The Valley of Not-knowing

Jan 12

Good Evening Friends,

A spiritual teacher told me that I was in ‘The Valley of Not Knowing” at a critical time in my life.

Some of you may feel a shiver of recognition with the mention of The Valley of Not Knowing. (And if you haven’t been there, you will someday, for your soul wants to grow, and lemme tell you, it doesn’t grow that fast in the plains o’plenty.)

Travel back in time about 10 years. I was 36 years old and had just gone through a divorce. I left a farming career of 18 years, I didn’t have a college degree, and nor any idea how to make money. I had left my farm, land, marriage, home, small town elite social standing, and the successful business I’d run with my husband for years.

Add to this I had a 3yr old and an 8yr old to mother and support through their own life-shattering upheaval. I had no hidden bank accounts, no trust funds, no rich uncles. I had $30k from when my ex and I split our savings account. That was it. Oh, and I had a Toyota yaris that was paid for.

Upon hearing my situation this spiritual teacher told me 'you are in The Valley of Not Knowing.' She nailed it.

Here’s what I didn’t know. I didn’t know how I was going to make money. I didn’t know how to be an adult without a husband. I didn’t know how I was going to support my kids. I didn’t know where I was going to live. I didn’t know how to be in a small town with a completely new identity.

(I had moved into a 1960’s trailer that was so dilapidated that even my unconditionally loving mom never visited me once while we lived there - there were actual holes in the walls and floors patched with cardboard, and baby-poop shag carpet so threadbare and forlorn you’d get sucked into a spiral of despair that wouldn’t spit you out until the spring bluebirds sang just stepping onto it.)

Luckily, what I DID know, thanks to that teacher, was that I was not going to move from fear. That’s the basic most fundamental instruction when one finds themselves in the ole Valley of Not Knowing. Don’t move from fear. Just don’t do it.

So this teaching became my rock. Sitting on the arthritic couch that huddled up against water warped wood paneling, I would literally wrap my hands around this rock, white knuckled when the kids went to school, and by God I DID NOT MOVE FROM FEAR.

I just wasn’t going to do it. And that, besides walking, meditating, and feeding my kids, is what I did for 12 months straight. Sat on the couch. Not moving from fear. And that was pretty much a full time job.

The $30K steadily dwindled. The seasons of the year turned on themselves, depositing me into the middle of a Central New York February, which, I assure you, looks very different from a trailer, where yes, that just might be a ceiling of asbestos above you, than from that beautiful big renovated farmhouse on the outskirts of town, surrounded by happy customers and winter vegetables tucked away in storage, and gorgeous winter greens filling the greenhouses next to the barn. Very different indeed.

It was grim and gray. It was cold. And I had absolutely no freaking idea of how I was going to make my way in the world. And the money was almost gone.

So why did I do it? Why didn’t I hustle and try to figure it out already? The most direct answer is because I just knew the teaching was right. I knew it in my bones as soon as my teacher said it.

The second reason is that The Valley of Not Knowing is an incredibly potent opportunity for radical transformation and revelation of true soul purpose. Somehow I knew that the transformation afforded by abiding in the Valley of Not Knowing was real. Somehow I knew that if I grew my ability to sit in the not-knowing, something of the soul and life-giving would emerge.

So what do you do when in a Valley of Not Knowing? Well, you let yourself Not Know.

And Not Know.

And that is scary a shit. We aren’t taught that this valley is an essential soul proving ground we are destined to travel through again and again.

Instead we are taught to know things at all costs, especially the big things - job, house, life purpose, how to freaking provide for little kids. We are taught it is good to know, that smart people have things figured out. We are taught that inspiration is cool, and intuition is good to follow, but we aren’t taught about how those two things only ripen in the state of not-knowing. In a word, we are taught to get the hell out of the valley ASAP.

We just have no cultural context for the Valley of Not Knowing. We worship knowing things. We get afraid when someone doesn’t have direction for their life. I see a lot of Life Coaching around ‘finding your purpose’ or ‘live the life of your dreams’. These are good things to look forward to, but this approach inadvertently tries to skip the not-knowing. It relies on a lot of egoic motivation and youthful chi and life force, two things that can keep a person going for a long time, but eventually break down.

