Welcome back to Psychedelic Therapy Frontiers, the podcast devoted to exploring the frontiers of psychedelic medicine and what it takes to cultivate a healthy mind, body and spirit. As always, Psychedelic Therapy Frontiers is brought to you by Numinus. I'm Dr. Steve Thayer and today my co-host Dr. Reenobison and I discuss the challenge of dealing with uncertainty.
This is a challenge that we all deal with, I think, to some extent and has been at the heart of much of my own existential dread over the years. Today, Reenobison discuss the constant and unavoidable nature of uncertainty, sources of uncertainty, what actions people tend to take to rid themselves of uncertainty and the pros and cons of some of those actions. We'll talk about how to embrace and cope with uncertainty and much, much more.
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You here, Reid and I talk a lot about the psychedelic clinical trial work that Numinus does. If you or someone you know is interested in being a participant in a psychedelic clinical trial, you can click on the link in the show notes or go directly to Numinus.com forward slash research to learn more about the trials we're currently running.
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Reid, I got a quote for you from a mathematician that I was unaware of until I was researching for this particular episode, but the... Oh, I like math. Yeah. It was a mathematics professor, John Allen Paulus. He says, uncertainty is the only certainty there is. Knowing how to live with insecurity is the only security. Ooh, I like it. Yeah, what do you make of that? uncertainty. You know, only certainty there is. It reminds me of the saying that changes the only constant.
Yeah, Heraclitus is river right that something like you can never step in the same river twice because it's not the same river and you're not the same person. Yeah, yeah, there's truth to it and it's... I like the riddle behind it too, makes you think. But how about I raise your quote with a poem? I love it for the poem learners out there for the math of verse. But this one's called Thank You by Ross Gray.
If you find yourself half naked and barefoot in the frosty grass, hearing again the Earth's great, sonorous moan that says, you are the heir of the now and gone, that says, all you love will turn to dust and will meet you there. Do not raise your fist. Do not raise your small voice against it. And do not take cover. Instead, curl your toes into the grass, watch the cloud ascending from your lips, walk through the garden's dormant splendor, say, only thank you. Thank you. Hmm. Does that relate?
I think so. Well, and what came to mind is contemplating the perhaps sad reality that everything turns to dust that we will all turn to dust. It sounds like I'm trying to interpret a poem on the spot. But at least what I'll say, what it sort of stirred up in me was how to cope with uncertainty and the inevitability of grappling with impermanence.
And that's kind of what inspired the topic today of dealing with uncertainty, grappling with uncertainty, how to live a comfortable, meaningful, purposeful life in the presence of the only certainty there is that being uncertainty. Yeah. And the presence of that sober in fact that all you love will turn to dust.
It's true and it's scary, right, that everyone dies and there is change coming in one way, shape, or form at some point in pretty much everything we know and we don't even know when that's coming. Right. Yeah. So I think maybe we'll start there with the, I mean, I feel like anybody listening to this can probably relate to the struggle of dealing with coping with, grappling with uncertainty. In some way, shape, or form, right, and as you said, it can be really, really scary.
And this can be uncertainty on sort of a micro level, like I'm not sure what I'm going to have for dinner this evening or uncertainty in a relationship. I'm not sure if this relationship is going to work out uncertainty about the future. Am I going to be able to make more money like those types of uncertainties and then macro uncertainties about our position in the universe and where do we go after we die or am I doing what I am called to do in this world?
Questions like that have perturbed me most of my life. This is all some potent fuel for anxiety, that's for sure. And based on how we're wired, like the deck of cards we're born with and all of our life experiences that have shaped us, we all respond differently, but everyone, we all have this common relationship with uncertainty, that it's uncomfortable.
In fact, like through the ages, that's become apparent in even why religions have been formed or why ceremonies exist, for example, because life is uncertain and uncertainty is uncomfortable. And we tend to try and condense that uncomfortable place of infinite possibilities, especially the scary ones, into something more manageable by doing something that's more ritualized, repetitive, simple, and predictable, and therefore more comfortable and safe for our system.
