[THE
POWER OF POSSIBILITY]
Broadcast 11th December,
2017
For just a moment tonight I'd like us to consider
together the Power of Possibility......
[I
Can Do Anything – John Farnham (A) – 4:27]
If I have a religion, it would probably be a religion
of Possibility... We're all too ready, I think -- and I'm just as guilty of
this as anyone – to overlook something we can't immediately see, and consign it
to the Impossible Basket. We all seem to be very well adapted to coming
up with reasons why something won’t work. Limiting thinking, in the guise of “being
realistic” is an ingrained habit from the past that I sometimes have to
negotiate with. And I don’t think I’m alone in this.
For example, as soon as I decided to make Possibility
my topic for JAM tonight, I typed the word “possible” into my music catalogue.
Not a single entry showed up, but found a stack of “impossibles” – “Mission
Impossible”, “You're Impossible”, “It's Impossible”, and enough versions of
“The Impossible Dream” to send the most prevaricating positive thinkers into a
cosmic orbit. Which suggests to me that Don Quixote's chivalric method of
finding Possibility by tilting at windmills of Impossibility, while
romantic as all get-out, may not be such a good idea for prosaic plebs like me
who've got more practical things to do than going around making legends of
ourselves. What if there's another, easier way to plumb and produce what's presently
only possible?
For just a moment tonight I'm going to turn The
Impossible Dream in on itself. I invite you to look with me at how our lives
might transform if we change our minds and stand instead in a basic
Assumption of Possibility –a space in which the seemingly impossible might be possible; that if we can think it,
it's possible, one way or another; a space in which we assume that we ourselves
might be the agents of evolution, feeling possibility into existence.
[La
Raya]
Just a moment.........
When you're troubled or stuck........
Try another way of looking at it.........
Let me tell a bit of my story and see how much of this
resonates with you...
[The
Impossible Dream – Ferrante & Teicher]
My relatively recent awakening to the existence and
availability of Infinite Possibility came just in the nick of time. After 60
years of living in a permanent state of Anxiety and Anger, I succumbed to a black
death of chronic fatigue, anxiety and depression. I just didn't have the will
to resist it any longer. I didn't care much whether I lived or died. I wasn't
going to top myself; I was too shagged out to even make the effort. Suicide
required a kind of courage I no longer felt.
Nothing mattered any more. But then something
happened, and nothing mattering any more became my saving grace..... The hell with this! I’ll try anything as
long as it’s different to what I’ve been doing! …. Something in me shifted,
and I don't quite know how to describe that shift, but here goes.......
You know those 3-D pictures that look like a flat,
jumbled pattern of coloured lines and squiggles? You stare at them and de-focus
on the detail until there comes, of its own accord, a click-shift in your
perception. Suddenly there is revealed a magical, 3-dimensional world that
you'd been told existed, but until now remained hidden. The picture on the
paper, as such, has not changed, but your view of it is magically transformed
in half the blink of an eye. And you can suddenly see something wonderful. It
was actually there all along, but lost in the confusion, in the detail, in our
innocent inability to know how to look at it, and in our ignorance of the fact
that there is more to this than immediately meets the eye. The new
vision existed all along in another realm of reality --- Poss-ability.
My transformation felt similar. No longer caring about
what others thought, and feeling that nothing mattered any more, both suddenly
became triggers to letting go, to seeing the thing in a different way. The
resulting “A-hah!” heralded bursts of freedom, of possibility, of lightness and
exhilaration. “What you think is no
longer my business”......Whew! “Your
opinion of me doesn't matter any more – not to me!” Thank God for that. A
load lifted. Without my having to do anything about it, my panicky grabbing
onto existing abated.
I surrendered to what Les Murray calls “the Is-ful
Ah-ness” of things as they are. Isn't that beautiful? – The Is-ful Ah-ness of
this moment. It happened without warning one afternoon as I was walking to the
bus stop on the way to work. I became sharply aware of space..... in, around
and through me being choc-full of Possibility. Anything could happen in the next
moment. The sense of freedom that washed over and through me in that moment was
en-lightening.
En-lightening!
Nothing changed, and yet I've never been the same
since.
In just a moment, I'll be back to relate what happened
next, and share what it's like to feel the Power of Possibility.
