Are there limits to your perception? How big do you imagine the Universe to be? How far does your energy field go? Where do you end and the space around you begin?
My husband and I have an ongoing discussion/debate about the limits of human potential. I don’t think that there are any limits. He thinks there are things humans just weren’t designed to ever be able to do. Maybe I’m just opinionated (an existential hazard of being born with 4+ planets in Aries) but I really believe that as humans we are only limited by our perceptions of what is possible.
Think of all the inventions of the last century. I was explaining to my 5-year-old daughter tonight that my grandmother Mary, born in 1900, didn’t have television as a child – and read books by lamp light. And when I was my daughter’s age, TV (in Jamaica) was in black and white! She could hardly imagine such a horror! Technology has shifted what we believe to be possible. And I would argue that our belief in what is possible has accelerated the phenomenal technological and consciousness shifts of the last century. Because of technology my dad survived a heart attack 8 years ago that would certainly have killed him 50 years ago. Because of technology we also know immediately when tragedy has occurred anywhere in the world and we can rush to help relieve suffering.
As technology has supported our belief in what is possible we have dared to dream bigger dreams. And because we are human these dreams of course have been fueled not just by our altruism and generosity, but also by our fear and our greed. And so even as some people dream big dreams, others are afraid that these dreams will destroy us. We live in fragile human bodies – the identification with which leads us to be afraid of death. This fear of death, the yogis say, is one of the things that binds us to suffering. (It also keeps the majority of us from jumping in front of moving trucks!) This fear of death (or of annihilation – or non-being) also seems to underlie much of our resistance to life – what I would describe as contraction.
One of my first experiences with Reconnective Healing was through a process called The Reconnection. This axiatonal realignment process is designed to reconnect us with our true potential. During this 2-day process I had the realization that I was participating in something much larger than myself that was happening all across the planet and directly impacting human evolution. It was amazing to me – mind-opening in fact. It was so amazing that it scared me silly. I felt that I was on the edge of a precipice – that I had been brought to the edge of the Void and my next step was to jump in – to something I didn’t and would never fully understand – at least not with my mind. In the Reconnective Healing training I asked Eric Pearl about it and he said “Isn’t it exciting?!” Exciting? Heck no! It was terrifying!
In the years since my Reconnection I’ve come to some realizations that my mind still has some trouble wrapping its mind around. I’ve come to accept that the Void is everything. There wasn’t anywhere for me to jump because I was already here. What was missing was my perception. The Void is awareness and awareness is all that we are. Some of us have amazing experiences of it, others more subtle realizations. But whether we are aware of awareness or not, it is the ‘substance’ of which we are made. Each of us is all that is – “the world in a grain of sand.” This is why I believe in the immense potential of humankind – if we choose to embrace it. It’s not an imperative in my mind – it won’t make us better humans than we are now – but I think it would be really, really fun! I also think our expansion into this understanding is happening whether we like it or not. We can be immensely joyful and compassionate, or we can be immensely selfish and greedy. Through it all we are being – whichever choices we make, wherever we go, whatever we do. We are the Void – nothing and everything. Immense, unlimited potential.
In this Universe, as we experience it, is the potential for contraction or expansion. So as we approach the dawn of a new year, the question arises – how expansive can you allow your perception to be? As you imagine the vastness of our human potential, does contraction eventually kick in? What form does it take? Is it fear, is it a belief system or an adopted “truth?” Is it a sense of how things can’t be or should be? Is it sadness for the way things are? So, what if you could open to let even your contraction be expansive? In other words, what if you could just allow it to be okay to have all those thoughts and welcome them into this sense of expansion or possibility? Then how much could you allow your heart or your joy to expand? And in the midst of all of this, how much could you love yourself, just as you are – contraction, expansion, resistance and all?
To quote Blake (don’t be impressed, this was my first time actually reading the poem! These lines actually stopped my breath for a second):
To see a world in a grain of sand
And a heaven in a wild flower,
Hold infinity in the palm of your hand
And eternity in an hour.
And a heaven in a wild flower,
Hold infinity in the palm of your hand
And eternity in an hour.
You are the world in a grain of sand – all the Universes in one human body. What could be impossible?
Have a blessed, expansive, loving, joyful, perfect-as-you-are New Year!!
See you on the other side…