Imelda

Dublin, Ireland

Betsie Maner

Mt Pleasant, SC, USA

Explore your spiritual landscape, acknowledging and embracing seeds of doubt as potential for growth and wisdom.

English

Today we’re exploring harvesting wisdom from doubt. Maybe you find yourself on the edges of a religious structure you used to belong to because of questions that you couldn’t get good answers to. Maybe people around you feared your doubt.  Today in this practice, in the quiet space of our hearts, together we’ll acknowledge the presence of doubt. We will hold space for doubt together. Doubt is not an enemy to fear, but a companion.

Harvesting Wisdom From Seeds Of Doubt

 Welcome to the meditation. Thanks for taking the time to practice today. To begin, find a comfortable position seated or lying down. If it feels okay for you, close your eyes and begin to breathe in and breathe out, starting to set your intention for this time to engage deeply. Take an inhale and release the tension from your forehead. Scrunch your eyebrows together and down, raise them up, and then release, letting them come to a natural, relaxed state. Release any pressure around your eyes, breathing in and experiencing the relief of fully focusing inward, giving space to your internal self, free from performance, free from requirement. Unclench your teeth and move your jaw around a few times, and then let it come to a natural resting place. Notice what it feels like for your breath to enter your body and to leave your body. Open your body for any other tense places, shoulders, hips, toes, moving around, releasing sensations until you can find more ease in your body. Notice how even just in the past couple minutes, you have increased your capacity for presence and peace in this moment. Today we're exploring this idea of harvesting wisdom from doubt. Doubt is a natural and inevitable part of our lives, in so many realms, and yet so many of us were handed a black and white view of the world, and now we find ourselves exploring the gray area. Author Philip Yancey calls this the borderlands of belief. Richard Rohr calls it the edge of the outside. Maybe you find yourself on the edges of a religious structure that you used to belong to because of all the questions that you couldn't get good answers to. Maybe those around you or in leadership feared your doubt. Our human brain craves certainty, yet any kind of faith in something spiritual or beyond us requires a humility inherent to being honest about all that we do not know for sure, but that we still might hope for. For many, this uncertainty can be felt as a threat, but actually uncertainty, questions and doubts can serve as a powerful tool for growth and deeper connection with the sacred. When we are unwilling to engage our questions and instead push them deeper, it leads to disconnection from ourself, from others, and from God. Today in this practice, in this quiet space of our hearts, together we'll acknowledge the presence of doubt, and we'll hold space for doubt together. Doubt is not an enemy to fear, but a companion on our spiritual journey. Now I invite you to picture your spiritual journey as a vast and open field. Take some time to let your imagination fill out the scene for you, trying not to question it too much. And then find yourself in this scene. Imagine yourself reaching down to feel the texture of the soil in your hands grounding you in that place. Sense the warmth of sunlight on your skin. Notice any smells, sounds, physical sensations. In your imagination, allow your full self to be present in this sacred, safe space that you created to represent your spirituality. Imagine that the presence of the divine is also with you in this place, whether your imagination supplies a visual representation or it's more of a felt sense. Now, however your field looks, I want you to imagine and notice scattered about on the ground are seeds of doubt. Observe these seeds with curiosity. A seed is a powerful and ancient metaphor. Each question that you ask holds the potential for growth, for new insights, and for understanding. Take some time to explore your field with an open heart. Notice orienting yourself toward your doubt with curiosity and openness instead of rejecting or avoiding them out of fear. What does it feel like to reach down and touch your doubt? As you walk through your spiritual landscape, take a moment to pause and ponder some of the past seeds of doubt and notice what they have grown into. Reflect on a moment of doubt in your life. What questions came up and where did they lead you? And what insights did you gain and how did you grow? When you cultivate your questions to take you deeper into exploration of God, yourself, and your relationship with others, they can become a source of wisdom waiting for you to harvest them. One more note about existing in this space, these borderlands of faith, is that it can be very isolating. You are not alone in this space. While you're still imagining yourself in your field, who can you invite to join you there? Regardless of where you find yourself in relationship with a religious structure or a certain faith community, you still need the things that you found in that place, whether it was belonging, spiritual connection, or relationships with other people. So again, who can you invite to your field? Who can you engage in the questions with and create these rituals of connection and belonging with even in this uncertain space? Trust that you are not alone. Take a bit more time to imagine inviting others into your field. Who might that be that you can explore these questions with and what fruit might that bear for you all collectively? As we come to the end of our time together, bring yourself out of your imaginary field and back into the presence of your body and the sound of my voice and this moment in time and space. You can place your hands on top of your heart or perhaps place them consciously in your lap. Come back to your inhales and your exhales, the physicality of breathing that we so often take for granted. Feel the support beneath your body, underneath you, behind you. You are supported and let that truth ground you. As you continue on your day, may you walk this spiritual path with an open heart, embracing doubt as a guide, turning toward it with curiosity and harvesting the wisdom it brings.