Is your scarcity all in your mind?
Do we suffer from a lack of resources....or lack of imagination?
This beautiful article in the Wall Street Journal echoes what I have always believed in my heart: there is more than enough everything to go around - time, money, clean air, pure water, health, happiness and more. Furthermore there is no choice - because things are always expanding.
And I can prove it to you...
Proof of infinity is in the Internet.
As little as 30 years ago, the dilemma was, how to get things to move faster? Could we make faster cars, speedier airplanes (remember the Concorde?), more efficient mail (ah, the day FEDEX came on the scene!)
We were thinking about "speed" from the place in which we were collectively standing at that time: planes, trains and automobiles. Phones, radios, faxes (they only came about 25 years ago). Overnight delivery was the best we could do with what we had.
Then came personal computers.
In 1981 I worked as a Marketing Director for a small Apple software company in Baltimore, appropriately called MUSE Computers. Personal computers had just come on the scene and my job was to convince people that home computers were both useful land necessary - not a luxury item just for the Jetsons.
The first applications for the home computer were word processing and playing games. (I had an Apple and then the Apple II and then the Apple II+ - 64K of RAM!)
And then came the Internet. Thank you Al Gore, Bill Gates, Steve Jobs, or whoever would like to take credit.
We actually had no idea how explosive an innovation the Internet was. Just a few score years later, life on this entire planet has completely expanded in every direction because of it. CLICK - you're connected halfway around the world. SKYPE and GOOGLE HANGOUT and VIBER, oh my - a face-to-face connection thats not only fast, it's free (bye, bye Ma Bell...for those who can even remember this one-time phone monopoly).
CLICK and you have instant access to the answer to any question on any topic any time of the day or night (if you even believe in time anymore).
What happened? Everything expanded instantly.
But before the manifestation must come expansion of thought.
How many times have you heard that we are "using up" the world's resources, "running out" of oil, "reaching the limits" of the atmosphere's capacity to cope with pollution or "approaching the capacity" of the land's ability to support a greater population, asks the Wall Street Journal article.
The assumption behind all such statements is that there is a fixed amount of stuff—metals, oil, clean air, land—and that we risk exhausting it through our consumption.
But always remember that peculiar feature of human beings: we burst through limits again and again. Ecologists call this "niche construction"- when people (and indeed some animals) create new opportunities by making their habitats more productive in some way.
When whale oil starts to run out, petroleum is discovered, or that when farm yields flatten, fertilizer comes along, or when glass fiber is invented, demand for copper falls.
Economists call the same phenomenon innovation. Economic concepts like "markets" or "prices" describe the limits to growth when in fact, there are none.
I call this phenomenon limitlessness.
If you have ever said, "I don't have enough time," "I don't have enough money," "I can't afford that," "I can't get it done," you were engaged in limited thinking - and it is an illusion. If everything is indeed limitless, you must be, too.
In fact, you are the Master Controller of Limitlessness, directing it to you or away from you with your words.
When you are standing in a place where the answers have not yet arrived, it's easy to get discouraged and to convince yourself that what you cannot see must not exist. At that moment, stop and consider the Internet - in fact, all inventions and innovations: once there was a time when they were not. In order for them to be, someone had to conceive of the possibility of something they could not yet prove or define.
Someone had to be willing to relax into the chaos of not knowing the answers. Will that be you?
Instead of saying, "I can't" start saying, "How can I?" Engage your limitless mind of solutions which, just by doing so, are now on the way.
Start by opening your mind to the surprises, the possibilities, the gifts coming your way.
And do your job - which is not at all what you thought: it is NOT to take action and MAKE IT HAPPEN. Your most profound activity is to relax - not to fret, worry, stress, not to be discouraged by "failure" and not to be deceived by what things look like today.
Your real job is to find out what you want and ask, "How can I?"
Your asking inspires innovation, inspiration, and the manifestation of all that you want for yourself and for the world.