Yeah. Yeah, I think there's something about human nature, and maybe even unique to humans among the other animals on this planet or beings on this planet, that we want to move from uncertainty to certainty. We're very curious creatures.
And so that desire to go from sort of the insecurity or the fear of uncertainty to the security and control or perceived control of certainty has prompted the creation of the things that you mentioned, like ceremony and ritual and religion and metaphysical beliefs, of the philosophy, but also the scientific method.
I think a lot of what we enjoy in modern life and the form of technology and the development of civilization and things like that come from this insatiable curiosity that we have to make the unknown known, to make the unknowable knowable. And we've accomplished some pretty impressive things, but I think it's also responsible for almost sort of an un, how might I say it, like a unquenchable thirst that leaves us always thirsty, right?
Because the universe is essentially unknowable when you get down to sort of its constituent parts and who we are in this universe, and some of you might disagree with me, but at least the way I feel about it, who we are in this universe, it would be difficult to say me to say with authority and conviction and certainty that this is exactly the answer to that question. Yeah. Just, it's this sort of, like I say, this unquenchable thirst at the heart of what it means to be human.
I like how you put it, because it seems to me that as civilization gets more advanced or progresses into this complex society we live in, more and more people have this thirst coming up. And we feel it in myself for more of a simple life.
I think it's why you hear people say I just want to get away from the city and live on a farm, things like that, because we do crave the simple predictability and the security that comes with managing some of the complex, unpredictable things we have to go through in day to day life, especially modern life. Yeah. Yeah, as awesome as modern life is, it is probably a little bit more complex.
If not safer for most people, then we would have been on, you know, as hunter-gatherers where we're predominantly preoccupied with just staying alive.
Yeah. And when these rituals, like I use that term loosely because it can mean just like a simple morning meditation practice or making your bed or brushing your teeth even, like give some sense of repetitive kind of familiarity and security that our systems find comfortable, you know, gathering with family around a dinner table, for example, like a sense of security and safety in a uncertain world.
Yeah, that reminds me of thinking about like sources of uncertainty and one of them is unpredictability. So when we don't know what's going to happen from day to day, that can be a very scary place to be psychologically. And so that sort of drives us to cobble together as much predictability as we can.
I mean, we do that in the form of routines by, and also in the form of like, you know, community where we are surrounded by people either in a family or a larger community that whose behavior we can generally predict because we know them well enough. And that gives us some sense of security. And that reminds me of something we've talked about a lot on here, the Rebus theory or the free energy principle, which is, you know, or the entropic brain theory.
It's based on this idea that the universe is full of uncertainty and we are wired. If you look at it from a kind of a neuroscience standpoint, we're wired as these prediction machines to deal with that in ways like the one you're describing where we're taking in data constantly. And if as the unpredictability increases, so does our anxiety around the uncertainty. If we have less data, our system is less confident in predicting what's going to happen next.
And those predictions become our patterns, right? In inner ones and outward ones. Yeah, so less data leading to that anxiety. And so that's one of the ways that we strive to reduce the discomfort associated with uncertainties to try to get more certain. And we do that in at least one way by accumulating more information, get more data. And you can imagine a variety of circumstances where that might apply. Yeah. And we're doing that kind of automatically in some ways.
We could talk about how that could run amuck and become excessive in terms of our search for data, our search for answers. I mean, in fact, there's that Greek mythology story of Icarus flying towards the sun with wax wings. In fact, my brother, Jair, who you know, has that tattooed on himself. But it's this lessened to me anyway of giving up the incescent, excessive search to know the answers. And because much of life is unanswerable, there is unpredictability at the end of that search still.
Yeah. So what you're alluding to is I think an important balance when we're trying to grapple with uncertainty. The balance between seeking information, seeking reassurance, seeking sources of knowledge that help us predict our world better, balanced with surrender, right? Surrendering to perhaps the fact that we can't know everything, that there will always be uncertainty and some degree of insecurity.
