On doubt, certainty, and what happens when we stop resisting our not-knowing
I want to start with a confession.
If I’m being totally honest, there are certainly times I have doubted the path I’m on. Times I’ve questioned my beliefs, wondered about the credence of what I teach, felt the ground shift under what I thought I knew. And when I look honestly at those times, what I find is a subtle slide of my awareness — from the power within me to looking for power outside of me. I can see how doubt was a compass, a way to come back to what I actually know to be true.
In the tradition I teach — a strand of practical mysticism that emphasizes the creative power of thought and the ever-present nature of the Divine — there’s a particular pressure to be certain. Our affirmative prayers often begin with “I know.” Our statements of principle begin with “We believe.” Certainty can seem like the goal, and doubt can read like weakness or failure.
But that reading misses something important. The doubt I’ve experienced in my own practice has usually been pointing to something specific: the places where I’d quietly started treating conditions and outcomes as the source of my security rather than the deeper truth underneath them. This is how doubt becomes instructive.
That kind of doubt is not the enemy of faith. In fact, it might be one of its most honest expressions.
Two Squirrels
A colleague of mine, Christine Green, shared a metaphor recently that really broadened my thinking about doubt.
She described watching a squirrel in autumn, moving with focused purpose — assessing, gathering, making decisions about what was needed and what wasn’t. That doubt (“Is this enough? Is there more? Is this the right spot?”) wasn’t paralyzing the squirrel. It was animating it. The doubt was intelligent. It was keeping the squirrel in motion toward its own thriving.
Then she described a different squirrel — one she’d watched in the middle of traffic, cars coming from both directions. Darting left. Stopping. Darting right. Stopping. The same instinct that served the first squirrel completely overwhelmed the second.
Same animal. Same impulse. Two entirely different relationships to the signal.
This is the distinction I want to explore about doubt. Constructive doubt reads the environment. It asks: Is this true? Is there more here? What am I missing? It keeps us honest, keeps our thinking alive, prevents our beliefs from calcifying into dogma. Reactive doubt has stopped processing information and started spinning. It’s moved beyond being instructive; it’s taken over. It generates worry, anxiety, fear, and contraction — it’s downright exhausting.
The invitation for now is simply to notice which squirrel you’re being when your doubts arise. Not to fix anything — just notice how you respond, and what happens when you do.
The Idol of Certainty
Theologian Howard Thurman writes about the danger of making an idol of commitment — of letting the thing we’re committed to matter more than the truth the commitment was meant to serve. I think we do the same thing with certainty.
Certainty feels like solid ground. And the ego is simply built to want solid ground — it keeps us safe, knows where the walls are. It’s not wrong for wanting certainty. The ego is just loving us and doing its job.
But here’s where it gets spiritually interesting: the opposite of faith is not doubt. It is certainty.
Certainty closes the door, as if there is nothing more to know. And in a universe that is infinite and ever-unfolding — letting our need for certainty set the ceiling of our spiritual life is how faith quietly hardens into dogma.
The ego wants the itinerary. It wants to know every stop before the journey begins. And that is understandable. But faith — real, living faith — says: start walking. The path will show you what you need to know when you need to know it.
Big Doubt, Big Enlightenment
There is a teaching from the Zen tradition — attributed to Korean Zen master Nine Mountains, and part of what teachers call the Three Essentials of practice — that says:
Small doubt, small enlightenment. Big doubt, big enlightenment.
The full teaching identifies Great Faith, Great Doubt, and Great Determination as the three pillars of the spiritual life. And the part that consistently surprises people: great faith and great doubt don’t oppose each other. Great faith actually activates great doubt. The deeper your trust in the nature of things, the bigger the questions that trust opens up in you.
That is not the absence of faith. That is faith going deeper.
The Path of the Modern Day Mystic
This fall, I’m going on sabbatical. Part of that time will involve walking a significant stretch of the Camino — one of the great pilgrimage routes of the world. I have wanted to do this for years. And yes, I have significant doubts: about my physical readiness, about what I’ll find, about how it will change me.
But when I sit with those doubts, I recognize the first squirrel, not the second. The season of my life and my career is asking me to slow down, to let go of certainty for a while, to dive deeper into my own faith. My doubts aren’t stopping me from going. They’re part of why I’m going.
It’s a journey I’m calling the Path of the Modern Day Mystic — and I’ll be sharing it here as it unfolds.
There is a tradition on the Camino of carrying a credential — a small document that pilgrims get stamped at each stop along the way. Not evidence that you’ve arrived. Just evidence that you’ve been walking.
Devotional doubt is the willingness to keep walking even when you don’t have the full itinerary. It is, in its own way, the most honest act of faith available to us.
A Question to Sit With
Before you look for answers this week, I want to offer a question to simply be in for a while:
What doubts are you currently hiding — and what do you fear those doubts say about you?
Not to fix them or pray them away. Just to look at them clearly, maybe for the first time, and discover that they don’t have the power over you that shame has given them.
This is the first stamp. You showed up, you were willing to look at the doubt rather than manage it. That is enough. It’s a good beginning.
The door is open. I’ll see you next week.
This post is adapted from a talk given at CSL Capistrano Valley on May 3, 2026, opening a five-week series on Divine Doubt. I’ll share the central ideas here each week for those who weren’t in the room — or who were and want to sit with them a little longer.
If this resonated, share it with someone who might be in the middle of their own traffic-squirrel moment.
