A great shift occurs in our spiritual practice when we stop being so sure of anything. Reality seems to dissolve when we try to grasp it too firmly, at least from the mystical perspective. Maybe there is a God, maybe there isn’t. Maybe there isn’t a Great Spirit is the sense that we’ve known. But perhaps there is. Can we be ok with that? Maybe the human soul endures after death, or maybe it simply dissolves into nothingness. Perhaps there is no afterlife, at least in any durable sense. It could be that all that remains of us is but a whisper, an echo of a life. Can we exist peacefully with this unknowingness?

Through this paradigm shift, the spiritual practice ceases being about the preservation of the self. It stops being about acquiring this or that, or maintaining this or that, or about being certain about this or that. When we nakedly face the Unknown, the spiritual life becomes more like a dance. Whatever the Universe is, we dance with it. Whatever life or death may be, we sway to it. Whatever Spirit or God may be or not be, we sing with it. At first there is immense dread in this openness which feels very uncertain. But as we pierce through the veil of our ego’s death avoidance—which is at the core of much of the human endeavor—we find a deep, abiding source of peace. In this well of spirit there is little to know, nothing to achieve, nothing to grasp. As you drink from its crisp waters, all there is left is to simply Be.