Keys to a New and True Kind of Certainty

Story: a reporter wants to do a story on a successful business executive. He sets out and finds him at an institute for the unbalanced. The reporter asks the doctor if he may speak to Mr. Johnson. The doctor replies, "no, he is only as stable as the conditions around him."

We are also only as stable as the conditions around us. Most people spend their lives trying to swim out on an undertow. We are spiritually and psychologically rigid. The only things that can come down in the face of reality is what is not real.

Vernon Howard: "Your conclusions are your tragedies."

I want to feel certain about my life, so I tie up all my ideas and images. Then I feel as real as what I imagine. "Living things don't want to be wrapped up." Our tragedy is that we have concluded that we can be certain about life.

Pure uncertainty need have no fear in it. We can eventually come to where we say, "I've lost control over making images fit. I'm not afraid anymore because I'm no longer certain."

We love to watch nature because of the uncertainty. Life is pure uncertainty. We have something in us that doesn't want to be wrapped up.

It is violence to try to control people. Our unattended mind wants to "wrap this puppy up." Learn to watch, not to will. We are part of the change. Leave life alone to work out the way it wants to go. Let life prove its essential goodness.