Thriving Through Uncertainty

by Tama J Kieves

  This is what I want you to know: Only your strength is real. Everything else is practice.

  The wisdom of A Course in Miracles teaches that “only the love is real.” Everything else is fear—a temporary disconnection from the powerhouse that you are—a powerhouse that is not mealymouthed and has never once had the belief that you shouldn’t have sung at the top of your lungs when that cute guy called or that your idea for a business was dumb. Fear is fog obscuring the mountain, but it’s not the mountain. It’s mud coating the golden Buddha, hiding but never destroying the gleam. Real love is real. Your excitement is real. The times you got it right, that’s what’s real. That’s why they felt so right.

  “Remember what you knew when you were on fire, not when you were tired. Stay faithful to what you knew when you were most alive. Those are your diamonds.”

  When you’re not inspired, you’re not in your right mind. The power is off. You’re not plugged into your true capacities. But just because the plug isn’t in the socket doesn’t mean electricity doesn’t exist. Of course, you will experience times of disconnection. Still, disconnection doesn’t mean the power has disappeared from the building or that there never was a building. It just means that you’ve allowed a circumstance to become your identity instead of remembering your identity—and shifting your circumstances.

  Sure, I know that doubting ourselves is the “human condition.” But it’s not the transcendent one that is also true about you. When you’re connected, the exact circumstances of your present life don’t matter as much as what you know inside. You know unwavering love. You’re not worried about transitory appearances—because you know another truth. It’s not about being delusional. You don’t negate your circumstances or current abilities. You just don’t let them define you.

  Still, it’s status quo to be suspicious of excitement and dreams. Some see inspiration as just a sugar high of the mind—unsustainable, a wafting pipe dream. They quietly suggest you shouldn’t operate heavy equipment—or your life—while under its influence. You are encouraged to doubt this wild, pure strength and trust more in the times when you lose it than in the times when you felt more like yourself than you ever had.

  Now, pessimism we put stock in. We trust our cynicism as though it’s wisdom, the voice of experience instead of embitterment, the way the world works, no questions asked. We think negativity is getting down to brass tacks, instead of moments when we lapsed. We don’t see fear and anxiety as flights of imagination. We see those as probabilities.

  But your dreams can take off at any minute. You can write a screenplay that Sundance produces, even if they’ve rejected your work before. You can quit drinking this time. You can still buy a farm home on the hilltop in France, though you’re struggling to pay rent in Boise right now. You can change the face of education or ineffective legislation, even if you’ve never had a website or a Facebook page. This happens. But only when we feed the light within us.

  Don launched his new digital photography business after coming to one of my retreats. He wrote me an e-mail: “This is the best Christmas morning I’ve had in years. And it’s only Nov 18th.” A client said he heard Broadway show tunes playing in his head as he prepared for a media appearance. A friend found the man of her dreams and saw dominoes falling into place, click, click, click. “I finally realized how much I am born to love,” she said.

  These moments of becoming are real for all time.

  These are the times when life just made sense, and you felt like you’d landed in your own skin at last. Like you finally smelled the musk of a lake or forest you had searched for all your life and you knew you had arrived. This was vital information.

  Even if the moment passed. Even if conditions changed. It was still true. And it’s time to pick up where you left off. It’s time to take the gift of knowing everything you knew was possible in a given instance, and study it as though it was your own Rosetta Stone or a tablet that God—on one of her infinite mercy days—chucked at your head, along with those endorphins, coincidences, and lightning bolts to maybe get your attention. Because you’re not supposed to base your life on the moments when you stumbled. You are the moments when you rose.

  I discovered the poet Jack Gilbert, a beautiful spirit, in The Sun magazine. And I love how he explored an inspired moment, the myth of Icarus, said to have “fallen” because he flew too close to the sun. The myth suggests we might not want to trust our instincts or grand desires. But Gilbert says, “Everyone forgets that Icarus also flew” and “I believe Icarus was not failing as he fell, but just coming to the end of his triumph.” I love that reminder. And, sure, you may be tempted to point out, because you’re picky like that, that Icarus fell to his death. Yet some of us are dying from lack of flight and lack of genuine connection to who we really are. And I can only imagine the feeling of legitimacy Icarus felt, soaring at last, thinking to himself, I knew it. I knew it. I knew I was meant to do this. I’m reminded of a Cuban saying my friend Teo taught me, that translates, “You can’t take from me the dances that I’ve danced.”

  When things change, it doesn’t mean you failed. “Following your bliss” or “guidance” isn’t an immunization from life, a Get Out of Jail Free card, or a guarantee of a neat, straight line. You can meet the love of your life and still divorce and face some horrible little abandonment issue you saved for a rainy day. You can finally leave your corporate job to enroll in an executive coaching program, only to have a loved one have a stroke and require your care. Life is messy. Thriving is not an unwavering condition, as much as it’s an unconditional response to life.

  Only you get to define your progress or your real identity. How will you measure your life? Do the latest bank statements negate the moments you waltzed in the yellow moonlight in the square in Vienna, forgave your drunken father or yourself, campaigned for animal rights, did a handstand in a yoga class, read your poem at open mic night, or fell in love? Will you turn on yourself in this way? What about who you became by walking in the direction in which you were called? Are you still walking forward? You have no idea what’s still available. Because what’s in front of you doesn’t define what’s inside you. And it doesn’t define where you’re headed.