So back to the quote that we started with, right, that the only, that knowing how to live with insecurity is the only security. Yeah. We were quoting Maslow last time we spoke, I think, and I saw something from him today that said, life is an ongoing process of choosing between safety, out of fear, and need for defense and risk for the sake of progress and growth. Make the growth choice a dozen times a day, he said.
And it reminds me of this concept I quite like of in any moment or either opening up to life, like fully feeling it, fully being present for it, or we're constricting against it because of fear. And we're closing off to life, like take anxiety around social gatherings as an example.
If it's something you value, connecting with other humans or seeing ones you love and you would like to face that fear, if you do give into the fear instead and just do not go make these meaningful touch points of connection that are good for your heart, then you're in that place of choosing fear over love and constricting, closing off to life instead of fully being present and embracing it and living it.
Yeah. I think the example of sort of social anxiety that you might feel in anticipation of going to a social gathering is a really good one for talking about uncertainty. Because a lot of what causes us to suffer psychologically is I'm not sure how these people are going to perceive me. I'm not sure what they really think about me. I'm not sure how I'm going to behave in this social scenario.
I mean, when we talk about people who come to us as clients with social anxiety, this is a lot of the things that that vex them, right, is not being able to know with certainty, either again, what people think about them and whether or not they like them or how they're going to behave, like how am I really going to respond in this social gathering?
I sort of describe myself as an introverted extrovert, meaning I'm primarily fairly introverted, but I really like those social touch points that you're talking about. But I almost, even now as a four-year-old man, still feel a little anxiety as I'm driving to a social event, even if it's with people I know well.
Which makes sense and it's part of being human, right, being human in a body means in this life where there is so much uncertainty and we don't know what the other is thinking even the ones we love. Sometimes especially the ones we love, like this shows up intensely and intimate partnerships, right? But yeah, I think you're bringing up a good point that it's not about never feeling that fear or anxiety.
That would probably lead you into this path of numbing, disconnecting, and going to get out of it. Yeah, it's about learning to be with and move through and we can and we'll talk more about that. Yeah, I mean, maybe we'll talk about it now, right?
As a way of coping with uncertainty, again, back to maybe the balance comment, but opening yourself up to feeling what you're feeling and then still behaving in a way that's in service of sort of maybe your larger values or goals that are in alignment with sort of the healthy expression of you in the world is a way to cope with uncertainty. So in my own intimate partnership, if I feel any insecurity about whether or not my wife likes me or wants to be around me, I can do a few things.
One is I can sit with that feeling and have compassion for that feeling, knowing as you said, that it's only very human to have a feeling of an insecure feeling like that. And then I can reference all data. I can go back to memories of interactions with this person. How many really, really negative interactions have I had where my wife has been has hated me or not wanted to be around me almost almost none, right?
And so I can I can seek reassurance that way by sort of questing back in my memory for examples of why I don't really need to be as anxious as I feel. Isn't it funny how we fear the worst sometimes or we are mine just tends to go there and I guess it makes sense slipping back into that neuroscience view of how we're wired to predict and detect any potential threat and how that can kind of go awry sometimes and be excessive.
But I think life is just one big interpersonal meditation and if you're talking about uncertainty and the response to that being to surrender and let go of an excessive worrying about things you can't control or it's relationship especially the close ones where I think it's the hardest practice.
At least what I've seen in a lot of people what I've experienced in me I could think I have a bomb ass surrender practice and but if I had not been given the trigger opportunity to practice that kind of thing then you know I wouldn't know how hard it is I might think
I'm well equipped but it's this is really an embodied practice experiential thing that's unfolding through life and and you know I think because of how much we love those close to us the uncertainty and fears of rejection abandonment loss all those things can be you know some of the most intense.
