Clients often ask me what it was that began that initial shift for me back when I was in the throes of chronic physical symptoms, depression, and gun-to-the-head terror.
And as far as I can see, it seems like one of the very first and most helpful shifts came with a simple openness to considering that I don't really know anything.
And this may sound absurd to anyone hearing this for the first time. After all, we are taught from the time we are toddlers to be problem-solvers. Thinkers. We are trained to learn the best ways to figure things out and pin things down. And none of this is wrong or bad.
But, in 2018, when I was in the middle of unexplainable chronic symptoms, everyone's BEST attempts to solve the "problem of Missy's weird symptoms" proved to be impossible. All the thinking and the problem-solving attempts seemed to actually make things worse.
Thankfully, there was a tiny little opening to something completely new and different.
“What if you could just hang out in the space of I don't know?"
My ego protested LOUDLY, of course. That adorable little meaning-maker in my head wanted me to keep on searching, keep on trying to solve this impossible puzzle of my chronic symptoms.
But there was something in the giving-up of everything I thought I knew that cracked open a door. Just a tiny crack at first. But that was enough.
My mind's greatest hit, “These symptoms are ruining my life,” was the most persistent of all my mind's stories. So it was the first that had to be considered for the "I really don't know anything" pile.
In spite of the evidence—the drastic weight loss, the weakness, the symptoms, the inability to do the basic things I had always done for my home and my family—I had to be open to the possibility that I did not really know the deepest truth about my symptoms.
It made NO LOGICAL SENSE to let that story go. It looked so freaking convincing. Surely 8 billion people would have agreed with that story. But that did not make it The Truth.
So, I started with “I don’t actually know. I don’t actually know if these symptoms are ruining my life.”
And then I did not give that to my mind to analyze, prove, or justify! The mind was much too contracted in habitual, conditioned thought to be able to consider such possibilities.
As the "I don't know" game continued, one simple question kept coming up—so much so that I wrote it on a notecard and taped it to my bathroom mirror.
“What if, beyond the ability of my human mind to comprehend, THIS EXPERIENCE is in the greatest service of me?”
Every day, sometimes dozens of times a day, when the gun-to-the-head terror or the painful symptoms would rage inside me, I would ask that simple question, “What if, beyond the ability of my human mind to comprehend, THIS EXPERIENCE is in the greatest service of me?”
And then, again, I did not go to my mind to seek an answer. The question was simply asked. And then it was left alone.
Nothing about my symptoms, my weight, my weakness, my depression, or my gun-to-the-head terror shifted. But that stopped being the goal.
I found myself increasingly open to the possibility that what is REAL is not exactly what I think it is. There is something more. Something beyond what I perceive with my five senses. Something non-verbal. Something outside of the reaches of my brain’s language and conceptualization center.
This was not AT ALL about positive thinking or trying to have a better experience.
It was a complete dropping out of everything I believed I knew.
It was like a deconstruction of the rigid lines and edges that my mind had drawn around myself and the world.
It was an openness to being returned to my factory settings before any beliefs and concepts were added.
I wanted to be blank. Completely open. Knowing nothing.
In the process, what emerged was a vague but palpable sensation that I only knew to call God.
That is the word I had learned as a young child immersed in Sunday School and church each week. A seed had been planted during those formative years that was suddenly helping me see something new. In that space of "I don't know," there was a felt-sense knowing that something beyond the logical and explainable is possible.
My understanding of God shifted during this season of deconstruction.
It felt fresh and free from filters and contamination. It was no longer a man-in-the-sky with a naughty-or- nice list. It was not a list of rules. It was—for lack of a better word—Love.
Unconditional, Infinite Love.
Something else began to shift as well. I noticed that, in small moments, I didn't really mind my symptoms. It was as if I was no longer completely identified with them. There was a space between this story of me—this adorable Missy character—and the aliveness that was living her, breathing her, moving her.
A new groundless ground appeared. It was steady, warm, loving, and safe.
It was God.
Love.
Infinite Awareness.
Light.
I began to find other people who were also in a season of un-learning; deconstructing.
They, too, were seeing this Light—this Love—this God—in the same way I was.
My favorite comedian, Pete Holmes, explained it this way: “My God is not a man in the sky. It is a metaphor for a mystery that transcends all categories of human thought, including being and nonbeing. But that’s too many words for the back of a quarter.”
He also described God as the blanket we put over the mystery to give it a shape.
I found the most remarkable freedom and peace in the falling away of so many old definitions and constructs.
For the first time, the most peaceful place was within the mystery. Within the space of I-don't-really-know.
I continued playing all kinds of "I don't know" games.
Each game had the same basic tenets. Begin with “I don’t know.” Be open to whatever wants to present itself, no matter how much the mind protests. Consider that any perceived experience of suffering might not be exactly what you think it is. And then, leave it alone. Be open to surrender. Be open to having your fingers pried off the metaphorical steering wheel. Be open for inspiration and intuition to find their way to the surface. Be open to what is just beyond the logical and explainable.
To this day, when I am awake at three o’clock in the morning, the words of the Lord’s Prayer often become the background music that lull me back to sleep. And there is a little wooden block next to my bed with these words carved into it: “This is the day that the Lord has made; I will rejoice and be glad in it.”
But now there is a much different and more viscerally profound experience of both of those things. And I cannot even begin to explain it.
For now, it feels like enough to say that I really don't know. AND it’s enough to just be open to the mystery of it all.
It seems to me that there are beautifully quiet, barely perceptible miracles happening everywhere, in every moment. What if being open and basking in the space of “I don’t know” is enough to begin recognizing them?