2026 is said to be a universal Year One—a time of fresh starts and preparation for a new nine-year cycle in our lives. Are you feeling it yet?
If your answer is “not at all,” you are not alone. Many people are reaching out feeling overwhelmed—by their personal lives, by what is happening around them, and by the state of the world at large.
2026 and the Experience of Collective Uncertainty and Disorientation
If 2026 is indeed a Year One, it seems—at least in its opening—to be marked by collective uncertainty and rapid unraveling.
What many of us are experiencing is not simply individual anxiety, but a shared sense of disorientation. The familiar reference points no longer seem reliable, and the pace of change can feel relentless.
Whether or not one resonates with numerological frameworks, the lived experience of this moment is unmistakable: uncertainty is not peripheral—it is central.
How Do We Meet This Moment—Individually and Collectively?
So the question becomes: How do we meet this moment? And, from a soul perspective, what does it mean to live through a time like this?
If you have followed me for a while, you know that I hold a deep reverence for Mystery. In this two-part post, I want to share reflections drawn from a chapter of my upcoming book on mystery and awe. It invites us to stop pretending that we have a map and to learn how to be with the unknown.
You might be thinking: What? Are you asking us to soothe our anxiety about the world by adding even more uncertainty?
Bear with me, if you can. As some former clients have said, “there is a logic to the madness.”
Why Old Ways of Responding to Crisis No Longer Work
What the world is showing us with increasing clarity is this: we cannot continue to create, adjust, or repair our lives based on the past—or even solely on what the present appears to be—because these frameworks no longer serve the collective.
Or, as philosopher Bayo Akomolafe so poignantly asks, “What if the way we respond to crisis is part of the crisis itself?” What holds true for our collective human story is equally true for our individual lives.
Why Uncertainty Is Not the Enemy
Reframing Uncertainty as a Catalyst for Growth and Transformation
The truth is that uncertainty is not going away. But rather than seeing it solely as a source of fear, we can learn to work with it—to engage the unknown as a catalyst for resilience, growth, and deep transformation.
Part of this process involves reframing our relationship to uncertainty: instead of perceiving it as something to resist, we can approach it as an opening, a possibility—even as the space from which something unexpectedly good might emerge.
The Spiritual Power of Not-Knowing
In When Things Fall Apart: Heart Advice for Difficult Times, Buddhist teacher Pema Chödrön describes “not-knowing” as a profound spiritual and emotional strength.[1]
These moments cultivate humility and wonder—qualities required for true transformation—and invite us to loosen our grip on rigid narratives in order to make room for possibility.
Why the Questions Matter More Than the Answers
This is an invitation to step out of our fixation on answers and to remember that the most fundamental dimensions of our lives—birth, death, love, belonging—arrive first as questions. It is, at its core, an invitation to humility.
Living the Essential Questions: Who Am I Choosing to Be Now?
We may not yet have the answers about where we are going collectively. You may not have clear answers for your own life. And that is okay. Keep asking the questions, day after day: Who do I choose to be now? How do I choose to show up? Just for now.
Breath, Presence, and Releasing What No Longer Serves Us
Allow the answers to arise moment by moment as gentle guides, as in-spiration, as the breath you take in each morning. And with each exhalation, allow what is ex-pired—what is no longer alive or needed—to be released, even if you have not yet fully named it.
You may be surprised by how this practice helps you hold fear with compassion and, over time, restores a sense of agency and flexibility—an ability to remain in the flow of life.
This, too, is how we continue to nurture a new vision of how we might live together.
What Comes Next: Why Awe Is Essential to Spiritual Resilience
One essential dimension that is often forgotten—and that makes all of this possible—is the experience of awe, which is intrinsically connected to mystery.
Stay tuned for Part II of this post.
And remember: keep asking the questions. With each exhalation, release what is ex-pired. And allow each inhalation to in-spire you more deeply.
Béatrice Pouligny | Shaman, Spiritual Healer and Coach
beatrice.pouligny@shamanicspiritualhealing.com
[1] Chödrön, Pema. When Things Fall Apart: Heart Advice for Difficult Times. Boston: Shambhala, 1997.
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