say it with me: “I am a slut for the unknown!”

The subject of today’s post is pretty self-explanatory: we’re going to talk about the Big Bad Unknown and why I think you should make sweet, sweet love to it.

This subject has been drifting along the currents of my subconscious for a while now, but especially recently due to big changes in my personal and professional life. In the past six months I have: graduated from a five-year-long part-time art program; exhibited my work at a gallery; dismantled my work from the gallery and started an art collective with friends; organized new exhibitions with those friends and navigated the black hole of the space between projects; brainstormed new projects and gone all out with my tarot business… And this is only the beginning of the next chapter.

Now, a few years ago, this amount of change and uncertainty would have terrified me, but a few years ago, I also had a life-changing conversation about my fear of The Unknown with a very dear friend. His name is Rhys and he’s an incredibly talented musician and voice coach, so I encourage you to check out his work, but more importantly, he is a profoundly deep thinker and an all-around wonderful person.

Rhys and his partner & collaborator Natalie Deryn Johnson* get full credit for the spicy title of this spiritually salacious blog post, so keep reading if you want to know the juicy details of our naughty little chat!

*Being the thoughtful and humble soul he is, Rhys asked me, upon co-editing this article, to acknowledge Natalie’s direct and deep-seated influence in his remarks on curiosity vs. judgment.

A shift in perspective

A few years ago, I was in a bit of a personal situation that knocked the wind out of me. I was so confused and worried that I called up Rhys, knowing that he would know exactly how I felt and would probably offer the best advice out of all my friends. I’m not going to divulge every detail because the content of this story also tangentially involves others’ personal lives, but suffice it to say I was confronted with a big fat question mark. And back then, I was someone who did not like not having answers (or so I thought). 

So, rewinding to that winter night, I’m on the phone with Rhys, straddling our two separate time zones and desperate for some reassuring words. He’s listening to me explain my situation and I keep repeating the same thought over and over: “I don’t know. I just don’t know.”

At some point in the conversation, after emphasizing the not knowing part until I was blue in the face, Rhys asked a very simple question that turned everything around:

“So, you don’t know where any of this is going, but what are you actually feeling right now if you let go of how you think you should feel?”

I thought about it for a moment. “Well, I guess I’m feeling a little… swept away?”

“Okay!” He was getting excited now. “So you’re feeling ‘swept away,’ like you’d like to see where this can lead?”

“Yeah…” I thought. “Yeah I guess so.”

Now he was really thrilled.

“I just had a crazy thought,” he said, continuing to muse out loud. “What if this whole situation is actually symbolic of you fully stepping into your role as artist and creator?”

“Interesting…” I said, intrigued. “What do you mean by that?”

“Well, you’re feeling shaken up because you’re facing all these unknowns, but you’re also kind of excited by that because you’re feeling swept away by all the drama of it, right? So maybe, all this uncertainty is really a chance to reclaim your creative Self and fully embrace The Unknown.”

“But I hate The Unknown,” I protested. “I don’t like not knowing what’s going to happen.”

Rhys laughed from the other end of the line as those words left my lips. 

“Are you kidding me?” he countered. “You love The Unknown. You devour foreign languages, and you always wanted to move abroad… And now you’re becoming an artist, which is literally creating something from nothing… You’re like a slut for The Unknown!”

We both laughed this time–and not only because of his cheeky spiritual cat calling, but because he was absolutely right. I did love those things. And it slowly dawned on me that I did kind of like the thrill of mystery.

“Say it with me:” he said, “‘I am a slut for The Unknown!’” 

And I did. I even wrote it down in my notebook and read it every day until I actually started to believe it. And you know what? That one small shift in perspective completely transformed my relationship with The Unknown—and all the (un)certainty that comes with it.

On (un)certainty

At the end of our conversation, Rhys recommended a book to me called Existential Kink by Carolyn Elliott. It’s a pretty fun read that offers a very accessible take on shadow work and Jungian psychology, and while the concepts covered in this book are too layered to fully unpack in one blog post, there are two messages I’d like to borrow from Carolyn’s writing: the first being that the line between pleasure and pain is a blurry one, and the second being what she emphasizes in the opening chapters as a crucial concept for doing shadow work: “You are not who you think you are.”

Let’s start with the first point, which I think is an important one for a number of reasons, but especially within the context of divination and creative expression as paths to spiritual self-discovery. 

Something I have seen frequently within my tarot practice, from the first practice readings I ever did as a beginner to the readings I’ve done since going pro, is that people often come for a tarot reading because they are searching for certainty. And pretty often, on the other side of that desire for certainty is an extreme discomfort around uncertainty—and subsequently, a fear of The Unknown. However, as both Rhys and Carolyn pointed out to me, there is a very fine line between fear and excitement, pleasure and pain. And as Carolyn explains further in her book, it is oftentimes (though not always) a matter of both perception and choice that decides whether we experience something as one or the other.

Why, you might ask? Well, let’s take a look at fear versus excitement as an example. Let’s imagine that you want to start your own tarot business, or start selling paintings, or change careers, or even make some smaller, less drastic change like finally making a move on your crush, but a change that nonetheless requires some degree of risk. Maybe you’re not actually dealing with any of these things right now, but we’re doing another spiritual thought experiment, so just do your best to think of a time that you had to face The Unknown and felt a little antsy about it. I’d like for you to try to remember how it felt in your body. Try to locate that sensation and notice how it feels. Got it?

Now, let’s do the same exercise, but this time, I’d like you to imagine a time that you felt totally pumped up about something and just couldn’t wait to get going. Maybe you were getting ready to go on a big trip somewhere or about to go on a first date. How does that feel? Pretty similar, right?

