![]() ![]() Yes, said the questioner, but do you believe in a thing called the soul? His reply: he tries not to believe in anything. In one of these classes somebody asked the teacher if he believes in the idea of a soul at this question he lit up, began to speak about how he finds soul in many things, all the time, a quality that something is imbued with indefinably but undeniably.Īs he was speaking his expression was imbued with the kind of soul-like quality he was describing. My incapacity to throw myself hard at a belief or set of beliefs has often troubled me in the night, when I’ve felt I most need something to cling to.ĭuring lockdown I’ve been joining a daily online meditation class run by a man whose teachings and talks have got me through many sleepless nights. I’d do my best to believe in absolute materiality, and couldn’t. I’d do my best to believe in something like God, and couldn’t. Mostly I have countered with, so what? But when the anxiety took hold, it would key into something fathomless: nothing is really known, nothing is really certain, even reality itself. In the grip of that feeling there have been times when my thoughts would gravitate toward the ridiculous: what if I’m in a computer simulation? What if nothing I take to be objective reality really exists? What if I’m really alone? What if, what if. My feeling, when lying in bed awake, has been one of falling, falling, with no ground to catch me. I’ve had insomnia for the last two and a half years, often severe and disabling. So it’s really no wonder that the uncertainty of our times now unsettles people in profound ways. Studies have shown that we’re more stressed when faced with uncertainty than when faced with a definite negative outcome, and this has been demonstrably true, over and over, in my own life. We’re very much programmed to want to be sure about things. ![]() Uncertainty is a word that comes up so much now our uncertain times. ![]()
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