Yeah and you know probably really really important for our survival right if we were well attuned to the potential sources of destruction whether destruction was like you know actual destruction or a physical body or interpersonal destruction in the form of rejection and isolation we probably wouldn't have survived as a species.
Yeah so my mind returns again to balance to grappling with uncertainty is does not mean that we become certain about everything right that's often what's at the heart of things like OCD or generalizing something disorder is this obsession with I need to feel certain
and so I keep seeking reassurance I keep asking the questions like what if what if what if something bad happens how how do I prevent that bad thing from happening and then life begins to constrict around those worries right yeah and the unfortunate paradox is that you're
often triggering more of the behavior you want to avoid by the excessive attempts at reassurance or how you're how your anxiety might manifest behaviorally in some relationships right you know but but what I think is important or I like to remember on the relationship front end in general
is the ego want in the face of uncertainty wants to keep things small like and and then if if we're talking about like a sacred partnership or intimate relationship it's like infinity is calling you to to grow and develop and and that's the most uncertain place there is and so we want to keep things small to keep it under our control sometimes or that's why for some people there might be a fear of intimacy or a fear of commitment or a self-sabotaging before you get hurt yeah so we're
trying to keep or you guys trying to keep us small so that we're not exposed to the potential threats that in that infinity might expose us to yeah yeah it's like you know when when we were talking about the embodied part of this uncertainty and you know we're in a body and we're going to feel these
feelings around whether they're positive or negative these experiences and you know we of course want more of the joyful ones less than negative but but they're inseparable in a way like we're talking about everything eventually changes and and that dog you love so dearly will pass on one
day likely before you do right and and that's that's super scary stuff and then but it's it's actually the it's kind of the fuel for our awakening and aware the ultimate both you know psychospiritual workout and and surrender practices to stay open in the face of that intense uncertainty to
like to love anyway or to show up for life even though you don't know what's going to happen yeah takes a lot of courage takes a lot of courage to love anyway to show up anyway in the presence of the the fear that uncertainty often causes especially with past hurt too like you know in the
relationship department that's what often shapes peoples like fear of abandonment fear of rejection as from getting rejected or abandoned in the past right yeah and you know we talk a lot about inner child work of course but but just just from a big picture standpoint doesn't matter if it
was last year or when you were five years old you know those things matter yeah yeah so maybe there's some self-compassion that needs to happen here as you know you're on your listener you're on your own quest to figure out how you're going to grapple with the fears of uncertainty and
insecurity like reads it earlier just to know that this is part of what it means to be human and that depending on what's happened to you in your life and combined with the particular genetic code that you came in the world with that it might be more or less difficult for you
regardless a a a nice helping of self-compassion is rarely a bad idea yeah yeah it's always that's one of those things that's always a good idea you know self-compassion but do you want to hear a summary of Ramdhas's take on uncertainty I think it applies to hard to say no to a Ramdhas
summary saying no so I heard this talk from him once not in real life it was a recording it was a long time ago but you're not that old but where he was talking about how even the great saints in light and gurus they're all as neurotic as anybody else he likes to point this out which
I find helpful and people are like what do you mean and he says that the neurosis is a human embodied default world kind of thing he didn't use those words so at but at their stage of psychospiritual development as like a great saint for example it becomes less relevant
and what he means is that you don't have to stop having neuroses you don't have to eradicate them they in fact will come up and buy neuroses I he's just talking about these anxieties around uncertainty that we all have you just need to stop identifying with them and make friends with
them and he said and they come for tea I think I'll I want to pause there for a sec because I think that's the most useful metaphor ever is to have tea with your uncertainties and your fears right but then he says how do people respond to this like number one would be
check out distract like go buy some more stuff get more immediate pleasure because it feels good they essentially go for a dopamine spike right you might check out get high go drink a bunch of alcohol or whatever it may be another hit of dopamine or another way of numbing distracting
busyness for example and we can talk more about that but the other category I thought was really interesting that he talks about is is there's another alternative to reduce the fear is if you align yourself with what you perceive as quote unquote good or quote unquote evil in other words it's in
the world of good and evil and you're part of either the elect or the good guys or the bad guys and you push away the bad guys thinking that that'll then protect you from the uncertainty of the evil in the world but it's a pretty black and white view to see it that way because we of
course don't know the subtle nuances of someone's perspective and other you know culture community group they're a part of our belief system so the people we as humans are tend to grab on to belief systems thinking that it'll make us feel less anxious around the uncertainty and we try
to convince others that this is the right way or they're in the wrong and then we get this polarized world which leads to you know what we're seeing a lot of these days ours is the only way if you don't do it this way it's missing it's wrong and so what he says and this is what made me think of
it because you just brought up self-compassion he's like you have to have a lot of compassion not just self but extended to the other as well for the stages that people are in and he goes on to point out how the souls are not good or evil you know people's actions people's intentions
motivations even their temperament disposition action tendency personality leaning and you know this this thing of this good or evil thing it's not it's it's not about their soul it's about their their karma they've got to work out in a way but it can be unbearable to watch
the suffering that one person in a certain stage can spread or or bring on to others and it can get pretty dark and that's what he calls like this smile of a bearable compassion but but yeah he says that's the the predicament we're in but the minute and the minute you identify with with
those acts as the person you're kind of locked into that state of thinking and you're not seeing you're seeing the roles and not the souls if you will so the art he says and then I'll I'll wind down my recap the artist to see you know to see the to not identify with with that to see
the souls and not roles to see the actions as evil but the real human both in others and in ourselves and to to not identify with the anxiety but just to let it come and go like like clouds in the sky yeah yeah wow there's a lot to react to in that what the I mean one of the things that
that was really important for me in my own development we we talked a lot about adult development in a recent episode that people liked but was was noticing what he said about gurus that there that there is no one out there who has it all figured out because one of the ways I
tried to deal with my own uncertainty growing up especially as a young college student was to kind of guru chase yeah basically I was looking for people who who knew the things I didn't know or perfect yeah but just like looking for mentors who had it all figured out whether that be actual
mentors I I had in my real life or mentors by proxy by reading their books listen to their podcasts because I was just convinced that if I if I found the right person or the right community the right collection of persons then I would know capital T truth and then I wouldn't have to feel uncertain
about a lot of these things that that sort of vexed me or or plagued me and so when I finally discovered or learned that nobody has it all figured out that even the enlightened gurus are also neurotic at first it was a crisis it was like oh no nobody hasn't figured out and I sort of
had this existential crisis but then after you know after a lot of help from others and a lot of contemplation and therapy and things like that that became actually a source of comfort for me that nobody hasn't all figured out so the pressure to have it all figured out suddenly was
relaxed and then it was it has since then become a lot easier for me to just be me and for that to be an art project as opposed to like a science experiment that I had to discover the truth of yeah this this does sound like some of the stuff we were talking about last time or when we
talked about adult development and kind of that existential crisis or awakening when you realize that there wasn't that perfect human devoid of all fear out there negative feelings to deal with yeah that had all the answers right that could help me avoid those negative feelings
and that maybe if there are answers they're the ones we're talking about like the ones of surrendering the only way out is through indeed indeed yeah and then we out of through I also there was a quote from a quantum physicist that actually gave me a lot of comfort
and if you think you know what's going on in the reality of the world just you know talk to a quantum physicist and they will disabuse you of that confidence but yeah this comes from Sean Carroll who says quantum mechanics says that what the world is is different than what we see when
we look at it so you know you want to be certain about a thing and you use all the tools of empiricism or inductive reasoning or whatever intuition to look at your world but to be told that what you see isn't actually what the world is is kind of terrifying like wait a second I'm
measuring it I'm using all the tools and strategies I have to get certain about a thing but this quantum physicist is telling me that it's not what I see when I look at it yeah we were joking about how we were joking around earlier before we hit record how can we work
