Letting Go Creates Flow

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This message is brought to you by Saturn in Pisces.

abundance has limits

i often hear the idea of limits or boundaries discussed as things that hold us back — they dance something to the tune of “Don’t Fence Me In.”

but what if limits also hold us together? edges provide a useful containment for the shape we want our life, community, idea or relationship to hold.

limits offer us the gift of Flow.

when a river has containment, it has surging power to go in the direction of the Sea, its destin(ed)ation. when the river exceeds the limits of the banks, we call that a flood, and we're generally less excited about those.

limits offer us the gift of Abundance.

what?????! you say.

i thought Abundance was about everything and more and always yes, yes, YES.

allow me to explain.

let’s say you have a cup, and we sense an abundance when that cup is full.

but what if the cup is always growing?
what if as soon as the water gets half-way up i start working my hardest to make the cup bigger? 
abundance, then, has to be about more and more and more and more water so my cup can keep being full.

while i’m here for a conversation about increasing embodied capacity; i think it’s easy to confuse it with our widespread cultural obsession with More.

what if Abundance isn’t always More.
what if Abundance is Full.

if the cup is always getting bigger or leaking
well, then Abundance isn’t really possible
because leaky cups, ever-growing cups,
are never Full.

if you are always and only strategizing
working towards making your cup bigger,
then abundance is impossible because you will never be Full.

this means that the cup has to have a limit.
this means abundance needs limits,
and comparing your cup to the size of the ocean maybe isn’t the best strategy
maybe isn't the best metric for Fullness.

so if there are limits which generate abundance
and if we want things to Flow IN (and not be a flood)
then we also have to let some things to Flow OUT.

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to move IN, something has to move OUT

so if there is limited space to your cup… perhaps, then, we get more choosy about what is taking up space in that precious cup.
if we want more water, more soul, more flow, more creativity, more fresh new life…
maybe it’s time to move some of that dusty old furniture out.

one of the things that can become well worn
dusty old furniture in the house of your Creative Cup of Soul
is grief, old grief.

if grief, which is a water of its own is stagnating, hiding or taking up fixed residence
in that precious perfect cup that is you, then that is less space for flow, less space for creativity and less space for joy.

grief, like joy, can widen us, enlarge our capacity, make our cup bigger.
grief, when we enter it with a soft, open heart can bring us closer
to Soul so that when we return to the world from the ocean of grief
we find more Life has traveled back with us.

but if grief stays for too long in the same shape, position, bulk and weight,
then it starts to eat up what could have been more rooms in your house.
it turns the doors to stone where nothing can enter — not even your desires, your ideas, your creativity.
grief can become something we hoard or hide or take out to cling to like it is “our preciousssssss.”

but grief, like all matters of Soul, want to move like Water.
it doesn’t want to be a fixed gem in a treasure chest of pain in your basement.
it wants to move through you like a river and become a source of life.

i think anything that gets stuck IN for too long can, in time, turn into grief
if it doesn’t move.
think of all the ideas inside of you that haven’t flowed out or haven’t expressed.
often, the longer they stay inside the more they get tinged with a scent of sadness.

sometimes, that little voice inside that says
this is not a good idea
is a wise voice of caution, a healthy dose of risk assessment.
 

but, sometimes, that little voice
is simply the grief
that never flowed out, and now it’s got its own attendants
and admirers who call it “the precious” and they’ve brought all their roommates and friends.
they’ve become permanent couch surfers on what used to be a beautiful living room, expectantly waiting for guests.

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creativity needs room

so what does all of this have to do with creativity?

well, creativity needs room in your cup, too.
it doesn’t just need room outside of you — in the form of a chair, a desk, a studio, a book.
creativity, that is your capacity to generate and birth new things,
also needs room inside of you.

if you want the winds of the songs you want to sing
to blow in through your windows,
you have to open the windows.
and in order to open them, you must also allow the grief to flow out.

grief is not a fixed object to be permanently unchanged, guarded and enshrined inside your heart altar.
there will be more grief… don’t worry.
and we want to be able to hold that, too, when it comes.

but keeping the grief, prizing it, saving it for later,
doesn’t protect anyone.
it doesn’t bring more justice to the world, more joy to the world, more peace.

so let the grief move. let it move out, let it move through you.
let it change shape, change size, change rooms.

it is one of the many songs you will sing about being alive.

let it out.
so you can let IT in — that more fresh and reborn song,
those well-deserved wrinkles,
this hard-won perspective and experience,
an updated and alive chapter full of your
paradoxes, poems and initiations from Below.

may you Flow.