The problems arise when our survival instincts kick in, which is good when we need to protect ourselves, but not so great when it controls our entire life. Avoiding risk altogether not only limits our potential, but it prevents the possibility of experiencing many of life’s pleasures. 

Think about it. Seriously, pick a scenario that feels a little daunting to you and try to imagine never even dipping your toes in. What would it feel like to never pick up that paintbrush? Never take that trip? Never have sex with that really hot friend who you’ve been secretly jerking off to anyway? Are you having fun yet? Are you? ‘Cause you can bet your bottom dollar that most people would call avoiding all that good stuff boring AF. 

Risk can be terrifying, but with risk comes reward, which is why people become adrenaline junkies and gambling addicts. Please don’t be unsafe, but please do consider whether playing it too safe is really worth your while either.

Here’s the thing: uncertainty is actually full of certainty in some ways because there is always a hidden relationship between the two. Not knowing what’s going to happen next doesn’t have to feel like some haunted, barren wasteland. Not knowing can be a beautiful, blossoming bouquet of adventure and desire. 

Not knowing whether your crush likes you back, for example, is still a hint about what you want and what you feel in your nether regions, you freaky little thing, You! Because guess what? You being even remotely concerned about the potential outcome of that love connection is a huge hint about your own desires and what is of value to you. I talk about this in my essay about using tarot to find your life purpose, too: that desire is a hint about what we find meaningful. And the cool thing about that is that it’s an opportunity to get curious, which means you can discover new layers of meaning to your life and explore new ways of approaching the things that scare you—and maybe also excite you, too.

If that weren’t already enough to give you a hard-on for question marks, ellipses and to-be-continueds, want to know the coolest part of all? You are probably a Slut-with-a-capital-“s” for The Unknown, too, and you don’t even know it. As Carolyn Elliott writes in her opening chapters: “You are not who you think you are.” (emphasis mine)

And if you think you are someone who is afraid of The Unknown, yet here you are perusing a tarot, art and spirituality blog, this should excite the hell out of you.

Curiosity as an antidote to fear

One thing that really bothers me about the spiritual industry at large is that so much of it is fueled by a fear of The Unknown, when this could just as easily be reframed in terms of excitement for what might be possible. Instead of building marketing plans that depend on uncertainty and insecurity as drivers of business growth, and fear mongering our way to bigger client rosters, we could all be talking about how freaking awesome it is that the future hasn’t been decided yet. And this, in my very humble opinion, is what a tarot reading should be all about: possibility, empowerment, excitement.

This is not to say that I am ignorant to your fear, either. I have complete empathy for people who sit across from me who are tackling sticky situations, or who are overwhelmed by external circumstances causing them confusion or pain. This is tough, and with the exception of individual traumas or other life-altering situations, it’s pretty safe to say that most of us have been there, too, so I’m not trying to discount what you might be going through. 

I am, however, suggesting that there are many other situations in which we could benefit from a different approach. Maybe we can’t control everything, but we can greet The Unknown and the future with wonder if we make a conscious decision to embrace a mindset of excitement rather than fear. We can marvel at all the wide open spaces in front of us that are full of blank canvases to paint, people to meet, places to see, and all the other sexy fill-in-the-blanks.

The day that Rhys helped me realize that my fear was also excitement for all the possibilities that I hadn’t previously considered for my life was exhilarating. I experienced a brief glimmer of euphoric invincibility because I was so curious about charting unknown territory that I had no choice but to follow where that curiosity was leading me. It was like the compulsive need to watch a horror film that you know will scare the crap out of you (another example of the fine line between fear and fun). I had to know because not knowing about not knowing was suddenly unbelievably dull. This is why curiosity is such a powerful thing–it’s true that it requires bravery, and it is not always easy to follow our curiosity. But curiosity can also be the best way to combat fear, because curiosity is a conscious realization and an exploration of what fascinates us, whereas fear is instinctual and reactive.

Fear can be highly irrational, too. I realized this one day on my evening commute, when it occurred to me that I am far more afraid of sharks and plane crashes than I am of failure. And statistically speaking, I am WAY more likely to fail at things in life than I am to get attacked by a shark or go down in a plane crash. In fact, it is almost a guarantee that I will fail at things from time to time. But this is how our weird little brains work. It doesn’t matter how logical our fears are or aren’t, because when fear is present, our instincts can override any sense of reason. And this cute little realization about my fear of sharks versus my fear of failure was not only utterly hilarious to me–it made me curious. Why on earth did I feel that way?! And that curiosity was fear erotically transmuted into a conscious exploration, free from binary judgements of “right” or “wrong.”

So with this in mind, let’s try one last thing together: I’d like to invite you to think of some things that scare you about The Unknown. It doesn’t matter what they are, or how big or small they are, just make a little list. And the next time you are folding your laundry, or cooking your spaghetti, or watching reruns of “Schitt’s Creek” on the couch with your cat, I’d like you to go down that list, point by point, and examine your fears with curiosity. Can you laugh at your irrational lizard brain? Are there some things that are necessary shields for survival and other things that you could get inquisitive about instead? What shifts for you when you do this?

If I had to put money on it, I’d bet you’re probably horny already just thinking about all the things you could do if you’d embrace uncertainty and tell your fear to zip it. So don’t let your fear get the better of you. Make friends with your fear. In fact, I recommend that you become friends with benefits and make yummy, naughty love to it.

Then say it with me loudly for the people in the back: “I AM A SLUT FOR THE UNKNOWN!”