AW5: Recovering a Sense of Possibility
Creating a new world right in the middle of your life
Good heavens did I struggle to get into this chapter. Week 5 – Recovering a Sense of Possibility is all about … well, tapping into possibility. The problem is that it’s possibility in the sense of what is possible outside of your created framework and so that involves “trusting”, “God”, “flow”, and “listening to the inner voice”.
This is not something I’m new to. I have my understanding of the god force and flow and source and what what what, but when I started reading the chapter, I just felt the white noise arise at the first mention of “God”.
Cameron very much means “God” as the creative source that we all originate from, that we all are, that we all access when we “pry ourselves loose from old concepts” of Self, but “God” as catchall for this is still something I struggle with.
No matter how I’ve reframed the idea of the inexplicable creator energy that moves us and forms the world we inhabit, the minute I think of “God” with a capital gee I want to turn the concept into an all-knowing, all-giving – or all-withholding and vengeful – sort of essence, who rewards me when I am good and punishes me when I am bad. I’ve grown up in a very Calvinistic culture and these frameworks are difficult to undo.
Nevertheless, I persevered and while I could nod and yes, yes, yes as I read (many times, to get past the white noise) through the chapter, I found myself getting angry. Ultimately, I was getting angry at my old concept of God and how I’d felt abandoned by it; how, given my experiences as a child without any agency – given what happens to 90% of the world’s population – it’s difficult to swallow the whole “abundance and love is available to all, ya just gotta belieeeeeeve…”
But of course, it’s not that.
The universe and the creative source that feeds us all is indifferent to us as individuals, it doesn’t care about the nuances of our feelings, dreams and struggles. It simply is and it feeds us all equally.
Destructive people thrive just as well as considerate and kind ones do; it keeps the psycho alive just as it does the saint. In a forest, life doesn’t favour this tree or that flower. When one dies, ten spring up in its place. Life is life; the creative source that compels reaching for the light, for expansion, for expression, for continuation, is inevitable and unstoppable. Even when this earth is turned to dust, the universe that contains it and birthed it will continue.
The creative force that we might call God or the universe or flow or source will do what it does, but since we’re humans with complex and curious bodies and brains to help us, we can tap into it consciously. And that’s where the magic lies.
In a forest, life doesn’t favour this tree or that flower. When one dies, ten spring up in its place.
The phrase “as within, so without; as above, so below” is a simplified and somewhat bastardised version of the “writings” of Hermes Trismegistus, the mythical Egyptian sage who was said to be the font of almost all philosophical, religious, and esoteric knowledge. But it’s the closest I’ve come to the sentiment that best encapsulates the concept that we are the creators of our world.
As you are within – your heart, your mind, your conscious will and your unconscious drives, everything and everyone that set those first patterns of your personality or laid the foundation for your character – is what creates the without. “We see the world not as it is,” wrote Anais Nin. “We see it as we are.”
No two people will experience the same tree or landscape or music concert in the same way. When you look at a room of 10 people, you’re looking at a room of 10 different worlds. And, as adults with this remarkable tool of a body and a brain, we each get to choose and create our own. Some are just in a more comfortable position to do so.
Cameron’s exploration of this in week five is a bid to get readers understanding the possibility of what exists if we accept the power that’s available to us when we tap into this source, and “go with the flow” to see beyond the limitations imposed by our histories and blunt assumptions.
It’s powerful stuff, it’s unsettling, it’s irritating, it’s exhilarating.
I’m not going to pretend that, at this point in the process, I’m not actually getting scared. I can see why I stopped shortly after this chapter when I first did this course in 1998. Only this time it’s scarier, because I know what it takes to make a change that supports my growth in this one little life I have; I know that with each seismic shift I’ve made, I’ve had to say goodbye to an old world and all the comforts – yup, pain and trauma and sadness and feelings of victimisation can be comforts – it holds.
But I’m ready this time because I’ve built trust in the process: I know it works because I’m enjoying the rewards of all the work I’ve done in every other aspect of my life. I can feel in my “tingles” that I’m on the right track for another shift to a new world and I’m ready for it.
I’m ready.
I wrote some Woman&Home columns awhile back that sort of taps into this whole business, if you’re interested:
Loved this! Your voice is strong and certain, even with the doubt... Onwards to possibilities!!
I am feeling scared too.
I am scared of the radical little girl who is being revealed layer by layer, as this process paint-strips the layers of my adulterated self like the walls of an old house. I find this journey is asking me: what is the bedrock of my being? So now I have to wonder what will be stripped to find out and will anyone suffer? Will I suffer? Will this stripping be painful? Or simply liberating? Where am I going? What will I find behind what some part of me put in place for good reason at the time. These no good reason tears – where do they come from?
Dreams of speaking in the tongues of my ancestors, which I don’t know. Si, io canto. Yes, I sing...? And then more dreams of singing. Yes, I sing, but certainly nowhere near where a harsh ear may hear.