Embracing limitation 

Stepping into limited experiencing

We are often striving to grow, expand, deepen and increase our experience of ourselves.  It is phenomenal that most of us have this hunger.  This hunger is often sparked from a feeling of knowing there is more to existence (life) than we have been experiencing.  This feeling that there is more often comes with the awareness that we are currently experiencing limitation in some way and in response to that feeling we’ve lit a fire inside of us to move through into more.  

The reason this fire gets lit is because the experience of limitation is uncomfortable, frustrating, and annoying.  No one enjoys feeling limitation, so in order to not feel limitation we find ways, places, tools, and the like to move us into feeling less limited and more free.  Being free is our most natural, innate state.  So when limitation arises it contradicts that which we know to be more true, that we are free.

So how do we rest in the knowingness that we are free while simultaneously experiencing limitation?  The key here is in embracing what we perceive to be our limitation.  Now almost no one will readily do this.  This is one of the primary reasons why we have a field of “healing” in the first place.  No one wants to embrace those things or experiences that feel crappy, such as limitation.  Often it feels like we are “going in the wrong direction” if we embrace that which we are trying to change or don’t like, almost like we are inviting it in rather than transforming it.  

The truth is when you embrace you do invite it, but you invite in that which is already there.  Our frustration comes when we don’t invite or include in what is already present.  In that way we resist a part of our experience rather than accept our experience.  We all know that what we resist persists, so what you end up getting is more and more of the experience of limitation or whatever it is you don’t like.   

The other side of embracing limitation

Your free self

What happens on the other side of embracing limitation?  When we are able to drop into receiving what is presenting in our experience the pressure to have to be different subsides, which is experienced as a huge relief to our system.  That thing that we all call “stress” seems to relax.  What is really relaxing is us.  Its through this process of accepting what is that our freedom can begin to be felt and experienced.  We are now free from something about us or in our experience having to be different, better, or changed.  What then arises is a state of presence; we become present.  

Underneath the experience of limitation are the thoughts and beliefs that you are not capable, that something is not possible, or that something is fixed or solid.  None of these beliefs are ultimately true, but they are true to a part of you that is experiencing the limitation.  When that part that is experiencing limitation is felt and allowed its calms down, and rather than it controlling your experience, something else arrives on the scene.  That something else that arrives is experienced as a calmer, stiller, clearer and more aware presence.  That is you, the free you.  

The free you that you truly are never goes anywhere.  It just gets covered up by thoughts, beliefs, concepts and ideas, which confuse you and make you feel like you have no idea what is going on.  Most of us are trying to fix or figure things out from this confused, covered up aspect of ourselves which makes us feel like we are moving in circles and never getting closer to the truth. 

It is only through surrendering to these parts of ourselves, ending our battle with them, that we can move through.  This may feel like failure, like giving up, like losing fight, or like the wrong direction because you are so identified with the part that feels the limitation and so determined to overcome it and not give into it.  If you simply just let this part win, allow the experience of limitation without the fight, I promise you something else will arrive on the scene.  That something else that arrives has always been there its just that its been covered up by the battle to make some aspect of itself different.  When you end the battle now you can perceive this truer aspect of self.  The battle that you create inside is what perpetuates the limitation and continues what feels like the never ending cycle to nowhere.  When you are willing to rest your sword against your own experience your freedom awaits you.  

Dr. Amanda Hessel, Chiropractor, Network Spinal Analysis & Somato-Respiratory Integration, Boulder, Colorado