I’m thinking about two especially frightening mental places to find yourself in life.
The one where you think everything is limited.
And the one where you realize that everything is possible.
I’m handing this over to you.
Remember when we had an experiment here where I gave you the concept, and let you expand on it?
You get to guess what I’d be saying about this. Or figure out what you know about this.
With a couple of starting points.
The relationship between the two.
At the Destuckification week in California that we did in January, we dissolved the scary of the first one:
What if I can’t ever get beyond these (external + self-imposed) limits?
And at the Week of Biggification in North Carolina next week we will — among other things — be making peace with knowing that so much more is possible than we think.
Playing possibility, being possibility, finding the gaps and acting on what we know.
Everything and nothing.
There is truth in the statement that everything is limited.
And there is also truth in the statement that everything is possible. And there is the truth of the continuum.
Part of accessing possibility is the ability to ask, “What else is true here?”
For the shivanauts.
Shiva Nata is about connections. And freedom from having to follow default patterns.
How is this related to the everything is limited and yet everything is possible question? And how does it help us find our way through it?
You’re welcome to play if you like. Comment zen for today?
We are thinking out loud here. This is not about absolutes or right versus wrong. It’s about examining what is possible.
We all have our stuff. Weāre all working on our stuff. We let everyone have their own experience, which means we donāt give each other unsolicited advice. And we are curious about where we get stuck.
Kisses to the commenter mice, the Beloved Lurkers and everyone who reads.
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To be honest, I don’t know what you would say on this, Havi. But I’ve been thinking about this a lot lately. To me, one of the problems is in thinking that this is an either/or situation. That we’re doomed to complete limitation or endless freedom. In practice, both limitation and freedom appear in our lives. And both can be useful. It’s about finding what works for us.
If we have habits or rituals that work for us, that’s a helpful type of limitation. These structures support us. If we have habits that aren’t serving us, then it’s time to explore possibility. But that doesn’t mean that we need to overhaul our life in a drastic way. It could mean that we find a way to alter this habit or maybe we explore it further and find out there’s nothing stopping us from finding what’s possible.
I feel a lot of tenderness when I think about possibility and limitation. I think that, for me, thinking about limits and possibilities needs to include tiny steps (into the unknown, or into new limitations). And at the same time, it needs to include things to make me feel safe in uncharted territory. And I always need to know that I can take a step backward if I don’t feel safe with the new-ness. All of this has to do with knowing where we are and learning more about ourselves. Which, of course, can be helped along by the Book of Me and Shiva Nata, among other things.
Want to consult the I Ching (world’s oldest advice column) on Limitation? http://www.stinkwanink.com/2008/05/limitation-doesnt-always-sound-like.html
Possibility is great, within limits.
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My thoughts:
The scary of what is limited = not being able to see the pattern, or a way out of the pattern.
The scary of what is possible = is the same as the above.
When is possibility scary for me?
When I believe that:
There is one right choice
That I have to decide and get it right
Which is another pattern. Which I can work with in the same way as any other pattern, using my awesome trunkful of Fluent Self-ified techniques (legitimacy, separating, past/now, talking to monsters, etc).
When is possibility unscary?
When I realise that every point connects to every other point, and thus it doesn’t matter where I start, as long as I do so with conscious intention, with sovereignty. The conversation with the dryads about passages!
Also makes me think of Picasso, ‘learn the rules so you know how to break them properly’. Learning a pattern in order to have the choice to consciously break out of the pattern. Knowing how you’re breaking the pattern, and why. Classical portraiture into Cubism.
And learning to be able to stay in the pause between trigger and response in NVC. The possibility in the pause.
That’s all my fugged-up brain can muster right now, so I hope it makes (some) sense (to someone). Drat this cold!
Love to everyone,
Reba x
This is a thought provoking post! I’ve been working really hard to ser my own freedom lately ( am starting a RTW trip soon), and what I’ve realized this far is that many limita are actually just self-imposed. Once we realize that it makes it a lot easier to then realize the infinite possibilities that can spread out in front of us, cetins the limits that we had created.
I do believe in working and acting to create the possibilities we so seek!
@Jude Neat! I just tried that for my own limitation-related inquiry and definitely got some good food for thought. Thanks š
@Reba “The conversation with the dryads about passages”…yes! Exactly! Are you in my brain? (And is this from Havi’s process book or is there some other spooky brain-twin effect going on here?)
Putting on my shivanautical hat (it has sea-worthy knots on it that only I know how to untangle)…the truth of limitation is learning that it holds usefulness, in that sometimes I have to bump up against a wall before I can understand its existence. And learning how to connect the limitation side of the spectrum to the unlimited side of the spectrum, learning how to connect any two (or two thousand) points in space is Shiva’s favorite thing to dance toward and around and through.
If my default pattern is to see the limits, or the limitlessness (both of which contain their own particular fear monsters), there is also the possibility of looking at how each contains its own opposite. An open map can pose as many difficulties as a closed door; if this is true then its opposite must also be true, I think: an open map can contain as many joyful possibilities as a closed door.
