longer it went on the more like what this is actually happening.

We have to wear masks everywhere we go.

So you know that's just one example out of many.

Again the reason I said the the beauty of not knowing is really it is quite beautiful to be open to life rather than scared of it or closed off to change or dreading change dreading the potential of change.

You know change is gonna happen anyway.

Life is made that way.

Life is profound and incredible levels of diversity and variety and change is inherent in the system and change is a mystery and life truly is a mystery and that's the beauty of it.

It's like I like when I was a kid we had Christmas morning and some of the you know I had made a list of presents that I wanted but I'd often get other presents and so like I'd open up presents and to be like I don't know what's in some of these and it was exciting.

The funny thing is sometimes I didn't really like the presents but some of them I really liked you know but there was an excitement.

I wonder I wonder what's gonna be there.

I mean wonder is truly like the wondrous feeling is really healthy to have that sense of wonder and curiosity.

Complete contrast to resistance and being closed off.

What we're really talking about here is the wonder of not knowing and the truth of it.

The truth that we really don't know.

So I encourage you to consider this you know take a look perhaps try it on you know during the day every once in a while here and there you can have this feeling of like yeah I really don't know what's gonna happen next and then see what comes after that.

Are you okay?

Are you able to adapt to things that are happening?

Maybe similar things happen to things that have happened before but perhaps they're because you're more aware and more open to it they're a little bit different you know.

Some of the beauty of life is really noticing the subtleties.

When we get used to things being the same way over and over again we really stop noticing but we're open to we don't know what's happening next we would notice more because we're more aware because we're open and we resist and when we like demand stability or feel like there's very fear of change then we tense up and our ability to be open and even notice stuff really reduces.

So this beauty of being open to not knowing really has a lot of advantages to it so I wish you the best and take care.

Bye.