PART
- B
[Who
Can I Turn To (When Nobody Needs Me)? – Mark Vincent (A) – 2:40]
[Here's a song that's familiar – you know the words.
Listen, and imagine you're singing this as a love song to your self......]
As I daily become more aware of the hitherto unnoticed
possibilities that flow through and around me, aware of how once impossible
dreams are becoming more and more possible.....
[The
Impossible Dream – Mantovani]
….I find myself using my own awakening spirit as a
guiding reference point, rather than looking to other people as benchmarks, and
I find myself relying more on a growing intuitive awareness, and less on cold logic,
signs, omens, and random coincidences as reassurances for taking action. I rely
less on either the approval or agreement of others in order to feel OK about myself
or what I'm doing, or even the way that I'm doing it. I feel lighter. I fear
less than I used to. And I've been able to give up the need to try and control
that which is un-controllable (which is just about everything).
I've also lost so much of my need to feel “special” or
“important”. I no longer feel I have to be “liked” to get a job done. Sure, I
still like to feel that I'm bringing something worthwhile to the table, and I'd
much rather other people felt better about themselves when I'm around, than
have them arc up in antagonism or freeze me out with indifference: but I'm not
going to lose any sleep over how others react or feel about me (well, not much
anyway); what they think of me is none of my business.
It never was, but I didn’t know that then
I'm also losing the need to hang onto being “safe” and
“right”. By plunging into it, I'm discovering Security in the Un-known,
the Serenity of the Silence that is ever-present, and the unlimited potential
of this Great Nothing, from which I and everything else truly new is created. I
really mean my email signature, which reads – “Barrie Barkla – There’s less to
me than meets the eye.”
“I” and “Me” used to sally forth every day, ever
outwards, looking for More, looking for Better, looking for Different out there
in the so-called “real” world. The further I ventured out, though, the farther
I got from that-which-I-am, and the harder I had to work to shore up a
shopfront personality I'd created. The further I wandered away from the source
of power, the more energy I needed to beg, borrow or steal from others just to
keep up a facade. In my quest for importance and immortality, I weighed myself
down with acquisitions – social and career positions, important responsibilities,
ideas, beliefs and opinions to be right about, and influence over others.
To use a racing analogy – the horse had been riding
the jockey, and the jockey had buckled under the weight.
The truth is there was not, nor would there ever be enough
success or importance to fill the dead emptiness of an ego disconnected from
its source.
Well, nothing significant has changed since.
Discovering the Power of Possibility is not about changing anything: it's about
embracing more of what is available to us from within. I still have much the
same persona (or is that “personum”?) as before; I'm still the same holy
arsehole I've been since I started going to school. But more recently I've also
become something described by a friend recently as “a benevolent leprechaun”. I
think that’s come from seeing myself in
another light – in the light of Possibility. And that lightness is proving to
be immensely attractive to surprising new possibilities. More of everything I
truly want has come to me in the last 12 months, all without any conniving or
manipulation games. But only since I began to live each day in Gratitude for
what I am, and what I have in this moment.
Someone posed a question a couple of days ago – What’s one thing you miss from your
childhood? After about 3 minutes of standing in that one, I got: I’m not missing anything from my childhood;
I think I’ve got it all back.
[I
Can Love You Like That – All 4 One – 4:22]
[Here's another love song to your self] (11 secs)
In an ocean of infinite possibilities, I am just one
bunch of possibilities that showed up like a ripple on the surface. So are you
– a wave of possibilities cresting on an ocean of possibility. From the biggest
tsunami to the tiniest ripple, we are still made of the same stuff as the ocean
which gives rise to us, and supports us. I Am, and always have been, that which
I'd been vainly searching for. You Are that which you've been looking for. We
are the ocean that created us – waving. What we are is that which is permanent
and remains after the wave has washed up on the shore. We are that which is
Aware – of everything we previously thought we were. Unlimited Possibility is
inherent in that Awareness, from which has arisen everything that will be,
everything that now is, and everything that once was.
[The Impossible Dream – David Hobson (A) –
4:10]
From here – from now – everything is possible. All you
have to do is choose.
Now that's Aliveness for you!
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