Doubt

Doubt is a large and unavoidable part of modern life.  It comes and goes depending on changing conditions and our experience of it slides along a scale between certainty and uncertainty.  Doubt can be useful when it is a constructive and truth-seeking skepticism. Or, it can shut us down completely when it becomes a self-identity of indecision, powerlessness, and distrust.  We can use mindfulness as an investigative strategy to realize increasing freedom from doubt, when we remember to expand our awareness, broaden our views and challenge the doubtful stories we’ve created.  Phillip Moffit, founder of the Life Balance Institute and co-guiding teacher at Spirit Rock Meditation Center, stresses that our experience of doubt is “the absence of feeling grounded in something greater than your own ego structure. It is for this reason that doubt is both an existential challenge and a spiritual hindrance.”