  Please remember what you knew when you were on fire, not when you were tired. Stay faithful to what you knew when you were most alive. Those are your diamonds. Everything else is an angry or fearful dot. A moment of disillusionment about who you are is not a moment of clarity.

  I don’t know about you, but when I leave this planet, I’m taking the diamonds. I’m taking the love. I’m taking the truth. I’m not taking the moments when I didn’t hit my note. I’m taking the moments when I did.

  TURNING POINTS:

  Remember When You Got It Right

  An inspired moment is the Universe’s way of introducing you to yourself. It claims you. It authorizes you . . . teaches you who you really are. You’ve had them.

  Inspired moments are the times when you connected with your true blueprint. . . . These inspired moments are real. But if you do not feed them, they cannot feed you.

  I want to know what you knew when you knew. That’s your soul’s knowing.

  Only your strength is real. Everything else is practice.

  The times you got it right, that’s what’s real. That’s why they felt so right.

  Thriving is not an unwavering condition, as much as it’s an unconditional response to life.

  You have no idea what’s still available. Because what’s in front of you doesn’t define what’s inside you. And it doesn’t define where you’re headed.

  Remember what you knew when you were on fire, not when you were tired. Stay faithful to what you knew when you were most alive. Those are your diamonds.

  HOW COME IT TAKES SO LONG TO SUCCEED? (AND HOW COME YOU’RE ASKING THAT QUESTION?)

  We want a medicine man or a New York Times–endorsed expert to tell us what to d
o or to confirm we’re on the right path. And while we search for this information, we miss vital information, the information that arises from our souls.

  TAMA KIEVES (journal entry)

  Secretly, I believe there’s a divine appointment—a time when you finally stop searching for reasons for your supposed failure and start cherishing your own becoming instead. A life-changing experience only comes from a life-changing relationship with yourself.

  TAMA KIEVES (journal entry)

  I’ve met many individuals who are working on long-term dreams or goals. I watch them worry like grandmothers, patting down an imaginary apron, or get all frantic like some butterfly in a bag, as they talk about their perceived lack of progress. It’s the question that plagues so many daring to live unconventional, inspired lives: Why does it take so long for things to turn around? Why does it take so long to succeed?

  If you’ve been consciously looking at your life for any amount of time, you will no doubt fall into the tar pit of the blame game. I’ve slipped into this abyss without even knowing there was one. Like Lot’s wife in the Bible, I kept looking back. Unlike her, I wasn’t afraid of what I was leaving. I was more afraid that I wasn’t leaving.

  I kept thinking I must be doing something wrong. It was obvious everyone else had it altogether. I saw it on TV (though I managed to ignore the drug commercials for depression, high blood pressure, fatigue and anxiety, which should have been a clue). I kept looking for a fly in the ointment, my core issue, my pattern, an ancestor’s pattern, something to blame for still being in a life in process.

  Well, I’m poetic, moody, and emotionally apocalyptic, and I journal more than I move, so there was that.

  Or maybe I just didn’t go to the right astrologer, business coach, or witch doctor. Maybe I should have seen John of God or at least Tony Robbins, or spent a tiny bit less time plundering Nordstrom and thrift stores. Maybe I should have shoveled out my subconscious mind, gotten a chiropractic adjustment for my karma, taken an Internet marketing course, or moved to the Bay Area. And don’t get me started on family. Don’t even.

  I often imagined others bungee jumping their way into outstanding results and making Silicon Valley salaries, leaving legacies instead of apologies, or having the inner peace of Jesus, a home life of baked bread and Scrabble, and steamy love affairs in Ibiza.

  Why weren’t great things happening to me? I knew I had some decent potential stock. I knew I belonged in a life of goodness. I knew I had gifts to give. I knew we all deserve love and opportunity. I kept trying to figure this out, solve my life’s dilemmas like an algorithm or the ultimate Rubik’s cube. I kept trying to learn what others knew and how they pulled it off.

  I can’t tell you when it happened, but I finally realized the most important thing: There was nothing to figure out. The reason I couldn’t find the “something” I needed to change was because I’d been wrong thinking that there was something I needed to change. I’d thought that if I could just track down the one defect, then I could make life perfect. Everything would all come together in a Hollywood flourish and stay that way forever.

  But there was nothing wrong. There never is.

  Yes, I know, my fellow savvy eye roller, it’s a harps and patchouli “spiritual” thing to say, but it is a spiritual thing. It’s a jug of water in the desert, a jug of holy water, if you ask me. It’s the absolute turning point. It’s the threshold. It’s surrender and acceptance and the freedom of an emotional Mardi Gras all rolled into one. It’s the ground of being for a different way of life.

  In A Course in Miracles, it says the ego’s main teaching is “If this were different, I would be saved.” Essentially, it’s a way of making sure that you never land in your life right here and now. Instead you look for a rescue, a fix, a guarantee, a finale. You make yourself wrong. You push away the life before you, the circumstances that are here to serve you, convinced you know what is true. You deny your own love—separate from what is—and guarantee an inability to thrive.

