My current Intuitive Vision Board has many images of people, mountains and Cypress trees. Taken together they convey stillness and contemplation, encouraging me to pause, stand still and wait until Life sets me on a direct course again. Nothing much is known. Nothing is yet secure and in place. The quest for certainty is absent.
Quest for certainty
I’ve been thinking why it is some of us are more comfortable allowing the ‘planner-within’ to take a back seat while our creative, intuitive mind makes an intuitive vision board. And then there are others among us who cannot resist the urge to interfere and control the outcome.
If, in creating your vision board, you allowed your thinking-mind to influence your choice of images in any shape or form then you have not created an Intuitive vision Board. The thinking-mind has interceded to create an intentional vision board. There is nothing wrong with this. It just produces a different outcome.
Then I ask: Why do some of us have a need to intercede like this? Why do we quest for certainty?
The answer I got: It’s driven by the need to feel secure.
Acting on the belief we are in charge of our own destiny, we insist on determining what this will look like. Then focus on it until we get a result.
This belief also harbours the illusion that we can finally gain control of our lives, if we try harder, work harder, or push more. This goal-fixated approach to creating our destiny is what the ego does to protect itself against uncertainty. Faced with the anxiety of an unknown future, we prefer to invest strongly in our preferred version of it than face the raw truth that the future is uncertain.
Acting on the belief we are in charge of our own destiny, we insist on determining what this will look like and then focus on it until we get a result.
This belief also harbours the illusion that we can finally gain control of our lives, if we try harder, work harder, or push more. This goal-fixated approach to creating our destiny is what the ego does to protect itself against uncertainty. Faced with the anxiety of an unknown future, we prefer to invest strongly in our preferred version of it than face the raw truth that the future is uncertain.
“There is a contradiction in wanting to be perfectly secure in a universe whose very nature is momentariness and fluidity.” Alan Watts from The Wisdom of insecurity.
In our attempt to manipulate Life our way is a hidden assumption that because we want something, we are entitled to have it. However evidence proves the contrary that however much we use our will power, we have little control over the machinations of Life.
Jobs are lost, babies don’t come, house sales fall through and Trump becomes President again.
The unexpected, the shocking, the outrageous happen despite our best efforts. It’s our judgements about these that cause us more stress, a stress that endures, rather than experiencing the events fully in the moment and moving on.
What if a less stressful approach is to get more comfortable with uncertainty. To accept Life in all its glorious unpredictability, rather than resist or complain about what happens.
“There is nothing good or bad, but thinking makes it so,” sayeth Shakespeare in Hamlet.
Efforts are wasted in attempting to make ourselves feel secure. The ego goes to great lengths to build fortifications and create the illusion of security. Yet, inside the fortress, it can feel isolating. And there is a need to defend our own corner. And yet Life continues to be uncertain.
All goal-setting and intentional vision boards are an attempt to make things go our way, as opposed to the way Life wants to take us. Our efforts to flee from insecurity to security, uncertainty to certainty, are attempts to escape the matrix of Life in which we are an integral part.
Does this mean we shouldn’t protect ourselves from crocodiles?
No! But it does mean feeling secure and experiencing a rich, authentic, fulfilling Life are opposites.
I believe one of the most valuable Life skills we can cultivate is improvisation. To avoid setting immovable targets and pursuing them doggedly. Instead, to allow an idea to slip into view on our Life path and with curiosity be free to explore it, with whatever energy and resources are available and without needing to know in advance where the path is taking us.
Improvisational-minded people are creative, intuitive, and inspired. They allow Life to morph as is necessary and are willing to go with the change in direction mid-course, without being derailed by it.
“Life is a dance and when you are dancing you are not intent on getting somewhere. The meaning and purpose is the dance.” Alan Watts again.
The quest for certainty is what blocks the intuition and creativity. It’s in the nature of uncertainty, which by definition is in the moment, without reference to the past or future, that real power, authority and progress lie.
A wiser approach may require us to adopt a more open-hearted attitude. A willingness to trust that Life knows best along with a greater acceptance of events beyond our control. To respect the flow of life and be ready to flow with it, participating with what is unfolding rather than fighting against it.
Have you noticed that which starts out looking like a disaster can end up being a blessing in disguise. It would seem like the more challenging the situation we encounter, can call up even more life force to bring about the necessary changes.
So rather than resist the problem as we perceive it, we might welcome it as a harbinger of a marvellous transformation.