Making Friends with Not-Knowing

This is the continuation of my previous post: “Stepping Out of Comfort into Not-Knowing,”  which tells the story of how and why I quit a successful teaching career of twenty years – on purpose.

In today’s post I share the goodies that could only be revealed to me by hanging out in the dark, often messy and uncomfortable place I call Not-knowing. Enjoy this excerpt from Your Spacious Self:

“I know of no handbook that shows us how to deconstruct, and re-shape a life, no natural follow-the-dot sequence that takes us gently by the hand from point A to B. For a year after I left teaching, I simply followed my nose and improvised my life, sometimes making lame stabs at clearing out a drawer, sometimes doing things that made my heart sing, sometimes doing things that made no sense at all. There was no particular pattern or unifying principle or plan. I allowed my little dinghy, now repaired and in much better shape, to float along looking for the next strong current. That new current came in the form of an innocent query and the unexpected gift of a book.

These pivotal encounters that galvanize us have a way of sneaking in the back door. In the first of these two encounters I was asked if I had a business card. I’m thinking: Business card?  Me?

But this innocuous request did something to me. It unleashed a host of unexpected and energizing possibilities. Hmmm…a business card. The question challenged me to consider what my card would say if I had one to give out to people. It tapped into the place that knew all along: my heart.

Tending the Home…Nourishing Homes…Beautiful Home Spaces…Healthy Spaces…Healing the Home…Feeling at Home…Flowing Home…Sanctuary… The phrases flickered on and off like little neon signs as my mind scanned the airwaves for answers to what my ideal life and new identity might look and feel like. It felt really good to play with new ideas, to wake up to possibility. All that aimless floating suddenly felt like directed floating.

It’s a simple exercise. Give the brain one question to chew on and it can take you places you never imagined possible. Massaging sentence fragments to design my tagline had a delicious way of connecting the dots of my life that spanned forty-plus years of experience, beginning with my home-making marathons for my dolls and teddy bears when I was a child, and my experiential side-studies in metaphysics when I was a teenager. The business card question took me as far back as I could remember and revealed a whole new direction that I was quietly and unknowingly cultivating. Things began to make some sense.”

– Excerpted from Your Spacious Self: Clear Your Clutter and Discover Who You Are

To be continued in my next post… “Connecting the Dots”

Photo Credit: Google Images/Vortex of Creativity