The Sacred Practice of Not Knowing: Learning to Surrender to the Mystery of God

The other day my husband playfully asked me this question:

What came first, the chicken or the egg?

What it got me thinking about wasn’t the answer.

It was how often we long for answers.

How a part of being human is not knowing and wanting to know.

We want to have it figured out.

We want certainty.

We want a clear path forward.

Because knowing feels safe.

Having the problem solved feels comfortable.

And at times, solutions are exactly what we need.

There are moments when we need to seek wisdom, make decisions, take action, and find answers.

But there are also moments when life invites us into something else.

Something deeper.

The mystery of not knowing.

The discomfort of uncertainty

So much of our lives are spent trying to escape uncertainty.

We try to plan enough.

Prepare enough.

Understand enough.

Control enough.

We imagine that if we can just find the right answer, we will finally arrive at a place where we can rest.

But what if rest does not come from having everything figured out?

What if peace comes from learning that we can be held even when we don’t know?

Life is not only a problem to be solved.

It is also something to be experienced.

Something to be lived.

Something to be received.

Sometimes we must leave the questions unanswered so we can move forward with the moment life is calling us into.

When we do this, we enter the mystery we are already living within.

We accept that we cannot know everything.

We surrender.

What do we surrender to?

When we surrender, we are not giving up.

We are not becoming passive.

We are not abandoning our desires, our responsibilities, or our participation in life.

Surrender is not the absence of action.

It is releasing our need to control the outcome.

It is opening our hands while continuing to show up.

And what do we surrender to?

The Unknowable.

The Unnamable.

The Ununderstandable.

The Great Mystery.

God.

A practice of surrender

So if I hold that question:

What came first: the chicken or the egg?

And instead of trying to figure it out…

I let go of the need to know.

Maybe you try it with me.

Bring to mind a question you’ve been carrying.

A question you’ve been trying to solve.

A question you keep circling back to because you want an answer.

Maybe it is about your future.

A relationship.

A decision.

Something you wish you could understand.

Now, for just a moment, release the need to know.

Not forever.

Not because the question doesn’t matter.

But simply for this moment.

Notice what happens.

Notice what happens in your mind.

Notice what happens in your body.

Notice what happens in your heart.

Maybe there is a little more openness.

A little more spaciousness.

A little more softness.

Maybe there is a willingness to simply be here.

To be present.

To trust.

And maybe that right there is God.

Meeting God in the mystery

I believe God is not only found in the answers.

God is also found in the questions.

In the waiting.

In the unfolding.

In the places where we cannot see the whole picture.

The Great Mystery is not something we have to solve.

It is something we are invited to enter.

We do not have to understand everything in order to be loved.

We do not have to have certainty in order to be held.

We do not have to know the whole path in order to take the next step.

Sometimes surrender is simply the quiet whisper:

“I don’t know.

But I trust I am not alone.”

And perhaps that is where we discover that the mystery we were searching for was never far away.

It was holding us all along.