in the Heisenberg uncertainty principle when I think I just did right yeah Heisenberg what's what's the name Werner Werner Werner Heisenberg yeah Nobel Prize in physics and what you said about measuring things as part of it like the the Heisenberg uncertainty principle I've been pondering
just for fun earlier today to see how it might relate to kind of some of these spiritual philosophical views but and it's a fun but deep rabbit hole to go down but but besides his thing about you know you can never know the exact position you know and speed of a particle
because they all have wave like properties he also part of it was that the act of observing or measuring something has an effect on it yeah yeah and so when you back away from quantum physics and you look at sort of this regular old science we're trying to with either fancy
statistical tools or really really good scientific experiment design control for all the noise right we're trying to eliminate all the confounding variables so that what we see is exactly what we're testing for but there's actually no way to control for all the noise especially when you're doing
psych research I mean our our people use are embarrassingly low yeah and from even backing up although I want to get I want to stay in the quantum realm because it's fun but from a neuroscience standpoint we really literally do not see things the same as each other right like
what is entering my visual field the form of like you know these energy particles and light waves coming in and hitting the rods and codes on the back of my retina are landing on like this optic nerve that is mine and different from yours because of my DNA and because of how I've been
shaped from my life experiences and then when it's projected through these other pathways onto my brain I am seeing a different scene than you while you're looking at that same scene not to mention how it's going to be different for you tomorrow and different from me the next day as well
yeah this idea that reality is relative to perspective is bizarre I've heard also heard it described as the parallax problem so if I'm looking at an old spedometer that's just sort of a you know a dial align over the printed numbers on the back and if I'm looking it from one perspective I
might say the spedometer says that I'm going 80 miles an hour but if you're in the passenger seat and looking at it from an angle you're seeing that that dial that little finger whatever that line covering over a different tick on the printed numbers so from your perspective this
pedometer is saying something different and we'd have to verify with outside measures anyway this this idea that that truth is relative is can be really really perplexing and anxiety provoking for those of us that just want reality to be a certain way yeah but I like that old spedometer
metaphor because it's like we were talking about in in the adult development chat about how just the more perspectives you can put yourself in whether you're literally like traveling the world your astral projecting to someone else's viewpoint of a situation and taking that in so it's not
just your one biased view the more perspectives you get the more of a complete view of that relative truth you get it makes me think of your polarization point because a lot of times what causes conflict are people who are unwilling are unable to take the other person's perspective yeah they are
convinced of their perspective and they think you should have their perspective which creates conflict and that would be like I think the the Ram Das example is kind of more of a like a Hindu view of of you know uncertainty and surrender and overlapping a lot with the Buddhist view but this
I think the the Buddhist viewpoint would view it more stemming from the the illusion of separation like illusion being a fitting term with what we're talking about of not seeing things the same and you know whether it's a relationship conflict or a full-on war you know it's not hard to see
that illusion of separation being at the root of it yeah yeah might I also point out I think this is one of the reasons why psychedelics have a lot of potential as a therapeutic tool but also why a lot of people you know the real psychedelic enthusiasts are hoping that
it will raise the collective consciousness of humanity because it's sort of this induction into perspective because of things it does neurologically and you know calming with reference to your with the rebus model right relaxed beliefs under psychedelics yeah in the same way that a meditation
practice over time would could make you less less caught up in the illusion of separation right or less likely to harm other humans or the planet because you're more fully present and attuned to the impact the ripple the wave like ripple effects of your of your actions and and you're more kind of
open to to those effects of what it might do you you have the other people more in your heart with this expanded perspective yeah I mean we can't really can't overstate how important perspective taking is when grappling with uncertainty in all these different contexts we're talking about I
mean I'm thinking of sort of the standard approach to a couple that comes in for couples counseling who are having communication issues and they're really on a not aligned one of the first thing as a couples counselor might do is to help them communicate differently in a way that enables
