In a world wired for certainty, the unknown feels like danger. We’re taught to see not knowing as weakness – a gap to fix, a failure to overcome. But that fear of the unknown runs deeper than conditioning. It’s ancestral. We equate unfamiliarity with threat, because for most of history, it was.
Yet beneath that fear lies a quieter truth. The unknown isn’t the end of clarity. It’s the beginning of transformation. It’s the pause between identities, the space between what was and what might be.
Uncomfortable, disorienting and often terrifying; but also alive with possibility. It’s where your next evolution begins, if you can stay patient with the process.
Wired for Safety
This deep pull toward the familiar isn’t just psychological; it’s biological. For most of human history, the unknown was dangerous. Eating the wrong berry, taking an unfamiliar path, being separated from the group could lead to injury or death. So over thousands of years, our nervous systems evolved to favour predictability.
Familiar = safe.
Unknown = potential threat.
That wiring still lives in us, even when the risks have changed.
This is why we often cling to what hurts us – because it’s known. It’s why we hesitate at the edge of change, even when part of us knows it would be good for us. Our bodies can’t always tell the difference between a sabre-toothed tiger and a new relationship, or a career shift, or a different way of being.
It all gets filed under “danger”. This isn’t a flaw; it’s ancient intelligence doing its job. But to grow, we need to recognise when this wiring is misfiring. When what feels safe is actually keeping us stuck.
Our Addiction to Certainty
Modern life teaches us to solve, fix and understand everything. If we don’t know something, we search. We Google. We analyse. We try to force insight. But some truths cannot be found by pushing. They must unfold on their own, through lived experience.
In the rush to find answers, many people bypass the process that would lead to deeper wisdom. People ask: “what’s next?” with an expectation that we know. “I don’t know yet” is looked down on; and yet it’s the very process that allows us to find a truly grounded answer.
In my own life, the biggest changes have always required a leap of faith. Not a reckless one. But a jump that felt terrifying precisely because it was aligned. Whether it was moving countries, leaving a relationship, changing careers – I was met with the same challenge.
Something deep was ending, and something unknown was beginning.
I had to trust the jump into the unknown.
The truth is – each time I’ve jumped, I’ve been caught.
Not always gently. But i’ve always been held.
Each jump is scary, it never becomes comfortable.
But each jump builds trust not in the outcome, but in myself.
Spiritual and Scientific Views on the Unknown
In Buddhism, the unknown is honoured through the concept of Šūnyatā – emptiness. It’s not emptiness in a nihilistic sense, but the absence of fixed identity. Everything is in flux. To fear the unknown is to cling to false ground. Letting go, in Buddhist practice, is the path to freedom.
Taoism offers a similar principle: Wu Wei. Effortless action. Don’t force. Don’t push. Just stay attuned. The seed doesn’t grow because we scream at it. It grows because conditions are right. The void is part of the cycle. It deserves reverence, not resistance.
Even in mystical Christianity, the “Cloud of Unknowing” teaches that divine truth cannot be grasped through intellect but only entered through surrender. To be willing to not know is to open to something higher.
Quantum physics, too, reflects this mystery. Matter is mostly space. The more we zoom in, the more reality dissolves into uncertainty. The void isn’t empty. It is potential. Every possibility, not yet collapsed into form. From uncertainty, form arises. From not knowing, creation happens.
The Fertile Void
The Fertile Void is a concept from Gestalt therapy. It refers to the transitional space between the end of one cycle and the beginning of the next. It is a space of stillness, where no new form has yet taken shape.
Like the soil after harvest, it appears empty.
But underneath the surface, life is beginning to form in the potential of darkness
This is the place where something new is preparing to emerge.
You cannot rush it.
You cannot force clarity.
You simply need to wait.
Just like a seed takes time to break through the soil, we need to allow the next version of ourselves to take shape without forcing it into form.
But waiting in the void can feel unbearable. We’re wired to seek the known, even when it hurts us. Familiar pain is often chosen over unfamiliar possibility. We tell ourselves, at least I know what this is.
The alternative, the unknown, is too threatening.
Grieving the Known
What’s rarely acknowledged is that choosing the unknown often means grieving what we’re letting go of. Not just relationships or roles, but beliefs. Stories. Identities we’ve clung to for safety.
When clients begin to let go of the stories that once protected them; about who they are, what they deserve, how the world works – there is always a moment of grief. A temporary sense of chaos. The in between space where nothing feels real and everything feels uncertain.
This grief is not a sign something’s wrong. It’s a sign of growth. It means something sacred is shifting.
Letting Wisdom Emerge
Mindfulness teaches us to stay present with what is, even when what is feels empty. To be curious and listen. To trust that if we stay long enough, something will rise.
In my work, I help clients sit in this space. Not to figure it out, but to feel it out. Because when we stop trying to control the unknown and instead relate to it, something surprising happens. A deeper knowing begins to emerge.
That knowing is not always logical. It doesn’t come from the mind alone. It comes from the body. From the gut and the heart. The integrated wisdom of all your systems working together. This is intuition. Not fantasy. Not impulse. But a grounded sense of inner clarity that rises when all parts are in coherence.
That’s what I aim to help people access – not just a clearer mind, but a wiser body. A felt sense of what’s true, even when the path ahead remains unclear.
Trusting the Fall
The unknown will always scare you. That doesn’t mean you shouldn’t move. It means the part of you that longs to protect the familiar is still active. But you can move anyway. You can trust that the fear doesn’t mean it’s wrong. It just means it’s real.
And when you leap from alignment; from full coherence between your thoughts, body, values and heart – you don’t leap blindly. You leap with clarity. With trust.
When you sit in the unknown, stay curious, grieve what was and trust what might be – you begin to feel the world differently. You stop looking for control and start building relationship. With life, your body, yourself.
So rather than asking: what if it’s worse?
Ask yourself: what if it’s better than i’ve ever imagined?