The Power of the Possible is a recipient of An Honorable Mention at the June 2008 New York City Book Festival Awards.
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It looked like as if it were going to be just another day. Another day filled with anxiety and depression; another day of fear and worry; another day in an emotionally abusive relationship over which I felt powerless; another day of too much pot; another day of not knowing how to end the misery.
Then I had lunch with Auriela - and my life would change forever!
Auriela had always been my spiritual guide, but this was different. She told me in no uncertain terms where I was headed if my life continued as it was. But she spoke in a way that did not make me feel judged. If this was how I wanted my life to be, it was not bad or wrong. She would still love me, regardless of my choices.
Then she spoke of possibilities, possibilities of a different future. A future filled with all that I could imagine - a future that I could actually create...
~ Lee Myers, San Rafael, Ca.
The Power of the Possible: Introduction
Up until the year 1987 I had been living in alternating states of determined hope and overwhelming despair. My personal life was falling apart. Trying to ignore this fact brought about physical illness and more pain. I was stuck. I hated the only answer that I knew was the right one, and so – I did nothing. Yet hope never left me either. Perhaps because it had always been my natural sate, and I simply didn’t know how not to feel it, regardless of the circumstances.
For most of my conscious life, I have been a seeker. A seeker of truth, a seeker of love, a seeker of Something More. I’ve traveled down many paths, most of them blind alleys leading to dead ends. Then a miracle happened. A treasured friend entered my life, not to lead me, but - walking beside me – to illuminate and point the way. My cup runneth over.
I began to wake up. Starved for truth, I couldn’t have enough of it.
All paths lead to truth, you just have to start walking. Even if a path turns out to be a blind alley, it too has a purpose. We human beings are a stubborn lot. One doesn’t need to hit rock bottom in order to discover the truth that has been sitting in plain sight all along, yet a number of people do.
Surrender is a difficult concept for most Westerners. Many are uncomfortable with the very idea of surrender, misunderstanding it, considering it to be a sign of weakness. We like to "be in charge", to be "in control" of our lives, and so the enormous power inherent to any true surrender remain elusive and is often missed.
I was no exception to this. Grabbing hold of the profound metaphysical truth "We create our own reality", I dove into the journey of "creating and manifesting" the reality I wanted - head first. I was no longer lost: I learned techniques of manifestation, how to change my belief system, how to reprogram my subconscious mind... Over the years, I became very good at these things. My meditations were incredible journeys into the mystery where much was being revealed... I was changing in profound ways. I experienced deep emotional healings and as a result – a more fulfilling life.
But it was not enough.
With time – the techniques didn’t work as well. Gently and not so gently, I was being pushed to go deeper.
How do you bring together the powerful concept of being "the author of your reality" and another, no less powerful one: "I am not in charge"? Seemingly contradictory – the two go hand in hand. Both are true and one does not negate the other. Understanding this, and eventually – beginning to live this understanding was a turning point in my life. Up until that moment I was accumulating awareness – after that, I stepped onto a whole different platform of being.
"Toto, I don’t think we are in Kansas anymore."
One can devote a lifetime to unraveling this mystery and it would be a richly lived life, with more gifts to discover the deeper you go. For mystery by definition – cannot ever be unraveled fully. Spiritual journey is a journey without an end. You get on the bus, and the bus takes off. No one ever "arrives", the road goes on forever, but you get to stop at various points and absorb the beauty of this road. The questions - Are we "done"? Are we there yet? do not apply here. Because once we get on this bus, everything changes. We are not in Kansas anymore.
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The subtitle for the book is "True Stories of Healing and Transcendence".
A terminally ill patient wakes up early one morning and sees the sun rising outside his window. Motionless, struck by the mesmerizing beauty, the man stares at the sky. It isn’t sky anymore… An ocean of swirling colors, the fiery red flooding into magenta, the glorious orange mixing with deep violet and pink…all of it - moving, changing, rearranging itself to its own design…the entire sky – an artist’s palette, exuberant, overwhelming… The man touches his heart, holding to the window sill with his other hand. Such beauty, such magnificence…such ….peace? Peace, the ultimate longing, the endless unrequited desire…suddenly – satisfied, - his, to touch, to experience, to hold in the palm of his hand, to inhale deeply, filling his body full, taking away the loneliness, the despair…and in their place - possibility, hope…
And the man makes a choice. I am going to live! I will beat this illness! I will get well. I will go on.
And he does.
A transcendent experience, brought about by the ethereal Beauty of nature - giving birth to a will to live, followed by total healing.
The neighbor next door, watching the same sunrise at the same time, notices the beauty of the sky, pauses by the window for a moment and smiles, then looks at his watch and hurries to the kitchen to begin his day.
It doesn’t mean this neighbor is an insensitive person. It doesn’t mean he missed a grand opportunity to change his life for the better. In fact, it doesn’t mean anything at all. For him, it was simply a usual morning with an unusually beautiful sunrise. That’s all. Meanwhile, the sick man had what Abraham Maslow called "a peak experience", a transcendent moment that changed him at the very core, giving him the will to triumph over his cancer.
It isn’t something that can be planned. It doesn’t happen that often or to everyone in similar circumstances. But it does happen. To experience transcendence - is to be blessed.
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Transcendent experiences are experiences of surrender. They can come through beauty, and also - through pain.
Surrender can be ecstatic, brought about by a sudden burst of joy, or - one can literally fall into it from total and utter helplessness. Either way, something in us lets go at that moment, and we are lifted "out of ourselves" and into the bigger, truer part of who we are.
