I said, “I don’t have to know.” I want to mean that.

Just to be in what is—is a struggle.

The disorientation of not knowing – I’m not sure how to approach this feeling, other than being a little sad.

In Falling Upward, Richard Rohr states “spirituality is more about unlearning than learning,” and that our illusions must be undone to take us back to God. Both he and Parker Palmer write often about our return to our “true self.” How do I become my true self, giving up pretense and illusion?

Today (and yesterday), my intention is and was to go to yoga class. Even before I came to Victoria, I checked out yoga studios, so I know where to go. I just haven’t had the courage to get there. I have lots of good reasons.

I hadn’t moved to my “real” location here until September. I had to get settled. I had company for two weeks. We only have one car. I haven’t been to a yoga class since June so I need to ease back into practice. And yesterday, the reason was… it was raining lightly and dark and I had to do the dishes and I could go tomorrow.

So, giving up pretense and illusion might begin with this yoga class. Yin yoga, a still and challenging style, is at 7:00-8:15 this evening. I can go, try, and be willing to not be able, perfect, or even wrong. I can take whatever comes from the experience.

Rohr goes on to encourage that people who have learned to live in deep time, in the big picture, found true self. From my understanding, deep time is akin to eternal time that conflates our past, present, and future selves and experiences. This change of frame is what Jesus called living in the Kingdom. We have to let go of our own smaller kingdom to be there. We practice by choosing union freely—plenty of room for communion and no need for exclusion.

My ‘smaller kingdom’ is all the inside retrospection that isn’t bad in itself, however, it keeps me locked into myself. This pervasive inwardness keeps me from risking going to yoga class with people that I could risk getting to know (and letting them know me) to expand my world.

Not knowing makes life more spacious, I was told. The bounds of what I will do each day now are open to new experiences and relationships if I let them be. Holy sadness, Rohr explains, “once called compunction, is the price your soul pays for opening to the new and the unknown in yourself and in the world.”

What comes to mind are the words: I will with the help of God.