Audio Script

Living With Uncertainty

Our lives, this existence is uncertain and how uncertain it is can be illustrated with a very simple experiment. Ten minutes from now, do you think you can predict what your state of mind will be? Or can you predict in ten minutes, in the next ten minutes or after ten minutes, what desire will arise? What thought will arise in your mind? Ten minutes from now, will you be happy? Will you be angry? Will you be peaceful? Will you be still?

And if you come to think of it, you cannot. To a certain degree, you can probably say, this is what I’m going to think. But it’s very difficult to estimate after half an hour what my mood will be like. It’s so uncertain. Anything can throw me off. Something can make me happy.

And this is just the internal uncertainty. Club that with external uncertainties, like the pandemic. Maybe tomorrow, you win the lotto and become a millionaire. Or you’re involved in an accident. Life is much more uncertain than the mind would like to accept. In fact, every moment is discrete. It is uncertain. But the mind does not like that. The ego does not like that.

Even though there is internal uncertainty and external uncertainty, it needs predictability. And why does it need predictability? Because in predictability, there is some sort of control. If things are completely uncertain and unpredictable, I have no control over what my tomorrow will look like.

But this control, which the mind exerts again and again, is illusory. You will see at the core of it is security. If the future is uncertain, but if it affects me positively, I’m okay with it. If tomorrow the uncertainty is between winning a million dollars and two million dollars, I’m fine. Because that uncertainty somehow favors me, helps me in my security. So I’m not bothered particularly with uncertainty. I’m bothered with the uncertainty negatively affecting me.

But is there a thing called security? Is tomorrow ever going to be secure? Or are humans forever doomed to fear the tomorrow? I call it the fear of tomorrow. What will tomorrow bring in? Will it be good? Will it be positive? Will it be negative? Will I lose my job? Will I get a job? And that generates fear. That generates anxiety. So the cycle is uncertainty about the tomorrow.

And that uncertainty is basically about my security. There are other factors, but it mostly centers about my security and wellbeing. And if that is going to affect it negatively, then today, right now, I live in fear of tomorrow. We invest a huge amount of our everyday energies to deal with that uncertainty, to deal with that unpredictability. The mind says, no, this is what I want. And tomorrow has to yield to me. Tomorrow has to follow in line and give me what I want.

But the mind on a particular level knows that has not happened most of its life, and probably it will not happen. And that again generates fear.

Accepting Uncertainty

So how do we break this cycle? Can we embrace this uncertainty? Because that uncertainty is a fact. It’s there. Even if you accept it or not, it will be. It will be a part of existence itself.

The problem is we think we have control over certain aspects of existence. And so the uncertainty is partial.

So let me give you an example. Take it as a thought experiment. Tonight when you sleep, as a thought experiment, think that tomorrow morning when you wake up, it will be an uncertain day. You might remember that. It will be an uncertain day. You might wake up as a king. You might wake up as a beggar. You might wake up in a war zone. You might wake up as a billionaire. There are endless possibilities, extreme possibilities. And it’s completely random and uncertain.

And what will the mind think? How will it deal with that tomorrow? It’s completely uncertain and random, totally random, uncertain, extreme. It can be amazing. It can be horror. It can be awful.

Take a moment and think, how will your mind deal with that? You will see when the uncertainty is total, the mind will give up because it has no way of dealing with it. The choices, the scenarios are so extreme, it will say at the end, whatever happens, I’ll deal with it because I don’t know how will I deal with so much of uncertainty? How can I model every scenario and think and do? I’ll wake up and whatever is in front of me, I’m going to deal with it.

Partial Acceptance and Control

So our acceptance of uncertainty, of understanding of uncertainty, is we see it partially. We think we have control over certain aspects of it. And then based on that control, the mind projects tomorrow and says, this is what the expectations are, this needs to be fulfilled. Then if they’re not fulfilled, the fear comes in.

But what if we accept this uncertainty totally and we say the next moment itself is uncertain, not even the… I was talking about a thought experiment where you sleep over the night and you wake up the next morning and say, it’s uncertain. What if the next moment is uncertain? That’s when you accept this uncertainty totally, embrace it. Then instead of generating fear, you see the next moment as an adventure. This uncertainty becomes an adventure to explore, not a tomorrow to fear.

Then all this energy that you have been wasting in fear and anxiety of tomorrows and all the days to come, can be used to deal with what is at this moment because there is no tomorrow. There is this moment which becomes tomorrow, but right now there is no tomorrow. Where is the tomorrow? It’s here. I project it.

But the mind is fearful of letting go and that’s the main problem. Why is it fearful? Why can’t it accept whatever is arising? What is it going to lose? It’s going to lose control. What if I let go and things don’t turn out the way I wanted to?

They might not turn out the way you wanted to. So then what options do we have? Do we move along with the pseudo-control, thinking I can control tomorrow somehow? And that generates the fear and anxiety and we live perpetually in the fear of tomorrow.

Living in the Now

Or we say it’s okay, life is uncertain, every moment is uncertain, and I celebrate that uncertainty. It’s an adventure. I embrace it. I let go of whatever demands I have for tomorrow. Whatever expectations I have, I drop them. Because I want to live in the now. I want to live here and now, totally, completely, open to whatever life throws at me, whatever it unfolds, whatever it gets me to.

And that requires courage. That requires tremendous courage. It’s not an easy thing to let go and embrace whatever arises. Even I faced a lot of difficulty, a lot of hurdles, a lot of resistance from the mind for many years.

But when I saw the true nature of this existence in reality, I understood every moment is a new movement. It’s a new unfolding. It’s fresh. There’s no past. There’s no future. It unfolds on its own. My mind projects the past and the future. And if I can be there in that moment, and totally embrace that moment for whatever it brings me, that moment for whatever it brings me, there is absolutely no place for fear or anxiety.

Then I do not live in the fear of tomorrow. I don’t live in a state of constant anxiety and wanting and expectations. Then life can be concentrated or can unfold here and now.

Realising the Extent of Uncertainty

So to embrace this uncertainty, you need to realise the extent of it. That this uncertainty, though it seems for the mind that it’s very limited, it is extensive in nature.

And knowing that every moment is uncertain, I let go of the control. How much am I going to control? And what has control given me? 20 years, 30 years, 40 years, 60 years of controlling, controlling, controlling, controlling, controlling the future. Where has it brought humanity? Where has it brought societies to? Or where are we after so many years of control and trying to have a predictable future?