Sacred Uncertainty: Hope, Fear, and the Quest for Transcendence

Abstract

Myth and religion have historically been driven by a quest for certainty, in the form of understanding, control, or both. This article contrasts the thinking of Ken Wilber and Chögyam Trungpa in examining the origins of this quest in the development of individual consciousness, and in assessing the central role of hope and fear in the pursuit of certainty. In the process, it explores the relationship of hope, fear, and certainty to both the notion of God and the experience of the physical body. Finally, this article locates in the works of both thinkers the establishment and maintenance of an illusory self as grasping at a primal form of certainty, and a link between spiritual transcendence and a relinquishment of hope, fear, and the desire for certainty.