There are several absolutely key things to know when you navigate a Valley of Not Knowing so that you can stay in it long enough for truly inspired action and direction to be revealed. And I use that word purposefully. The new thing is revealed, it is a revelation, it appears to come from nothing. It arrives fully formed and imminently actionable.

It emerges before you, ready to go, with all parts intact. The new thing has a specific energetic signature that is unique and instantly recognizable. It is something that your mind did not create, that it would probably never have thought of, but it is perfect, and you know it immediately.

Ok, the key things to know in the Valley of Not Knowing:

One: The first time you do it it is really hard, and not many people will support you. They just can’t, it’s not in most people’s wheelhouse. In fact, a lot of people will actively try to get you to do something else (ie go ahead and go to college, take that crap job that you already know how it’s going to turn out, marry that person that you know is not actually right for you.) People want you to have a plan so that they don’t have to feel uneasy about not-knowing, usually because they have not yet learned about the Valley of Not Knowing, and not-knowing is terrifying to them.

Two: The main thing that will pop you out of the Valley of Not Knowing is trying to know before you actually know. People either go back to where they came from (go back to the school they just left, back to the boyfriend, back to the old job), or they try to coalesce too quickly on the other side of the valley. They trick themself into thinking that they really do see the new thing, the new direction, whereas in fact the ‘new’ thing has come from fear, the mind has invented the new direction. Examples of this are starting a new job that, lo and behold, in a year or two, turns out to be exactly like the one they were trying to leave, or starting a new relationship that mirrors all of the negative patterns of relating that they were trying to get out of in the first place.

Three: Discernment. Being in the Valley of Not Knowing is a really good time to get very clear on what fear feels like. Fear can be so subtle and convincing, as well as overt and all-encompassing. Acting on fear is what will move a person out of the Valley of Not Knowing, so if a person wants to stay in the valley they have to get very clear about noticing what is fear and what is not. This can be very hard, as the reasoning and voice of fear is very convincing, especially if a person has not been taught how to really listen to the voice of fear from an objective and grounded position.

Four: This is the part of the teaching that I did not have the first time I went into the Valley, and while I trust that I must have needed to go through it without this wisdom, it made my first traverse very, very difficult. It is this: the key to traveling through the not-knowing is to learn to relax into it, to actually physically and energetically relax and lean back into the Truth, which is that you don’t know.

Learning to relax into the energy field of not-knowing is a total game changer. It takes a terrifying experience and fills it with ease, lightness, and infinite possibility in the flash of an eye. Space opens up, potentiality simmers and vibrates all around you. Relaxing into the truth of not-knowing also has the side effect of ripening the process, even speeding it up in certain cases, but of course you can’t do it for that reason because as soon as that agenda gets mixed in, even the barest hint of it, you are right back into fear.

I guide clients in how to relax into the not-knowing all the time. People tend to find me when they are in a Valley of Not Knowing.) For real, the valley is much more common than you think. This skill of relaxing in the unknown is accessible to most people even though we really have very little cultural context for it. With just a touch of guidance, most people can do it.

My own experience in repeated trips through the valley, combined with accompanying many clients along the way, has led me to see that we are presented with these valleys over and over. In fact if you are very still and observant, you will see that we are presented with mico-valleys of not-knowing every moment.

We search and search for the truth. We want to know things so badly. But what if the actual truth at a particular moment in time or life situation is that you don’t know? Isn’t that what you actually do know? So don’t throw it out. You have found something that you know, and that is, that you don’t know. Perhaps this is actually many people’s Life Purpose - to get easy in not knowing.

So, how did this epic inner journey through the Valley of Not Knowing that I traveled from a ratty old couch in the ‘60s trailer end? That story, my friend, I will tell another time. But it culminated in releasing into deep cleansing grief, a brilliant ray of winter sun pouring over dark rich soil, and the heft of a door frame my hand knew so well.