  Yet in life, there will always be uncertainty. There will always be a gap, a space between where you are and where you want to be. This isn’t failure. This is life, especially for someone who continues to grow.

  You have every right to desire progress. But it’s disabling to condemn where you are. Thriving comes from loving, not from withholding love. This is a miraculous adventure. And nonjudgment is the only way you will discover your True Life, a life you cannot imagine, one that you want with all your heart, the one that is already here and available to you.

  “You have every right to desire progress. But it’s disabling to condemn where you are. Thriving comes from loving, not from withholding love.”

  If you want to grow, turn your focus toward the sun. Begin to ask yourself: What am I doing well? How have I progressed? What feels good to me? What’s been moving in the right direction? How can I be self-affirming right now? This isn’t Sesame Street for the slow crowd. This is open sesame—the unlocking of more than you knew you could have.

  You’re always moving forward. You may have a narrow definition of what success would look like. You may feel as though the rug has been pulled out from under you. I’d say you’re on a magic carpet ride. You’re no longer in the life you planned. This is a life that is bigger than your plan. This is inspired jurisdiction.

  Sorry, Dorothy, you’re not at the big box stores at the mall anymore, where everything is as usual and you have the illusion of order, control, and manageability. Because when you’re growing, opening to your own signature soul adventure, nothing is going to be predictable.

  This is not a path of thriving through manipulation and control. You are learning to fly—to lose ground and find grounding wherever you are. Thriving means trusting your own experience to lead you where the deepest part of you longs to be, instead of fighting your life and yourself at every turn. There’s leeway. Fluidity. Trust, love, and energy. This is real success.

  Rhonda was in my Inspired & Unstoppable Life Tribe and for months she’d been struggling with trying to force the ending of her dissertation, and a move to another state. Finally, she decided to stop beating herself up and pushing. “I’m feeling more free. I don’t know exactly what I’m doing, but for the first time I’m really excited by that.” She added, “I’m letting life be life on life’s terms. I kept thinking I needed to figure it all out. Now I see there’s something bigger going on. It’s not up to me to make it all happen.”

  It’s not up to you to make it all happen, either. There is a mystical confluence, a divine backstory and stage construction coming together—or let’s just say things happen when they are ready to happen. In Zen, they say, “Spring comes and the grass grows all by itself.” Likewise, it takes nine months for an embryo to grow into a fetus, and no mother wants to rush this gestation and deny her child every possibility of development (unless she’s fully pregnant in August and it’s hot as hell—then she could be tempted to pry the thing out with a crowbar). And the fetus doesn’t need to say affirmations or learn the six steps to better toe development to save time. Things in nature aren’t about saving time. They’re about taking time, as in utilizing where they are to grow into their fullest expression. Nature is all about the right timing.

  I know it’s scary to let go of “control”—as though you have it. We live in a world of intellectualism, where we’re taught that if we just learn enough or do it right, we can take charge. We will never have to face our wobbling selves, our badgering fears, and trust that things are working out. But this is such a small way to live.

  I see this in my programs. Students want the three steps, the eight steps to success. Hell, they’ll do the 180 steps, and even a few tap dances, jumping jacks and Hail Marys, if that’s what it takes. They just don’t want to hear about the only step that makes all the difference, the one step that feels like a free fall—that feels, perhaps, like giving up, yet is the fast track to everything y
ou could ever want. Trust yourself. Love yourself. Bless your journey, for you are surely on one. The mystic Andrew Harvey says, “You have to leap into the fire. Nobody will do it for you. Nobody can do it for you.”

  Of course, “official” steps make our pointy-headed egos feel like they’re accomplishing things. Our egos love shiny binders packed with impressive worksheets with good graphics and wonderful logos. They can tell you what they learned. But who cares what you learn? I care about how alive you feel. Are you tingling with presence? Are you dancing in the moonlight, even when it’s just you alone in your kitchen, underneath an environmentally sensible halogen bulb? Do you know something inside yourself that can’t be taken away, even if circumstances change? Let me tell you, love is so much bigger than control.

  It’s always been love that has moved me forward. All the data or strategy in the world couldn’t give me the solidity of one inspired moment. I’ve had times when I felt this sweet, crazy, freaking divine connection and I’ll tell you right up front that it didn’t happen when I was judging myself or my life. It didn’t happen from planning my life and following through like an automaton either.

  I needed uncertainty to stay open. I needed to stay open to receive more than just an answer, but a true way of getting all my answers. This connection rings all the bells. It is the one true thing that has made me feel alive and made everything worth it. This startling power didn’t add on knowledge. It peeled away my limited “knowledge,” revealing the knowing that is always there. My progress wasn’t provable. But it was irrefutable to me. Love reveals conviction, not of the mind.

  I’ve finally taken in how successful I am, too. I’ve started appreciating what I have accomplished, inside and out. This is a deliberate focus and it works. Otherwise, whatever I achieve, my ego will dismiss. It will point to some new castle in the distance, as though being there will make me so much happier, and as though I wouldn’t bring that same longing mind over there.