harbingers of the valley of not knowing

Good Morning Friends, 

I wrote about the Valley of Not Knowing a while ago. Judging from the responses the topic struck a chord with many of you. (You can read that post here.) And hallelujah! The Unknown is maligned in our current culture, let’s be the light bringers to this vast mystery of potentiality. 

Last time I focused what it’s like when you are suddenly in the middle of a Valley of Not Knowing, but what is it like before you enter that Valley? Are there harbingers? Are clues dropped at your feet of what’s to come?

Turns out there are; life tosses, whispers, shouts, and eventually commands tidal waves to sweep into a person's life if a big ole Valley is on the horizon.  Sometimes we are headed straight for the Unknown, but don’t know it yet.

See if you identify with any of these things; they are signs that the soul is cramped, and yearns for change, but there is fear and conditioning blocking the path.

• You have been in a job or career that, while at one point may have been exciting, is now a grind, and there’s dread and drudgery every time you go to work or even think about work.

• You are in a relationship that is draining your joy, potential, and life force, but you just can’t seem to leave. You may not have even started to admit this to yourself, because the idea of leaving is terrifying, and you have no idea who you’d be or how you would support yourself if you left.

• You worked and worked for your position in life, you got it, but now it doesn’t fill you up like you thought it would. There’s a sense that there's more out there, that something is missing, but you aren’t sure what it is.

• Your soul is calling, you hear it, you feel it, but you just can’t answer. There’s a weight on you, and you long to throw it off.

• You work all the time, perhaps for a job that is fulfilling and beautiful,  but you never seem to make time for YOU, and the repercussions are starting to show.

I know how this feels, friends.  At age 18 I had the fortune to become wildly passionate about organic farming, and that drive and passion carried me all the way to starting up, owning, and running a beautiful and successful vegetable farm with my ex-husband. By all accounts I had ‘made it’ by my early 30s. (To those of you who know me from that period - hello!)

I was surrounded by the pulse of life, intricate systems of fertility and soil health, and embodied, meaningful work that I cared about deeply. I interacted daily with employees of such vitality and integrity, happy customers roamed the u-pick flower and fruit fields, and my kids, garbed in princess dresses and ninja suits, little field sprites in the raspberry patch, dug potatoes with us at sunset, and dove into in the farm pond on hot sunny afternoons, dirt streaming from their toes. Life was undeniably rich.

And yet.

And yet I started to notice that every time the moon was shining in the window as I climbed the stairs in the old farmhouse that look out over the patterned fields spreading to the edge of town, the silvery light pooling on the sill and wall, I would catch myself gazing at that moon, and then suddenly look down and scurry the rest of the steps to the landing.

What on earth was going on? As soon as that ancient moon met my eye I’d duck and run. Oh no no no no no.

I was afraid to look her in the eye. That big ole moon knew something, and it knew I knew too, but I was not ready to bring that knowing all the way up into the night and sit down with it on the stairs and look deep into its heart. 

It would have been the undoing of my whole life, and I was not ready for that.

This is a perfect example of a giant Valley of Not Knowing yawning open before a gorgeous known life, calling a soul to transform. It can be terrifying. 

So what frightens you my friend? What have you not allowed yourself to admit yet? What nudges you awake in the middle of the night? Where are you being called? 

Maybe there is an achingly beautiful piece of music that plays on the radio, and you begin to cry. 

Maybe one morning on the drive to work the rising sun strikes a cove of ice-clad forsythia bushes, sending fiery sparkles across the road, and something bursts alive in your chest for a split second, something you haven’t allowed yourself to feel in decades.

Maybe the night gnawers crawl across your stomach in the middle of the night, keeping you up for hours.

Maybe the moon calls to you, and you can’t meet her eye. 

All of these things are life calling you to change, to enter the Valley of Not-Knowing.

How are you being called?

“You enter the forest, at the darkest point, where there is no path.” Joseph Campbell