Making the Most of Limitations
Imagine an existence with no limitations. You are pure conscious energy and your will can create any experience it chooses. You have form, but not a body. You have awareness and senses that are infinitely more expansive than the ones you now have. You have connections with others but no dependency. You are active, learning, and experiencing a form of reality that extends far beyond the human condition. You are spirit, and this is your natural form of existence.
So why on earth did you choose the confines of this limited human form? Why would you want to live within the restrictions of matter, time, gravity, physical needs, and all the expectations of your culture? What does your spirit have to gain from experiencing these limitations?
With your first breath at birth, your spirit slams into the physical body and immediately feels all the discomfort that comes with it. Before you were born, the spirit hovered around, sometimes inhabiting the fetus and sometimes just getting to know the type of life it’s coming into. Then it happens; the child ushers the spirit into the heaviness of gravity, a flailing body, harsh lights and sounds, cold, pain, hunger and other strange functions of being human. Most of the child’s memory of being something else is obliterated in that moment, but there is a sense of having been somewhere else and now being in a totally unfamiliar and strange place. No wonder the newborn cries!
But then something else happens; the child finds loving comfort, food, warmth and touch. It begins to experience a sense of belonging and it becomes fascinated with its body and its sensations. It begins to find pleasure in these limitations in addition to the discomforts.
As spirit beings, we are an intrinsic extension of the creative Universe, which is forever expanding outward. Our expansion occurs with experience, and so it’s the nature of our spirit to want to have many different experiences which add to our wisdom and growth. We choose the human experience specifically for the limitations it offers us, so that we can see what we can do as a limitless being in a limited existence. How can we best manage time and space? How will we function within the confines of a body with all its needs, illnesses, malfunctions and sensations? How will we learn within the limitations of the human brain and the thinking mind which is so easily influenced? And what about the challenges of family, finances, work life, cultural expectations and the needs of others? How will we respond to those demands in our lifetime?
Even without a clear memory of our origins as a non-physical, limitless being, we can feel that as truth, and sometimes this creates frustration and struggle within the structure of a physical existence. Just as a toddler balks at being told “NO” we curse our clumsy bodies that don’t do what we want them to do, we grow impatient waiting for things to happen or we grow frantic with the quick passage of time, we resist change and the unpredictability of life, and generally push ourselves through the thick material substance of the physical experience just as we were pushed into it through the birth experience.
But we can change that. When we bring awareness to the sense that this material existence offers us something we can’t get in the non-physical, we can begin to observe it through the lens of its sacredness. We can see these frustrations and challenges as opportunities to remind ourselves of the vast, limitless reality of our spirit which can help us create a more beneficial perspective. We can begin to honor our emotions and use them to foster growth and expression. We can begin to focus more and more on what this experience is demonstrating to us about our strength, resilience, ability to learn and change, and most of all, our ability to love.
That doesn’t mean we can make this experience easy. Your spirit didn’t choose this experience as an easy one; it chose specific challenges that aren’t available to spirit because those challenges offer wisdom that isn’t available in a limitless non-physical form. What a sacred gift that is! And what a difficult one, indeed. Instead of longing for your life to be easy, you can create an intention for more ease. And you achieve that ease through allowing, observing and loving.
Resisting takes a lot of physical, emotional and mental energy, and while it has its place in our lives, too much of it will drain us and make our lives feel like struggle. Where can you move through some of the experiences you resist with more ease and flow? Can you allow others to be who they are without wanting them to meet a certain ideal? Can you make decisions about how to respond to situations and people without continually wishing they were different? Can you observe what’s happening around you, take action where you can and trust that all the experiences you’re being offered, even the really difficult ones, are offering something valuable?
It’s true that you’re an integral part of this experience and that each choice you make creates the way it will unfold. But you are also the witness of the experience, and more you are able to bring yourself into the observer’s perch, the more ease you will experience. From that perch, you can offer compassion, care and love without attaching your sense of self to the paths of others. You can take necessary action, stand in and speak your truth, be a force of change without entangling your sense of worth to the outcomes of those actions. You can pause and ask yourself, “What response is in my highest good and the highest good of others in this situation?” without drowning in the emotional reactions to the experience. If you can balance your energy between that of the experiencer and the witness, you’ll create less resistance and more flow in your life, which makes for a more peaceful existence.
Your true nature, and nature of all beings, is centered in love. When we are not centered in that place of love, it is because we are resisting it or blocking it with our thoughts and beliefs. We are reacting to emotions which are generated when our expectations aren’t met, our actions aren’t having the desired outcome, or we are encountering external resistance. We become angry when experiencing or witnessing injustice, unkindness, a lack of compassion or understanding because it is our intrinsic nature to expect those things, and rightfully so! But we can choose to channel that anger into action, and sometimes the most effective action we can initiate is being more of what we’re seeing as lacking in the world. We can let the experience of not enough love inspire us to be more loving.
Yes, it’s a challenging life, and the degree of challenge you’re experiencing is in direct proportion to the level of wisdom your spirit is intending to achieve. Feel what you need to feel, express those feelings in a healthy way, observe through the eyes of the witness, make careful and deliberate choices about how to respond, and then turn your attention to the huge abundance of beauty, love, joyful experiences and opportunities to be of service to others which create the richest and most fulfilling existence in this grand adventure. You didn’t come here for easy, you came here to see what you could do with this limited and grand physical expression of your spirit. And however you choose to live, you’re sure to get something out of it. Make the most of it.
