at the altar…
Finally, I am on my back at the altar of uncertainty and it has taken quite some effort to get here. Yes, it has taken effort to surrender flat on my back, belly up and heart open.
2020 invited me to pause. 2021 invited me to my knees and now at the start of 2022, I have finally made it to my back, to savasana in the words of Octavia Raheem from her book Pause. Rest. Be. Stillness Practices for Courage in Times of Change, “A pose for endings”.
It is now, that I am on my back daring to rest, feeling the thrum of my heart beat and feeling my belly rise and fill with breath, that I surrender to this teacher and bathe in the fire, water and soil of its’ medicine.
Its’ fires graciously consume the familiar material means in my life that have masqueraded as certainty extending illusions of conditional comforts and control. In the wake of its flames, smoldering piles of ash remain illuminating the path to altar of uncertainty.
Its’ waters hold me in their stillness, inviting me to float in the tender and wide ripples of their embrace rather than trashing violently against the currents above.
Its soil, the soft folds of earth beneath me, cradle my body and invite me to sink in the the softness of my own earthen animal folds and rest.
There is nothing left for me to fix.
There is nothing left for me to control.
There is only an invitation to be, to rest and to feel.
As I lay here, I can feel that the medicines of this teacher having taken nothing from me, but generously leaving me with that which is absolute necessity in this moment. Slow sobs unfurl in quivering waves throughout my body as my heart expands into the miracle of generosity.
This body and this breath.
All I have truly ever had. All that truly even matters.
What I began with in this life and what will companion me through the end.
This body and this breath.
Layers of soil and minerals, animated by breath and water and fire.
clarifying relationship with uncertainty…
Flat on my back, belly up and heart open, I am reflecting on my relationship with uncertainty as teacher, companion and beloved. I use the term relationship loosely because upon reflection, my approach to relating with this powerful teacher has been everything but relational. In fact, I have spent most of my childhood learning to relate to uncertainty through the lens of deficit, binding it’s presence to stories of lack, lack of food, lack of water, lack of shelter, lack of care, lack of love, lack of belonging, lack of the basic resources that any living being requires to thrive. In response, I’ve spent the greater part of adulthood (whatever that is) resisting the medicine of uncertainty, taking calculated measures to lessen the impact of its reach in my life.
In the solitude of reflection, it is clear that much of the calculated measures have been executed in vain- - like grasping at air in free-fall.
After all, how do you swim in water and not get wet? Uncertainty feels like the ocean of our existence.
How do I run away from that which is in me? I feel layered with imprints of uncertainty shaped by free will, experiences and the conditions and contexts of my environments, and yet I run from it?
Have we been systemically conditioned to distrust the imprints of uncertainty that reside within us, while prostrating ourselves at the illusions of certainties offered by systems of harm and oppression?
What if this way of relating to uncertainty, through a lens of deficit is by design, a tool of oppression and disconnection, to keep us all from dreaming, resting and courting possibility?
When did that which is uncertain become that which must be feared?
clarifying my thoughts…
As I explore authentic courtship with uncertainty, I’ve felt pulled to slow down, to clarify my relationship with this word. Lately, I’ve felt looped into a culturally binary experience of uncertainty where contexts of intentional lack and deficit created by systems of harm and oppression have been historically employed to obscure contexts of possibility.
I can feel myself re-weaving and remembering context that does not equate uncertainty with the looming threat of lacking access to universal and basic resources. Because when it comes to the disperate distribution of basic and universal resources, these are the intentional practices of lack and deficit created by systems of oppression and harm. These intentional practices have been carefully wrapped in the language of uncertainty to enforce compliance and divorce one from language which holds the potential of possibility and pathways of resilience.
Systems have succeeded in co-oping of this word along with others to reinforce scarcity models which commodify human life and labor and incentivize participation in rituals of disconnection which yield proximity to false & fleeting levels of certainty within systems of harm and oppression. These rituals and practices reify and protect these systems, while simultaneously consuming us along with our capacities to dream and write our stories and futures.
Within these systems, language, experience and though is measured and converted to measurable metrics of predicted productivity, profitability & certainty to assign value and to extend the promise of tentatively accessing that which one needs to thrive. In these systems our language is co-oped and used against us.
clarifying an invitation…
i am reclaiming uncertainty as mantra and meditation
a blank canvas of possibility stretching toward liberation and awaiting the art of our destinies
a generous fabric of possibility draped across the expanse of time and space inviting us to dream and breathe into it, trusting that the protection of possibility is far more resilient than the bondage of certainty
i am recovering this teacher and the myriad of others whose names I have been conditioned to fear, whose stories have been weaponized to bend me into compliance
whose language has been warped through the lens of deficit and lack
i am reclaiming uncertainty from contexts of harm and oppression which repeatedly displace systemic burdens of neglect onto the language of uncertainty to divorce me from the context of possibility, dreaming, learning, resting and weaving spells and rituals with the medicine of uncertainty
i am reclaiming uncertainty whose medicines co-create portals of possibility and power vehicles of change
i reclaim uncertainty as companion, teacher and beloved
what does it feel, taste, smell and sound like to be held in the fabric of uncertainty? What levels of liberation and renewal do we miss if we only have the capacity to dream and exist within the confines of certainty?
-tamira cousett LLC, copyright 2022
