Facing My Own Discomfort with Ambiguity

[qos]

Have patience with everything unresolved in your heart and try to love the questions themselves. . .


This quote from Rilke has been a central tenet of my post-Void spirituality. It's part of the basis for "feral holiness" -- living outside the boxes of traditional spirituality, without the comfortable assurances of certainty that are so often part of organized religion. I have come to believe that many people stay within traditional religion because the they are afraid of not having answers for the scary existential questions about who we are, where we come from, what happens after death, and etc.

I've gotten kind of cocky about my own level of comfort with ambiguity -- or my perception of my own comfort. Because I've come smack up against two rather startling and humbling realizations.

The first is that I've developed some fairly strong beliefs over the past few years. Which shouldn't be surprising, given that I'm a priestess -- but it's at odds with my story of myself as someone who doesn't have the answers and is comfortable with that. In point of fact, I do have answers to those questions, answers I feel rather strongly about. I don't think they're the only right answers, but they work for me.

The second realization, and the one which was the prompt for this entry, is that I have some serious discomfort around certain ambiguities of my path, and they give me fits.



My questions have to do with the intensely personal aspects of my path: my practices, my connection with LM, my inner blocks and struggles. I can't tell you how many times I've either explicitly asked my teacher to just give me the answers or have cried out to the gods (or LM) for some specific answers to give me reassurance that this all works, give me something concrete to seize and build on -- or just cling to. I want to be told exactly what is going on, how it will all work out.

And that just isn't going to happen.

I've learned to stop asking certain questions. My teacher is not going to spoon feed me, and she shouldn't. The whole point of her teaching me is for me to develop the skills and the insight to find my own answers. (She does answer many questions, but not the ones that don't have answers, or are answers I need to figure out for myself.)

And you know what? I hate not knowing.
I hate not being able to hear LM as clearly as I'd like.
I hate not being able to understand the roots of all my blocks and resistance.
I hate not knowing what to do anchor myself in the upper world.
I hate not knowing if or how I'm going to be intimate with another human being again in this lifetime -- or if I should even try.

I want the answers, and I want the gods to give them to me. And I want to have a super-charged godphone so I can hear the answers clearly and without my ego or my fears or anything else in the way.

And then I realize that it doesn't work that way. That I have to live with the ambiguity, with the not-knowing, and just keep pushing along the path and having faith that I will get what I need when I need it -- and when I'm ready for it.

I have to remember the rest of Rilke's advice to the young poet. . .

try to love the questions themselves as if they were locked rooms or books written in a very foreign language. Don't search for the answers, which could not be given to you now, because you would not be able to live them. And the point is to live everything. Live the questions now. Perhaps then, someday far in the future, you will gradually, without even noticing it, live your way into the answer.

I'm trying very hard to live my way into the answers.

Comments

[rin-x-x.livejournal.com]

"Don't search for the answers, which could not be given to you now, because you would not be able to live them."

Kind of sounds like something I should take to heart now.. although of a different perspective than the one you talk about here.

I live with a certain ambiguity myself, about a lot of the "important" questsions... but then there are somethings I just want the answers to -now-, regardless of whether I can handle them or not. But then, there is probably a good reason why I don't know them now. Still hard to swallow, though...

[shadowandstar.livejournal.com]

I've been told that it's not always our reception - They come through as clearly as they need to.

That's an interesting take on it. One that I like very much.

[labelleizzy.livejournal.com]

"it doesn't work that way... the ambiguity, the not knowing, ... having faith that I will get what I need when I need it, when I'm ready for it...

you will gradually, without even noticing it, live your way into the answer."

we are all poets writing our own lives, aren't we?

I bless Rilke for that wonderful insight. And I thank you for continuing to seek and to share your experiences.

[shadowandstar.livejournal.com]

It's funny: for years I concentrated only that first part, about learning to love the questions, but now it's that last part that I need to focus on. . .

[stiobhanrune.livejournal.com]

*smiling*

You know, it's funny, I was saying this to my students just the other day.

We were discussing how one could prepare themselves for an initiation of the witches' variety.

I told them that the only way you can prepare for it is to remember that there's no way to understand it, that it simply is beyond your comprehension.

I then proceeded to remind them that witches have four qualities which set them apart-

1. an ever-inquisitive mind which must learn to balance openness and also discernment;

2. an indomitable will and devotion never to walk in anyone's shadow, which requires one to learn a balance between authority and submission for one's own reasons;

3. a courage to face the unknown, teaching one that fear is a peer and companion, and can neither be silenced nor completely heeded;

4. an ability to be comfortable with instability and doubt, as one must know that doubt and ambiguous answers remind us that everything is possible.


Thank you for sharing your insight on this as well. *hugs*

[shadowandstar.livejournal.com]

Thank you for the affirmation.
*smile

[royalbananafish.livejournal.com]

This is juicy and interesting. The quote really, really struck me--so much that I wrote it down on the June 2010 index page of my planner so I can read it as often as I want to. This is also juicy and interesting because I have been pondering my own ponderings, and I have questions that don't have answers. (Most recently: why did I freeze when very nice Roman Catholic co-worker with whom I am friendly asked my religious path? It was so odd. Also, spent today thinking about how my parents' actions led me--often inadvertently--to my values.)