 Understanding the nature of doubt begins with seeing how doubt is associated with an attachment to a desired outcome or an attachment to a sense of forward movement in life.
Most of you seem to need to feel as if you are moving forward, evolving, growing, becoming more than you believe you currently are. It doesn’t really matter what part of your experience this sense of “forward” refers to; as long as there is at least one area of life seeming to improve and not fall behind, it seems to validate that life as moving forward. If you are a contemplative person, you might be seeking a sense of gaining awareness and having deeper meditations. If you are more outwardly driven, you are likely to have career aims and monetary goals and seek forward movement with external measures. Most of you entertain both internal and external gauges, unknowingly always calculating where you are according to where you last evaluated yourself. The moment you find yourself in evaluation mode, it is the moment you are entertaining doubt. We suggest that doubt, a kind of skepticism, or an inability to trust the moment, emerges out of evaluation which takes place because of an attachment to “moving forward” or achieving a desired outcome. This attachment to moving forward is discomfort with the now, or at the very least, relies on a belief that staying in one place would cause you to feel as if you were stuck. Attaching to an outcome is just defining the forward movement more specifically. This kind of thinking is common in the current culture. Most everyone wants everything to improve, to renew, to be great. However, what is covertly expressed in that sentiment is discontentment with whatever is occurring right now. There is a misunderstanding that contentment with right here and now could mean nothing should change, or that discontentment might imply that nothing can remain the same. Recognize that whatever is next is generally an unfolding and elaboration upon what is right now. Expecting what is next to be radically different from what is occurring right now, while of course possible, is generally an indication of the degree of displeasure with the present moment. So where do doubts come in? Whatever you might contemplate, you will most likely evaluate. Whatever you evaluate, you will most likely want to improve. Whatever you want to improve, you most likely believe to be lacking in some way, and whatever you believe to be inferior somehow, you are most likely to doubt. You might doubt whether a peaceful experience of life can continue, or whether it's real or just some kind of figment of your imagination, or some kind of illusion. If your current experience is painful, you might doubt that it will ever end or change or lighten up in some fashion. Your doubts are always ready to arise in any moment that you think you are in charge of change. At any moment you think you can make things happen or not happen in your life, you will entertain doubt. Experientially for most people, doubts seem to arise out of the blue. You are sitting in a in a beautiful place, feeling peaceful, happy and loved, and then suddenly a doubt, thoughts and misgivings show up. You think the ax is going to fall, the world will end, whatever doom and gloom you come up with, it is mistrust of the most likely natural unfolding of the now into what is next. The doubt stems from real knowing that all things are impermanent, but gets distorted into suspicion or doubt because of your attachment to “improvement” and only “good” outcomes. It takes courage to simply allow what is next to unfold. Culturally speaking, it is seemingly impossible to allow what is next—you have been taught to “seize” the moment, to “create your reality” and to move forward at all costs. If you are feeling pain, doubts arise about whether the pain will subside, so the very notion that the next moment naturally unfolds from the now might seem to indicate that you will always be in pain. The doubt is an uncertainty and mistrust of life. We might even say that doubt is uncertainty posing as certainty if it is believed to be true. The radical eradication of doubt succeeds only when all thoughts lose their power to enchant you. So while you were busy trying to distinguish doubt from other thoughts, you were actually making doubt really important amongst all your thoughts. All thoughts are the same. There are no good thoughts and no bad thoughts, they are all insubstantial, there’s nothing to them. Now this is antithetical to many teachings that attempt to help you to hold on to the good thoughts and create your reality from them, and eliminate the doubts so you don’t create any reality from them. However, from our perspective, that keeps you in evaluation mode all the time. You are only adding to the cacophony of the thoughts in the mind if you are evaluating all of them and ranking them according to which ones will work and which ones will not work. We simply suggest that if they seem to arise from nowhere they will also seem to depart to nowhere, and its nowhere that is the true Now Here. All doubt is thought, all thought is seemingly profound and real, but not to be believed or evaluated. Be fluid, you have the capacity to not believe anything you think, and to not make any thoughts important. It’s just allowing thoughts to rise and fall and to let those thoughts just become nothing. This is a profound time for diving deep into practices that will free you from thoughts which have no bearing ultimately on who you are. Life just gets easier and easier and easier, and becomes simple, peaceful, and happy. Start to notice if you think you should be improving or if you think things should get better, or if you are telling yourself any story that encourages an attachment to forward movement or outcome. The deeper truth is that there is no forward movement that is absolute, the starting point and the ending point of life are one and the same, and there really only is right here, right now.
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