I suppose the pattern that’s true for me right now is the stuckness of seeing where the joy and possibility lies in the closed door. Looking forward to more comments and more illumination on this choose-your-own-adventure type post!
Maybe first we’d chase down the truth of the possibilities, then the truth of the limitations, but not as a list.
Maybe we’d make a treasure map.
Maybe we’d take a paper and write down the possibilities and the limits at the same time as if the possibilities are the path and the limits the stones marking out that path.
Or, no wait. Maybe there would be a map for each possibility. The possibility written at some point on the map with a big X marking the spot. Then the steps to getting there might make a meandering path across the paper with the limitations that come up as those steps come up laid out like the stones marking the path. They don’t so much keep us from where we’re going as much as make the path prettier, somehow. AND easier to see. (Thank you, limits.) The path gets to the X. And so do we.
Maybe we draw the monsters on the map as well, so that they know we know they’re there and that they can play, too. Maybe we write the names of our crew (brains, talent, skills, other people who help us, etc.) on a page which goes with the map.
Yeah, ok. We’re gonna need crayons. Or colored pencils. Or both. Or even watercolors. But definitely crayons.
And then we take the paper and crumple it up, burn the edges and rub some kind of ick on it so it looks like we discovered it in a creepy cave.
And then we put the map up where we can see it as we navigate. And then we get going.
Maybe that. I don’t know.
Such a juicy topic!
Iāll put my philosopher hat on and paraphrase Kant who said something to the effect of āfreedom is constraint by norms.ā Basically the idea is that unlimited possibility isnāt freedom, itās chaos. Imagine a city with no agreed-upon conventions about which side of the road to drive on, and no traffic signals. I sure donāt want to drive in that city! Even if we sometimes want to ācheatā and drive on the shoulder, thatās only possible because we have the notion of a shoulder as āthe part of the road thatās not used except in emergencies.ā
Similarly with language. Without the conventions of grammar and usage, communication would be impossible. When everyone knows and understands the rules, You. Can. Break. Them. And communicate even more effectively.
Paradoxically, sometimes a lack of possibilities can be the most spacious possibility of all. Freedom *from* choice is sometimes better than freedom *of* choice. Thereās a great TED talk that addresses this issue. We often assume that more choice is better. That more choices mean more freedom and more freedom means more happiness. These connections are deeply connected to Western cultural ideals of individuality and autonomy. But so often, instead of empowering us, too many choices confuses us. As Schwartz puts it in this video, some choice is better than no choice, but more choice is not necessarily better. http://www.ted.com/talks/lang/eng/barry_schwartz_on_the_paradox_of_choice.html
Loving reading everyone elseās reactions!
Thinking that anything is possible feels like an awful lot of responsibility to me. Because then I really have no reason not to act on the possibility. And maybe I don’t want to act on it, you know? Maybe I’m not ready, or I don’t have the energy, or whatever.
Maybe I’d rather believe it’s not possible, so that I can comfortably curl up in my chair and watch TV and feel that I’ve done all I can. At least some of the time.
I love limitation actually. It’s like instead of being the pirate captain you are a passenger on a luxury ocean liner, hanging out by the pool, drinking cocktails and letting someone else make the plans. It’s being able to fully experience everything, savor it all, good and bad, because you’re not busy trying to run the ship. And we’re here, on a planet of time and space, so we are actually always on that cruise ship, even when we’re busy making pirate plans and hoisting flags…
Coming out of lurkarage!
Recently I was talking to a co-worker. He will be working in public schools forever, he has a family and a house. I’m on a yearly contract, rent and have nothing tying me here. He said he envies me because I can do anything. I couldn’t quite make him see how scary that is and how there’s pressure there. So if I don’t do something, if I just stay here it’s like why aren’t you out there? Doing something free??
I envy his security, he envies my freedom. Maybe the answer is a balance of some sort…
Oh, so many thoughts about this, swirling in my head.
The choice thing feels important. What I find scary about everything being limited is the thought that I don’t have a choice. What I find scary about everything being possible is the thought that I have to choose.
Then, there’s the link between choice and control. Where do I feel more out-of-control, in a world where everything is limited, or in a world where everything is possible? And what is the tragedy that I imagine lurks within that lack of control?
Then, of course, there’s the fact that in the Dance of Shiva, losing control is a big part of the point. From that loss of control, new possibilities and insights emerge.
Tangent: When I make choices, I am crafting my own limits: I choose this and not that; I go here and not there. A chain of choices may create a chain-link fence of limitation, delineating the places where I perceive my boundaries to be. Doesn’t mean I have to stay there, but it may make change feel more difficult, more fraught with complication and consequence.
Are limits order, then, and is infinite possibility chaos? No, I don’t think it’s as simple as that.
Oh, tangled, tangled thoughts.
Thiiis is difficult to wrap my head around. Almost too open-ended, which… means there aren’t enough limitations to help guide me in a coherent direction. More on that in a second.
The scary thing of limitations, honestly, is wanting and not being able to have (or do or be). Being unable, incapable. Impossibility, and the emotional frustration of trying to kick down a mountain that will not move. That is Hard and nothing but.