Calmed yourself in Savasana after a hot yoga class. Stay awhile til your body feels light and floating, til your mind softens. If you happen upon some problem or dilemma, relax even more and let yourself slip easily into in a state of not-knowing, no-decisions, welcoming the chaos of being unsure floating in the matrix of all possibilities. That place is complete joy.
That is where you really live and always have.
It's why relaxing in Savasana feels so familiar: you are home.
Total relaxation opens the doorway to total limitlessness, which is just another word for You.
Rhonda Uretzky, E-RYT
Reader Comments (7)
I love the new way of thinking that I am learning. I can totally believe that this planet or Universe is limitless. I was actually thinking today, or the past few days that I am learning not to limit myself! Believing that I can do, be , or have anything opens up the world in a beautiful way!
Me too, Kim. Last week I watched two days endless rain and thought, how many raindrops that would be when it was all over ...or how many leaves or sprouts of grass would this rainfall nourish... or how many new cherry blossoms on all the trees in just one season...
Nature's message: there are no limits except in the mind that chooses to count.
I agree that there is no limit to things, however I think that sometimes people need to hear that there is in order for that one person to come up with, or realize, the next "thing" to take it's place. However a thought, wouldn't extinction represent an area where the idea of limitless has failed?
Not at all, Gabby; consider that "limited' might just be a made up idea that humans have created; we look at things that are "gone" and we see "endings."
On the other hand, we are beginning to comprehend the vast Universe itself as an ever-expanding place.
Are things ever "gone" - or are they transforming in the expansion of all that is?
The question is always, which idea feels better?
Death and extinction - these feel badly to us. Transformation and expansion - these feel wonderful. There is a good reason things ether feel bad (Turn Back!) or good (Go with this flow)
We view the stopping of the bodies of humans and animals as "dead" - but there is evidence that the larger part of you is not limited to your body- you experience this every night when you dream! Your "larger part" goes on adventures while your body stays sleeping in your bed. There is an infinitely more expansive part of you that lives right here with you, yet also continues on independent of a body. That part is never dead in the same way that the body may seem be.
Expansion is everywhere. That's why you can never be stuck: things are always changing and nothing stays the same...these, too, are thoughts that feel good. It is the "holding on" and wanting things to "be done" or "be settled" or "secure" that leads to stress: it is because these ideas are out alignment with your larger core of limitlessness.
Believing in limited resources always leads to fear, worry, stress, overwhelm - there seems no benefit to believing in limitations of yourself or anyone or anything else! Does a belief in scarcity ever work out for you - and can you see how may have worked against you in your own life?
I have always had difficulty relaxing. I rather liked this: Your most profound activity is to relax - not to fret, worry, stress, not to be discouraged by "failure" and not to be deceived by what things look like today. I know during savasana you're supposed to relax into it but I am very guilty of allowing worry, fret sneak in so next class, I plan on relaxing and being OK with not knowing the answers...
I'm in the midst of traveling alone in Europe. Some basic structure: flights in and out; Greece for 15 days, Rome for two days, Florence for 5, Milan for 1...some B&Bs...no itinerary...and as always the most amazing things happen when there is LOTS of space for happy surprises. Make room at your table for them and they always show up. Heather - dont "plan" on being relaxed in Savasana....just drift. No need to feel guilty about anything - even worrying! (now you're actually worried about worrying!) Laugh at yourself and you'll expand instantly into... relaxation.
I feel that my musicianship really reflects this blog entry -
for so long, I have allowed myself to believe that I am limited in potential…essentially that I am only as good as what I have been able to do in the past…and so that means that…I can only play what I've been able to play before- not much foreword thinking in that model :)
Recently I've been thinking more and more - what would it be like to stop believing myself limited? What would it be like to sit back, be in a Savasana state of mind, and let myself reach the incredible heights of expression that I know desire to soar within me?
How can I?
By stopping the worry about what it may look like, be like, sound like to others. That's just some comparative mumbo jumbo. The real thing is when I can let go altogether of that, and revel in my limitlessness. That's where the music is.