them to take each other's perspective to have more compassion and empathy and they you engage in this sort of very predictable conversation style well first what where first I will listen to you and then before I say what I want to say I'm going to make sure I understood your perspective
correctly yeah you know mirroring and repeating back to you in my own words what I think I heard you say and that can go a long way it's really you know the final tool but it's huge yeah and that's that's the what I find myself doing as an antidote to uncertainty and the discomfort related to it
a lot lately is just perspective re-alignment because if I find myself caught up in overthinking and worrying about something it's very likely that what I need to do is in whatever way works for me a lot of ways to get there a lot of paths up this mountain but like retreat from that
that limited perspective place and find a way to regain perspective to slip back into that other place well I think there are a couple layers of it first you're slipping back into the witness consciousness or you're disidentifying with the thought the fear the uncertainty itself
and the discomfort associated with it and then you can slip even bigger back into this more spiritual surrender into the you know like surrendering your will to the divine there it's it's hard to put in words that are kind of universally accepted when you're talking about some
spiritual concepts but like what Jesus said of you know thy will not mine be done or what what some of the kind of Eastern philosophies would just say letting that shit go right that's direct quote yeah yeah so it's making me wonder other tools or strategies or perspectives people might
use or take on to help them grapple with with uncertainty and I think a a what we might call a spiritual or religious belief system helps a lot of people like when you can when you can take everything that you don't understand or that you feel uncertain about and let go and let God
that can be really really comforting for a lot of people like I don't have to know all the things because what I do know you know back when I was younger and I would hear from the pulpit say people say I know beyond a shadow of a doubt or with every fiber of my being those are phrases that I often
heard that God sort of has my back then that can be incredibly comforting and relieve us of a lot of this anxiety that comes with being uncertain yeah and that that is an example of what we were talking about of how how we are inclined as humans to seek out these ways of of kind of punctuating
life's mystery with something more comforting and predictable and secure and and those ceremonies rituals practices gatherings and things we do aren't always pleasant it shows how this isn't just a simple matter of uncomfortable or not there's a big perspective question in here and a big
meaning question too because if you look at why people do sweat lodges or we've talked about like intense yoga practices or or you know extended duration drum circles like people are exerting a lot of effort and sometimes they're like a sweat lodge sometimes that's extremely
uncomfortable on the body but done to kind of sacramentalize the discomfort and the mystery into something that's more meaningful and makes more sense yeah and often done in community yeah yeah so what what else to do about I think the big the big thing is surrender and I like to break
surrender down into a few different stages phases parts like first of all there's this outward fight against life like your actions like if there's a situation out of your control that you're caught up in and then you start to realize oh no this is counterproductive for me to be
expending all this energy fighting road raging suing whatever it is you know having a marathon argument day after day with with a loved one you know you let go of that first of all like the actions around at the fight and then there's what what we were just talking about like slipping
into that less identified place of seeing I am not my thoughts my feelings my fears and that kind of slightly more expanded perspective and then and then what we're talking about in the spiritual context like and so how does one do that they're a myriad of ways right yeah yeah like that's maybe
a mindfulness approach to dealing with uncertainty I'm thinking of dealing with the cognitions directly you could do what the sort of the CBT folks might call play the tape forward so let's say you're you're plagued by what if worries what if something bad happens what if this happens like
what if I take this job and or what if I don't take this job and we can get really stuck at that level of what if so sometimes what is helpful is to just play the tape forward well you know I've I've got this speech I need to give what if I flub or fumble okay what if you do what might happen
well then people might laugh at me okay what if that happens well then I'm going to feel embarrassed what might happen after that well then then maybe I'll lose my job okay well what happened after that you just keep playing that tape forward until you get to the worst case scenario and it's
often the case that the worst case scenario at the end of that train is although undesirable not not unmanageable like it wouldn't be the end of the world necessarily so if you can meditate on that and grapple with the worst case scenario all of a sudden the you know what is likely to happen
