Jenna Milner

Uncertainty is the very condition to impel us to unfold our powers. (Psychologist Erich Fromm)

Our willingness to not-know (whether we are a healer, client, or human being) is what permits the most potent healing to unfold. Being comfortable with the unknown, dancing with chaos, is a recipe for health. We implement the Not-Knowing-Plan through the Biodynamic Neutral. The Neutral is the transparent, harmonizing arena of freedom in which things can organically find their own resolution. 

Uncertainty is the predisposition of one who is poised to catch the wind of Primary Respiration. Your Midline is the mast of your sailboat, open to the breezes of Primary Respiration. 

How is this different from passivity? First of all, attunement to Primary Respiration is never passive; it is our primary objective. Additionally, the Neutral takes advantage of your expertise, allowing you to balance knowing with not-knowing. I happen to have knowledge of cranial bones. Here’s a strange event in which the inherent health took advantage of that knowledge:

I broke my arm. This was problematic, since I was a massage therapist. I sat one day in not-knowing, being with my ulna (the broken part) and being with Primary Respiration (the whole). Suddenly the vomer (a bone in my nose) got terribly painful. I was led to hold my nose, and an entire biodynamic session ensued, centered on my nose. 

Could Primary Respiration have worked with my vomer if I didn’t know about vomers? Sure! But awareness of a vomer certainly supported the healing process. At that impromptu session (conducted on the cement stoop outside my front door), I realized that as a teenager, I had had an operation on my nose. Apparently there was some work that still needed to happen there. After this session, I breathed through my nose better than I had in years, and I had much clearer energy to confront the issue of my broken arm.

Every one of us has our own knowledge base. Clinicians in particular have a ready source of expertise that the Greater Mind can call upon. Take my dreamwork teacher Robert Bosnak, who has worked with tens of thousands of dreams. In spite of his vast experience, each time as he begins, he routinely experiences what he calls “dreamworker’s panic.” He is prone to feeling, as the dreamwork begins, “I have no idea what to do.” 

Robbie always leads the participant through a brilliant sequence. Having no idea what to do is simply an acknowledgement of what is true. A tremendous doubt surges up in spite of your particular genius, because you don’t know what to do.

When you allow yourself to deeply know that you don’t know – when you permit the not-knowing –  then what is true arises in the moment. And without your intervention, its resolution can also emerge. 

The Zen monk Bankei (in 8th century Japan) spoke brilliantly about this. What we call Stillness, he calls the “Unborn”:

All things are resolved in the Unborn.

Not knowing what to do keeps us on our toes, keeps us fresh and attending to the deepest needs of the moment. This process leads mysteriously into the deepest realms of healing.

Thus, we must unlearn the habit of leaning on our mind for awareness of what to do. Going against the grain of one or two hundred years of medicine, the Biodynamic practitioner acknowledges that our mind does not know with certainty.

Have you experienced the benefits of unknowing? I’d love to hear your examples below.

(Erich Fromm quotation edited for gender neutrality.)