A Mason's Work

Today I want to talk about one of the ruffians I struggle with the most.

And this is the ruffian that represents uncertainty.

Uncertainty is like the other ruffian which we've discussed this week of fear.

Uncertainty oftentimes won't show up in its own sort of costume.

And certainty, sitting with uncertainty is very difficult for a lot of people, including myself.

When we sit with uncertainty there is just kind of a bunch of stuff going on.

And rather than address what that is and what that looks like more often than not,

we masquerade our response to uncertainty as virtue.

So what does that look like?

For a lot of us, and again I'm speaking for myself here mostly, but I imagine that you know other people out there feel the same.

Oftentimes my uncertainty will masquerade as avoidance or patience or tolerance.

Because we're taught that all of those things are really good behaviors or good kind of perspectives.

But when uncertainty sort of is driving the bus on these things, your patience becomes well, you know, for example,

just waiting it out. Maybe conditions will change later where that uncertainty will resolve itself.

That isn't necessarily the most productive thing to do.

And so when we start looking at uncertainty,

the same sort of procedural sort of conversation applies that we discussed in yesterday's episode, which is, you know, start noticing your behavior, etc, etc.

But with uncertainty, the root cause conversation has to go maybe perhaps a little bit deeper or further.

You more often than not will again find that uncertainties sort of resolution or disguise is something that again seems virtuous.

This whole uncertainty masquerading, for example, as compassion or non-interference or tolerance.

There are situations in our life where we'll get run over because we're afraid or because of the uncertainty of the situation is such that we don't take the action that we need to take or do the thing that we need to do.

And we'll use that sort of reality to masquerade how much we're maybe running from the situation or avoiding the conflict that comes with it.

And so there are some couple tests here for this.

One of the things that you can do to test whether uncertainty is driving the bus versus perhaps a more pure application of that virtue is that clarity would require courage.

So when you know the answer, if you imagine the answer to a situation or the driving data to a situation and it makes you fearful that you would have to take an action, that's a good indicator that you are acting from a place of uncertainty.

So when you're sitting in your practice, whatever that might look like, if you knew all of the things you needed to know and it would require you to have courage to take action, that's a good indicator that uncertainty is driving.

So when you sit down and you're doing your root cause kind of discovery process, like, hey, why am I feeling this way? What is going on?

Look for the places where that uncertainty turns into fear and that fear turns into paralysis. And then you'll find more often than not.

But you have a recipe for finding a virtue that you can map to that that will justify your inaction.

This is really, really tough work. Speaking firsthand, it is terrifying in a lot of ways. It is difficult.

And the good news is it's all in your head. So it is all sort of the mental and emotional content we create for ourselves, which means you can undo it as well. So there is hope here.

Don't take it as perhaps as the worst thing ever that could happen. Just understand that that uncertainty and the sort of fear of risk and all the stuff that comes with all that is oftentimes shows up again as in disguise as a virtue.

And we'll talk more about the doubt conversation in tomorrow's episode.