Surrendering to My Doubt

Sometimes we need to let ourselves question the universe.

If there’s a single feeling that seems most likely to undermine my willingness to put myself out there, to write about life on the spiritual path, it’s Doubt.

Unlike Fear, a dear old friend who knows how to grab me tightly by the throat, Doubt is like an aloof, passive-aggressive coworker making bitchy remarks at the watercooler.

Doubt looks me up and down, like one of my fellow sassy gay guys or the high school girls I taught years ago, dressing me down with eyes that say, Did you really mean to wear that outfit? You know those shoes are so last season, right?

So often when we talk about surrender, we couple it with trust, as if to say that we will accept whatever comes if we know, if we believe, if we don’t doubt, that it will all turn out alright.

But what if it doesn’t?, says Doubt, giggling from a distance, as if gossiping with his or her equally cool and sassy friends, making me feel like the nerdy kid who doesn’t fit in.

If there’s a feeling I want to escape, it’s Doubt.

One day I stopped trying to run from or get rid of Doubt. I didn’t flare my nostrils at the snarky remark whispered under his breath or pass him by with pursed lips that said, F*ck off, Doubt. I don’t to hear your sh*t today.

No, I did what I usually do with my emotions: I surrendered to them. I let them wash over me, I let myself submerge in all the possibilities — that I would become a destitute, lonely failure, living out of a cardboard box, unable to earn a living, exiled by all of my friends and family, rejected by society.

Or that I wouldn’t quite fail so spectacularly and dramatically, but end up eeking out an okay life, in which the best years of my life have already passed me by, and I serve up lukewarm nuggets of wisdom like a tired waitress at a roadside diner who once had dreams of stardom only to find that doubt had led her astray.

“Yes,” I said to Doubt, “I’ll listen. Pray tell, what insights do you have to share?”

Doubt, it turned out, as is the case with so many emotions, was actually wiser than I had thought. When I heard Doubt whisper or gossip that I don’t matter, that I have no value in this world, I realized I wasn’t hearing Doubt properly. Doubt was trying to remind me of talents that I’m not using — the parts of me that I’m not valuing.

In my case, my mercurial mind and love of legal reasoning also needs expression, not just the heart. “You’ve lost the balance between them,” it said. “You are not just a heart, nor just a mind. Your intellect is not just a reaction to pain. You’ve thrown the baby out with the bathwater in trying to deny your love of logic and reason.”

Doubt was right. It wasn’t that I didn’t matter or didn’t have value. It’s that parts of me that I had stopping valuing or said didn’t matter were calling out for attention. Doubt was their messenger. “Allow them an audience too,” Doubt said. And that’s when I realized that standing beside Doubt at the watercooler was not just some posse of meanies giving me side-eye, but these other parts of me that I had decided at some point were no longer important for my spiritual path.

Surrendering to Doubt is not about giving up on my path. For me, it’s a momentary pause that asks me to take a breath and look at the parts of me to which I am giving short shrift.

What messages might Doubt have for you? Learn to surrender to your Doubt so that you can hear them more clearly.

Thank you, 𝘋𝘪𝘢𝘯𝘢 𝘊., for this week’s prompt on surrender: