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Excitement & Certainty

Can excitement and certainty go hand in hand?

Our lives are often a quest for excitement. Yet, they are also a quest for certainty. Can these two go together? Isn't certainty the very antithesis of excitement? By seeking certainty, are we ensuring monotony and boredom? In our quest for certainty, are we depriving ourselves of the excitement of welcoming the unknown? Can a repetition, a certainty, have a quality of excitement that is brought about by uncertainty and the unknown?

We seek certainty because we fear the uncertain and the unknown. Our anxiety for our own survival and security makes us seek certainty. Yet, the fact is that life is an unfolding of the unknown. As we live, we are constantly called upon to encounter uncertainty and the unknown. Life is an unfolding of the unknown amidst varying degrees of uncertainty. In this uncertainty is the excitement of seeking to receive and adapt, seeking to cope and understand, seeking to survive and overcome. By seeking and ensuring certainty, by setting up predictable patterns of thought and action, are we putting an end to the excitement of living spontaneously? Are we setting ourselves up for lives filled with monotony and boredom? Can a life driven by fear and defensiveness be exciting? What is excitement? What is certainty?

Excitement makes life worth living along with pleasure, challenge, love, joy, peace and contentment. The presence of peace and stability does not imply the end of excitement. To me, excitement is the unfolding of the new, the thrill and exhilaration of discovery. To feel excitement, one needs to participate in a process of discovery. If we have built our lives on predictable patterns, if we have allowed our needs for survival and security to dominate our lives, we have reduced life to a predictable sequence of events and circumstances.

In the certainty of predictable patterns, however grand, there is no joy of discovery and therefore, no excitement. The thrill of discovery is the joy of excitement. There is an air of anticipation and uncertainty. This is seen most clearly in little children. For a young child, every moment is a process of discovery, filled with excitement and joy. Even predictable and oft repeated games can bring excitement to a child because he meets every moment anew. Therefore, it is not merely repetition that spells the end of excitement. Our inability to die to the previous moment, our tendency to live with the accumulated impressions of the past makes our lives burdensome and repetitive. When we see the present moment through the lens of past conditioning, we fall into repetitive patterns that bring monotony and boredom. A recycling of our past impressions is not a process of discovery. Without discovery, how can there be excitement?

Our need for certainty is a survival response of an anxious child. A stable adult learns to live with the fact of uncertainty. Uncertainty is a fact of life. Our willingness to face facts also means a willingness to face uncertainty. This means that life is forever dynamic and we are constantly called upon to meet its challenges in various ways. This does not call for exceptional courage or creativity. However, it calls for a constant emptying of ourselves. By emptying ourselves, we surrender past impressions and images; we die to the previous moment and live each moment anew. By keeping our mind empty of images and notions, we are totally receptive to life as it unfolds in the present moment. In this total attention and receptivity to the present moment is the continuing joy of discovery. This discovery includes the joy of discovering ourselves. Therefore, the unfolding of life is also the unfolding of our own awareness; our life in the world is a meeting with our deepest self.

By an inexplicable law of universal synchronicity, we encounter circumstances necessary for our continuing progress on the journey of discovery. We may not get what we want but we always get what we need. This means that judgement and labelling as good and bad are merely conveniences for daily living. In an absolute sense, labels like good and bad are absurd. Every circumstance of our life can be a discovery, a process of learning and in this discovery is joy and excitement. In this sense, the art of living is the art of being a child, unconditioned and spontaneous.

Our need for certainty expresses our need for survival and security. We can seek conditions that favour or promote our survival and security. Yet, life is full of surprises and absolute certainty of either survival or security can be elusive. Therefore, no matter how well placed we are in terms of our own survival and security, the future is still uncertain and it is unknown. Therefore, the opportunity for discovery is forever present. So is the opportunity for self-discovery. If we seek to lead meaningful lives, we cannot deny reality; we must embrace the facts of life as they are. That the future is uncertain and unknown is a fact of life. In fully embracing this fact, we honor reality and thereby our own awareness. For each of us, if we are willing to let go of the past and future and remain centred in the present moment, life is a process of discovery. The journey of life is simultaneously the inner journey of self-discovery. If we are receptive to each step, endless joy, excitement and ecstasy await us; we discover an unbounded awareness completely free from conditioning as the very essence of our being, as our own deepest self.