Faith was distressed:
“Uncertainty has always haunted me, like a ghost.
But lately it´s got worse.
She used to follow me everywhere -
but now she sleeps in my bed!
When I cook breakfast, she cooks it with me!
When I go to the toilet she come with me!
She lives inside me!
She even gets in my dreams!
There are two sides to everything,
and she always shows me the other.
When I say up, she says down -
and I end up spinning around!
Please don´t laugh at me:
I was going to kick her out,
but I wasn´t sure if that was the right thing to do!
And it´s not just relationship decisions, or career decisions -
Uncertainty haunts my understanding of Life Itself.”
“I hear you! I hear you!” I said, and asked
“So what to do?
II
You can ask the Tarot cards.
But in the end, you will have to interpret the spread.
You can go to a Tarot card reader, or a medium, or a channeler,
or some other sincere or insincere deliverer of messages
from beyond the edges of our everyday perception -
but in the end you will have to decide how you understand what they tell you,
and whether or how you apply it or not.
You can pray to The Lord, or The Goddess, or to Universal Truth -
you can meditate and wait
for intuitions and inspirations whispered by your Higher Self...
But in the end, once again -
you will have to decide whether you agree with what you´ve heard -
and whether you act upon it or not.
Try as you may
to avoid the fact that Uncertainty haunts you -
project as you may Absolute Knowing on tea leaves or gurus or scriptures or whispers -
you who live with Uncertainty inside you -
you cannot escape yourself.
Whichever way you go,
you always end up back at yourself!
III
It was the same for me too, you know -
I have an Uncertainty who lives in my guestroom, now -
but once she lived in the basement.
Perhaps it´s the same for us all...
I have a friend whose Uncertainty lives happily in a tent
at the far end of his garden,
with the insects and birds and trees.
And another friend whose Uncertainty
only appears when invited...
It´s was the same for them, and it was the same for me,
as now it is for you:
however many Tarot cards I studied,
however many darshans I sat in,
however intently I listened to the silent voice of God -
I always ended up being me
with my contradicting, confusing Uncertainty
sitting next to me, annoyingly -
ever undecided.
Until, that is, one night,
once upon a time...
my Uncertainty took me on a journey
in a dream -
and I saw Millions of Uncertainties in chains -
sentenced to silence -
banished from the minds to which they belonged.
I saw Uncertainties starving.
I saw Uncertainties being beaten.
I saw Uncertainties who had lost all hope.
She showed me Witches with their Uncertainties spellbound,
Jews and Chrstians and Muslims with their Uncertainties bound in beliefs,
Good Citizens with their Uncertainties bound in laws,
and Lovers with their Uncertainties bound in vows.
That night I felt the pain of our Uncertainties.
I felt their humility and their kindness -
and how though we may forget, they never forget
we´re not omnipresent or omniscient.
So the next morning,
when my Uncertainty came up from the basement,
and sat down beside me at breakfast -
I felt a new tenderness towards her.
“I am pleased you are not in chains, or bound in some way” I said -
and feeling (I must admit) quite some shame -
I invited her up from the basement to the guestroom.
Since then, over the years, we´ve become friends.
We take all of our meals together -
and I have become comfortable living with her.
I have become comfortable not knowing -
and I´ve saved a lot of money on Tarot Readings,
workshops with Gurus, and books on The Truest Truth!
Since then my thoughts have become softer.
Since then whomever I meet
I wonder about the wellbeing of their Uncertainty.
I do hope she´s comfortable and well fed!
Since then I no longer live in a right and wrong world -
an upstairs, downstairs world...
It´s as if Uncertainty has had lots of children -
Choice, Risk, Courage, Consequence -
and they´ve all become very welcome at my table.
*
Mark Josephs,
"Mark the Mystic Activist"
Aragon, Spain
Summer, 2024
This poem is from the (very expanded) third edition of "Love & Revolution"
(the foundational text of The Conscious Tribes Project)
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