The Great Unknown
“The secret to Spiritual living and conscious immortality is to surrender every moment of your existence to The Unknown. Neither claim nor keep nothing as your own. Give both good and bad experiences to The Unknown. Give all of your karma and the fruits of your actions to the Unknown. Worry note about your life and what will become of it. There is no you, there is only The Unknown.” — Londrell
It occurred to me today, I don’t pray. Many times throughout my day, I talk, I imagine a life force, but I don’t pray unless someone who still believes asks me to, and then with all the power and goodness I have, I’ll plead on their behalf. I stopped praying in stages as I deconstructed and left the majority of my former faith on the wayside. I took only the parts needed to help me remember where I’ve come from. Sometimes I miss the naivety of the version of me who once believed. I’ve never been one to believe fully, but partial faith was still faith.
Praying to the God who sits on the throne helped me believe in a Power greater than you and I. It helped me hand over my worries and fears—problems too big and too hard for me alone to figure out. Prayer made me believe there was a God who cared about me and the world, who cared about children, animals, nature, and climate change. It helped me imagine a Force that could stop all the evil—the madness in my life and the world when He/It wanted to. So I kept praying. When prayers went unanswered, I assumed the time wasn’t right, or I wasn’t right. Either way, my thinking and praying seemed more like luck.
And although I do not pray anymore, I’ve never stopped wishing—something I’ve been doing since I was about 6 or 7. Prayer and wishing aren’t so different when you think about it; both are ways of reaching toward something beyond yourself, of hoping your voice carries to some force that might shift your circumstances. I’ve been wishing on four-leaf clovers, shooting stars, pennies thrown in fountains, dandelion fluff blown into the wind, candles on birthday cakes. Wishing that someway, somehow my wishes held some power over my present circumstances and even more so over my future.
As I write this, Alice Walker’s words surface: “The most common way people give up their power is by thinking they don’t have any.” I’m asking myself what power I have in my voice, in my visioning, in my creation—and if I manifest a thing, how much power do I really have? I may be gassing myself up, but I do believe in the power of my thinking, speaking, writing, imagining, and wishing. Depending on the day, I don’t have faith in much outside of myself, but I believe in me—I believe in me more than I believe in anything in this world. And I have a tiny bit of faith in everybody else.
If I think too much, I get confused. I believe in manifestation and then I don’t. I believe in God and I also don’t…but I do. I believe in praying and sending energy and imagining my greater good flowing into the world, and then I don’t. And in my confusion, I am clear: what I actually believe in is the unknown and The Great Unknown. I have surrendered to the likelihood that there is something or someone greater—and yet how the hell do I know? I don’t.
Some may call what I am describing as a sort of spiritual homelessness—this wandering between certainty and doubt, this refusal to plant flags in theological ground that doesn’t feel like home. But this is home. And home with the Unknown is peaceful and right. At times, my faith feels rebellious but that is a gift in and of itself.
So I’ve stopped trying to figure it all out. Talking to the Unknown helps me lay my burdens elsewhere so they don’t become calcified within me. I am a bit obsessed with getting all of my stress and traumas out of my body. In my imagination, some other Power gets to hold the things I can’t handle all by myself. The Unknown teaches me I’m not supposed to do anything alone. I’m not supposed to carry it all. I’m not supposed to know it all. I can cast my cares to the cosmic Unknown and go about my day.
In a world that constantly demands answers, movement, and certainty, it’s easy to feel lost and overwhelmed. The more I heal, the more I realize that everything we think we know is stitched together—part truth, part memory, part hope, part energy, part imagination. Maybe we shouldn’t take ourselves, or this life, too seriously. Maybe what matters isn’t whether we pray to a God on a throne or whisper to the Unknown or wish on dandelions. Maybe what or who we believe isn’t as important as we make it—- so long as we believe in ourselves. So long as we call in our power. Maybe what matters is that we have something and somewhere to lay our worries, our hopes, our heavy hearts.
For me, clarity means making peace with not knowing. My answers won’t be your answers. Your resting place won’t be mine. And that’s exactly as it should be. There is no label required, no right thought demanded. There is only this: the act of surrender itself, the willingness to believe we don’t have to carry everything alone.
That surrender, I’ve learned is where I find my power. And where I have power, I also have peace.
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This reminds me to focus on the present moment, which is where I believe the Great Unknown resides. Awesome piece! Thank you.
This felt like a deep exhale, Tasha.
Not knowing… but not panicking about it either.
The bit about spiritual homelessness? I didn’t hear lost. I heard honest. I heard someone choosing mystery over fake certainty.
And the idea of laying your burdens somewhere so they don’t calcify in your body? That landed. We are not meant to carry everything alone.
I think a lot of us live in that in-between space and don’t say it out loud. This made it feel safe to.