For Eckhart Tolle, the author of "The Power of Now", awakening happened following an experience of absolute, intense dread. This is what he writes about it:
"I was gripped by an intense fear, and my body started to shake. I heard the words "resist nothing" as if spoken inside my chest. I could feel myself being sucked into a void. It felt as if the void was inside myself, rather than outside. Suddenly there was no more fear, and I let myself fall into this void. I have no recollection of what happened after that." He woke up in the morning to this experience: "... I recognized the room, and yet I knew that I had never truly seen it before... That day I walked around the city in utter amazement at the miracle of life on earth, as if I had just been born into this world... But even the most beautiful experiences come and go. More fundamental, perhaps, than any experience is the undercurrent of peace that has never left me since then."
Byron Katie, the author of Loving What Is, had once been institutionalized for her fits of rage. And then came one morning when she just woke up laughing. She has been a spiritual teacher ever since.
Here is an example from my own life.
All of my life, above anything else, I wanted to make "love" work. And yet I was failing at it. My first marriage had ended in divorce. I was in love again, but the relationship had reached an impasse. I "couldn’t change" my boyfriend of 3 years, no matter how hard I tried. The thought of leaving him was unbearable. I was gasping for air before I could finish the thought. I was lost, I doubted everything: myself, him, our future together. One night, unable to sleep, I found myself on the living room floor. It must have been close to three o’clock in the morning. Outside, it was pitch black. No moon, starless sky, no light coming into my window - a quiet time so still I could hear my nails scratching the surface of the floor rug. Curled in a fetal position, I lay without movement. I could not cry. I was beyond tears. It was despair so dark and bottomless, all I could do was lie in this deep black void without hope or thought…Sometimes my fists would clench and unclench. I could feel the dull ache in the pit of my stomach throbbing, contracting - the only physical sensation. I could not pray.
"I know you exist," I whispered to God, to the Goddess… "but right now I can’t feel it."
"I can’t fight any more," I said out loud.
I had not turned on the light and the living room was almost black. My eyes were used to the dark by then, and I could see the outlines of furniture in the room. How long did I stay on that floor, lost to everything but my despair? At some point I drifted to sleep, then opened my eyes again. Empty, spent, I lay there a while longer, then got up and went to bed. My boyfriend, Mykaell, the "source of my pain", turned in his sleep and snuggled up to me. He did not wake up.
I closed my eyes and fell into a deep sleep.
When I woke up in the morning, the familiar sense of frustration and pain I had been getting up with were gone. I was surrounded in a cocoon of gentleness. I don’t think I had ever felt this way before. I felt tenderness towards everything and nothing in particular, mostly toward myself. It was as if all the fight had been taken out of me, "scooped out" while I was sleeping, and the emptiness that replaced it had not yet been filled. I was floating somewhere, I knew not where. I had no expectation and no pain. It was a vulnerable, peaceful space. I thought about Mykaell. It somehow did not matter at all whether or not he changed. He was beautiful just the way he was.
It was a day of soft edges and kindness. I felt wordless gratitude, then sorrow, then quick spasms of joy. At times, I cried and was not sure what I was crying about. When Mykaell came home from work, and we sat down to dinner, it was as if we’d entered a different world, one that hitherto did not exist.
Everything between us felt new, tentative and real. I knew I was different, but so was he. How much had I fought him in the past, trying to get him to change and be the way I wanted him to be…to no avail. It had only lead to more and bitter fighting…Yet suddenly, without my saying a word, he had discarded the old way of being like an old worn-out coat never to be picked up again…
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"Nothing changes, until you do".
- Lazaris.
I remember the first time I heard this. How simple it had seemed at the time. How sure I was that I "got it", that there was no need to give it any more thought... It was so "clear" and so "obvious"... that I forgot about it right away. And yet, I would return to it again, many times... Because if I wanted my life and my relationship to work, it was imperative that I "get it" for real.
"Nothing changes until you do."
Simple on the surface, this truth – miles deep and anything but simple, is one more thing that has led me to the writing of this book.
So many people - frustrated, disappointed, angry - are stubbornly looking for reasons outside themselves to why life continues to remain fraught with problems and relationships remain difficult and often - unattainable.
Yet, NOTHING changes, until WE CHANGE.
If these words were understood and followed, we would be living in a different world, leading much happier lives.
I invite you to look to the truth above, perhaps write it down for yourself, and return to it over and over again, while reading the stories ahead. You will see how powerful and how on target it really is.
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"The Power of the Possible" is not a relationship book per se, though many of the stories and the concepts discussed have to do with relationships. Rather, the issues I talk about are universal, the ones that all of us face in the living of our lives.
The book in your hands is a book of hope. My wish for you is that as you read it, your hearts fill with Hope - for yourself, for the ones you love, and for the world we all live in.
It could have, also, easily been called a book of love. Everything in our lives begins and ends with love. Love is the subject of every song, every poem and every book that has ever been written. Love’s presence or its lack, our hunger and eternal longing for it…This is no exception.
But above all – this book is a book of possibility.
Not the "believe you can do it, and then you can" kind of possibility, which, while true, has become a cliché, but deeper and more, this book is about the Possibility that lies on the other side of humility: a possibility of a different future that comes with any true surrender - be it out of joy or pain. In this vulnerable space, with your defenses lifted - you can finally be reached. It doesn’t mean that you can now "get your way". Sometimes the greatest miracle is in not getting what you’ve been fighting to get for so long.
"More tears are shed over the answered prayers, than over unanswered ones," wrote Truman Capote.
Once you’ve let go, the Power of the Possible floods your consciousness, and everything changes. New here-to-fore unimaginable scenarios are suddenly possible, available - offering new, unexpected outcomes. You will see many examples of this as you read the book.
And one more thing.
My hope is that you will be left with more questions than answers, as you enter and exit the world of each chapter. But they will be the questions you didn’t have before.
This is a good thing. The questions are much more important. The answers will come in time, bringing with them – more questions again. Because like I said earlier - this road goes on forever. But what a ride.
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