But the good thing about limitations is that they’re often not actually restrictions. They’re stepping-stones. They give you paths to where you might not otherwise get. Each time you reach a limit and find a way around or over it, you find yourself with a few more skills and a little more experience under your belt, a slowly-growing toolkit that will help you surpass the next limitation (which looks like a guard-rail in my head – I guess we’re getting off the highway and going cross-country on foot!).
Say you’re a complete novice in some art or profession, and you are limited by your lack of knowledge and skills. You have fewer directions in which to go, and so are less likely to get lost. Your limitations can guide you and strengthen you as you overcome them.
After a while, you have fewer and fewer limitations, and suddenly… possibility opens up. It’s like the hard climb out of atmosphere, followed by the abrupt loss of gravity. You can float in any direction you choose.
Sometimes the freedom is so free that it’s scary, or confusing, or so difficult to navigate that it’s easier just to stay where you are. But other times, that freedom is a perfect fit, and all the things you learned from overcoming previous limitations become your vehicle to explore this new, vast expanse of potential.
…or something like that, anyways. This is all stream-of-consciousness, so who knows if it makes sense to anyone but me? š
Briefly de-lurking. Possibility is my number one stuckifier. There are way too many possibilities once you stop placing limits on yourself. Number one de-stuckifier is to figure out what is meaningful to me. Example – facing down retirement and the option to move. We could move anywhere. So looking at the communities I belong to I create my own limits by saying I need to be around people who do and like the things I do and then the geography starts to shrink to a more manageable number of areas.
The idea that’s bubbling up has something to do with the space/possibility not always being located at the edges but instead in the middle, between limits and limitlessness, in the places where we already live most of the time.
We don’t press up against the edges of our lives incessantly. Most of the time when something has the space to happen, it has space because it’s NOT at the edges. And there’s a lot of space within a form (like sonnets!).
The whole idea that ANYTHING is possible is sooo limiting for me because this is what happens: I think that I could/should be something more and because I’m not there must be something wrong, wrong, wrong with me. At times like that I’m grateful for my limitations because those limitations narrow down my possibilities to something much more manageable.
Saavy?
Sometimes I think that either definition is what sticks me. One seems to imply that other people are in control and the other seems to imply that only I am in control. Truthfully, I think that both are false. Control is a limit in and of itself. What is possible sometimes, is just whatever is. When I am truly present, it doesn’t really matter what is or isn’t possible. When I am really and truly present, it all just is.
My ex-boyfriend owned a fourteen foot Burmese python that once got loose. To get it back in its cage, he threw a towel over its head. I don’t know if this is true, but he told me that when it gets so used to its captivity, it freaks out a little bit over the sheer amount of choices it has. When you cover its head, it calms down.
I’m a firm believer in the sweet spot, philosophically speaking. Too many limits, and I get paralyzed by the constraints — too much freedom, and I get paralyzed by the number of options. The sweet spot is my container: just the right amount of obstacles to make me work and activate my creativity, with enough freedom to know I can get it done.
how deliciously synchronous! I wrote a post yesterday about possibility and my attitudes toward it.
http://enduserlifeagreement.com/2010/10/25/positively-sacred/
tl;dr: Doing the sacred = recovering possibility.
I’m less of a patterns person, more concerned with dealing with the Big Picture of Possibilities and Freedom, capitals P and F included. I’m all about making the new path in the yard and making the small things into the Big Thing. But when you’re feeling downtrodden… it’s important to remember why Possibility is important in the first place. Possibility is not just the goo within which we play — it’s the space we have that we give to others when we respect them, and it’s the resource that erodes more and more in continued political conflicts and within oppressive governments. When a country’s people don’t possess adequate Possibility, their quality of life drops precipitously and their ability to maintain loving relationships and other liberties drops as well.
It’s worth fighting for.
Wow Havi, you’re good. Thank you for this.
Just spent about 45 mins writing, crossing out, rewriting a response to this and found that my response was sooo thinly disguised as one of my Llamas (my monsters are fuzzy) it was all but chewing cud in my face while having a magnificent woolly coat. The Llama was wearing a Grocho Marx nose, glasses and mustache combo to throw off me off the cud and fuzziness.
What I came up with is ‘How does all of this possibility and limitations work with my sovereignty and world view?’.
Or maybe its the other way around at exactly the same time. There is most likely many combinations of the possibility, sovereignty, world view and limitations. Which is good to know for more choice if I deem it needful.
This. Is. Fun! In a brain break-y, need to dance kind of way, but still fun.
I had a powerful reaction to the first two lines of this post! Here’s my “first thought, best thought” brief response: My experience has been that I need a container (whether externally imposed or deliberately self-crafted), but the container needs to offer a sense of spaciousness (or at least elbow room!) and it needs to be a little flexible so that it can expand as my experience unfolds.
Taking this with me to dance with it for a while…
I have been paralyzed in my life by both the limitations of possibility and the infinity of possibility.
Only (very) recently made some decisions that will allow for fulfilling a nice middle ground of possibility and it feels so good.
It seems that when you find the Right Thing and can proceed to do it in the Right Way, it cleaves the line between impossibility and infinity quite Rightly.