Expanding possibilities

In general, I find paying less attention to anything that separates me from the present moment, especially thoughts, which tend to be about the past and future, helpful.

"Useful until it isn’t" Richard Bartlett, Matrix Energetics.

One way this helps me is in traveling. When, instead of thinking about what I’ve left behind or what I am going to (as most of us tend to when traveling) I focus more on the moment, traveling is less tiring, which is a good thing .

Yet in ‘The Spontaneous Healing of Belief’ Gregg Braden writes about a coach trip he was on where everyone eagerly anticipating what they were going to and the journey took an unbelievably short time - a better thing ?

My being fully present can also be a good thing for my clients but, in Matrix Energetics, we learn to distract ourselves by (among other things) thinking about something else, like what we are going to have for dinner, so that we get out of the way of transformation, which can be an even better thing .

The good or the best?

There are often lots of good things we could do. What we want is the best or optimal. If being fully present isn’t always optimal, what do we aim for? If we aim for specific results we tend to limit other possibilities, so I suggest freedom.

Freedom is a bit like getting all our ducks in a row - there are many more ways those ducks can be out of line than in line, and there are many ways we limit our own freedom.

The ‘right’ kind of attention

On the one hand, we often deny or avoid what is true, as in "I’m not too drunk to drive" or simply not paying attention where it is needed. Or our attention is superficial - we assume we know what is true, rather than connecting with what is actually present.

On the other hand, if we continue to pay attention to things we want to change or want gone, we can give those things more substance and make them harder to change. One way we do this is labeling our problems and describing them to ourselves or others.

Another way we do this is by checking whether our symptoms are still there or have returned, or worrying about them. Even if our symptoms have gone, they are so familiar to us, that we can (unconsciously) reproduce what we expect to find. Additionally, we make (or keep) ourselves anxious, which, over time, creates its own problems.

This does not just apply to health issues. Robert Scheinfeld (’Busting Loose from the Money Game’) believes that checking our finances is part of what keeps us from experiencing true abundance.

‘Needs’

We also limit our freedom by needing :-

• to be right
• to do something
• to understand why or how
• things to be other than they are.

It is natural to want to understand why and how, to want things to be different and to want to do something about that, but it is useful to watch out for and relax any sense of ‘need’ in any of these areas, to ‘let go and let God’.

Exploring unmapped lands

New possibilities exist beyond the limits of what we think we know or need. Looking for them there (by letting go of even our ‘useful’ beliefs and ‘natural’ needs, when that’s helpful) allows us to access new information and experiences, and evolve.

Once creative people have been successful, they can either repeat the same formula (which is unlikely to expand their creativity) or they can explore something new. If they explore something new, regardless how successful they have been in the past, they need to feel their way forward, exploring ways this might work, with no guarantee of success. Even if it doesn’t work, the have still exercised their creative muscles.

Similarly in life. When we cling to our beliefs or feed our sense of need, the results tend to be predictable and limited. When we hold everything as provisional, our journey is less predictable and a whole lot more interesting and expansive.

This entry was posted on Thursday, July 10th, 2008 at 2:05 pm and is filed under co-creation. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.