which is you know 50 things removed from the worst case scenario is all of a sudden more tolerable so it's a way of getting some some certainty in there in the midst of the uncertainty I like that I like it and it reminds me of how in some of these other schools of thought like
eastern philosophies religious traditions spiritual systems they have a practice sometimes of meditating on death and like what which we tend to fear and avoid and avert our gaze from around here whereas in in India you'll see more ceremonies around it like bodies being kind of
put in the Ganges River for example or they're they're spending more time meditating on that and I think less afraid of it and in our culture in the US anyway I think that our fear of death has more of a grasp or grip on us than we realize and that becomes evident
when people have a serious illness or come you know in your death kind of wake up call for example or it just it can be striking how the body reacts to that how anxious and fearful understandably it is but that practice of of not avert in our gaze to it and and taking that in as a reality of life
can help settle the nervous system in in pretty far reaching ways yeah yeah I mean the old existentialists would say that fear of death is one of the sort of the primary preoccupations that human beings have and that when if we are if we push it out of awareness into
the subconscious mind of the unconscious mind it's responsible for a lot of our neuroses and so to grapple with the reality of death is can be a healthy exercise so whether it's whether regardless of whether or not it is popular in our American culture it's I think it's
an important thing to grapple with and like I said a lot of people will grapple with it in accordance with their religious belief system and they find comfort there yeah I've also played around with optimistic nihilism or maybe have surdism you know this absurdism is fun yeah if if just
Google absurdism and then go watch the movie everything everywhere all at once and because it's a wonderful creative take on dealing with existential absurdism yeah and and and if you can set up shop there it can be really really comforting just again absurdism meaning the idea that the universe is
unknowable it's weird it's absurd that any of us are even conscious so let's enjoy it and it's not enjoyable you know let's enjoy that too it's an interesting meditative approach yeah I love that certainty yeah and the optimistic nihilist is everything ends in dust you know in a couple
hundred years everyone you have known and that has known you is going to be gone you put sort of the things that you're worried about in a cosmic eternal perspective all of a sudden they don't carry as much weight like Carl Sagan's pale blue dot yeah it's such a beautiful meditation on our
tiny place in the universe most reminded of and this I guess is related what we're talking earlier with Ramdas but Kristen Neff's work on radical acceptance uh terabrock terabrock I think didn't Kristen Neff write a book uh terabrock wrote it's right up there over your shoulder radical
acceptance but uh Kristen Neff is the self-compassion writer of courage yeah but uh uh maybe their friends maybe they collaborate they're going to make me google here oh do it anyway but the the principle I think is it's not the same as as being resigned
uh resignation but to accept what you can and can't control and preoccupy yourself with the things that you can yeah that reminds me of a concept also from the yoga philosophy world of you know at some point on your journey uh the saying in the yoga sutras is the seeker becomes the
seer and you know you can interpret that a lot of ways but it's kind of like the icarus story of eventually you let go of the need for the answers and you kind of become one with that path and just accept that you know like we talk about a lot on here we're all in this beautiful hot mess
absurd one at times together and walking each other home as Ramdas would say and you just kind of let go of some of the excessive suffering that we bring on like our emotional reaction to the pain to the uncertainty um by like slipping back into that that bean state yeah well Rita
think this has been a delightful and tangential as our conversations about topics like this to all over the universe um any other final thoughts about grappling with uncertainty no just uh maybe a final word on on surrender because you know the term I think pre psychedelic therapy
intention settings and everything else was well more often conjured up for more people this negative thing of giving up giving in defeat but you know the way we talk about it here and I think this is a given for for many or most but the way we talk about it isn't uh stance of weakness
is actually one of the greatest feats of strength in my opinion you can practice and it's uh use it letting go of your resistance if you will with total openness of who you are given up the the tension of that little vortex you you know feel caught up in and identified with at times and
realizing kind of the the depths of this kind of ocean of existence and power and beauty that is in your being and and how you can open up without holding back to life uh in spite of it even with feeling the fear of uncertainty well said well always a pleasure Steve always thank you
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