Leyla Aylin Kuntsal
The Wisdom of Not Knowing
Building the Inner Ground to Meet Reality as It Is:
A Daylong Workshop
There are few things we humans fear more than uncertainty and not knowing.
It hits our greatest vulnerabilities: our desire for—and illusion of—control.
Meaning, knowing, information, logic, reason…are the ideals we worship.
Even spiritual meaning and knowing can come from the same human impulse towards certainty:
if we can understand, explain, predict, make meaning, or manage for an outcome, perhaps we can secure ourselves against what we cannot know or control.
These are important capacities.
But when they aren’t balanced with mystery, they can distance us from intimacy, from our own centeredness, and ultimately from reality.
Because a rejection of uncertainty is a rejection of reality. Reality is the greatest mystery of all.
Reality is the greatest mystery of all.
And what is intimacy—with another, with ourselves, with the world—
but an encounter with reality, in all its uncertainty?
The wisdom of uncertainty itself holds the very peace we misguidedly seek in certainty.
And our growth is directly tied to our knowing we do not know.
But simply trying to become better at tolerating uncertainty often doesn’t do the trick.
The capacity to live with uncertainty grows as we build, bit by bit, a stronger and more flexible center within ourselves—
one that can stay okay amid the outcomes, unknowns, other people, and twists and turns of life.
This workshop will offer a map of the territory and experiential practices for discovering what becomes possible when reality and uncertainty become our north star—
and our own center becomes our ground.
The more our okayness can live within us,
the less we need to control what is outside of us in order to secure what is inside of us.
And the more influence we then might have on the world around us.
In this daylong workshop, we’ll explore:
Intimacy without a guaranteed outcome
The difference between vulnerability organized around getting a particular response and intimacy that can stay centered in discovery.
Our relationship with meaning and control
How we use understanding, interpretation, and attempts to manage outcomes to escape the discomfort of not knowing.
The wisdom of mystery
Meeting struggles and ailments we urgently want to solve, explain, or fix differently.
Allowing an unfolding
Making room for what is actually happening—even when the outcome is disappointing or nothing like what we wanted.
A stronger internal ground
Beginning to experience the difference between securing ourselves through certainty and developing a center capable of meeting what comes.
This isn't about becoming passive or giving up our agency. It’s about needing reality to be different less and less in order for us to be okay.