Suggestion: The mind is designed to take care of us. It will go to any lengths to do so. In order to be able to take care of us it stays on line and active twenty-four hours.
And it has to be certain. Always. If it is not certain it cannot function. So it rationalizes, compensates, deludes, justifies, lies, makes excuses - and lots of other tricks - in order to feel it has the situation fully under control.
So if there is uncertainty the mind makes us feel uncomfortable - to make us put some energy into being certain. Thus we 'believe' in God. Or we assure ourselves that we have worked out something that was making us uncomfortable.
(That is why we are so uncomfortable about death? - because we cannot be certain about it. And although we make up stories about it - heaven and hell, in actual fact, most people are uncertain.)
The saying attributed to Zen: "Not knowing is the most intimate" is one of the most significant. It has many depths. You see, if we are aware, we cannot be certain - of anything.
Not knowing is alive, it is present, it is alert, open, ready for anything. In these circumstances the services of the mind are rarely needed - so the mind struggles to get back our attention. Just doing what it thinks is its job.
So if you are in trouble - especially emotional trouble, the mind will feed you stuff to make you feel better - any stuff, true or not, just to do its job - making you feel better.
Alternatively... When a 'click' happens - when you really get a 'something' although you absolutely know you have got something, it is rare that you actually know what you have got. But it doesn't matter to you because you know you have 'got' something. You can feel it. It is wonderful. It is very different sensation from when you only think you have got something via the mind.
So although it may be not be so reassuring, when you are feeling disturbed, experiment with just floating with the sensation. Often the experience is attempting to take you to a deeper depth of consciousness. Actually, everything in your life is attempting to take you deeper - into the unknowable.
Here is a short fun piece to illustrate the point:
------ Forwarded Message
From: Alan Steinfeld Date: Tue, 27 Jul 2010 13:11:43 -0400 To: Paul Lowe
Gustave Le Bon (French social psychologist and sociologist, 1841-1931)
"From the confusion between truth and certitude the greatest conflicts of history have been born. People can easily live without truth but they cannot live without certitude. The simple certitude is a belief, truth is knowledge. Unfortunately the fact is that the man deprived of certitude would be like a boat without a rudder, a machine without an engine. Truth for the great majority of people being what they believe, it is above all with beliefs that one must govern the people.
Not able to live without certitude, man always prefers the less defensible beliefs to the most justified negations. One rarely finds some one ready to expose his life for a rational truth, but there are thousands ready to be killed for a belief. Belief, being neither rational nor voluntary, none of the absurdities it teaches would be able to do harm to its propagation. The absurd and the impossible have never prevented a sufficiently strong belief to provoke action.
Contrary to democratic ideas, psychology teaches us that the collective entity, called the crowd, is much inferior to the individual person. All illusions are easily accepted by the crowd and from the fact that they become collective illusions they acquire the force of truth. Illusion creates quickly certitude. Illusory or real, certitudes produce action. Once they reach a certain degree, mystical, religious and political beliefs become irreversibly destructive. In politics and in religion, the dream of the convinced has always been to massacre without pity those who do not think as they do.
One of the strength of the convinced believer is not to discuss the rational value of his beliefs. Scientific truths are universal truths. Religious and political certitudes taken for truths are usually transitory convictions issued from passions and feelings that have nothing rational in support of them. In scientific matters, to be believed one must give proofs. In politics, the speech of a skillful orator is enough to create imaginary certitudes.
When a question raises violently opposed opinions, one can be sure that it belongs to the domain of belief and not of knowledge. Intolerance is the necessary companion of strong convictions."
* Le Bon, La psychologie des foules. 1895; English translation: The Crowd: A Study of the Popular Mind, 1896
