Perception of the Possible

 “True stability results when presumed order and presumed disorder are in balance. A truly stable system expects the unexpected, is prepared to be disrupted, waits to be transformed.”

—Tom Robbins, American Novelist

“Expect nothing. Be ready for anything.”

—George Leonard

George Leonard often said that the health of an organism is largely determined by the number of perceived options it has. In other words, the sense that we, as organisms, have choices in our actions and in response to our circumstances; that we have self-agency. Feeling trapped is one of the worst feelings a person can have. To be healthy, we need a sense of spaciousness and freedom. What I'd like to explore here is the role that perception plays in our ability to pivot.

There are many kinds of pivots that we make in life: physical, mental and emotional. Some are simple moves we make when we change our minds about something, and these don’t mean much. Others are life changing. Usually, we don’t pivot by choice. We pivot because something we are thinking or doing is not working the way it used to. We've run up against some kind of obstacle in thought or action. Or perhaps we find that we need a more creative, generative way of being in the world to express our fullest potential, but we feel blocked. Rather than giving up in frustration (although we can), we often have the opportunity to stop and consider what options are available to us. What possibilities do we see? Not many, perhaps. We may feel paralyzed because we don't think we have options. Our life experience conditions us to believe certain things about what we are capable of, and these beliefs can limit our perception of options available to us. Believing that we are capable of acting in a way that will help us achieve our goals is a critical step. Then we can broaden our perception of options in thought or action. We will have the confidence to try something new.

Here is a mundane example. I go to the store because I need oranges to make marmalade, but when I get there I find out they don't have any. What are my options? An easy pivot is to decide to use a different fruit. But if I am wedded to making orange marmalade, then I will have more decisions to make.

So the point is that we can shift, or broaden, our perspective on what options we may have, or even the fact that we have choices at all. Beyond pivoting from orange marmalade to tangerine, a deeper example, on an emotional level, is pivoting from a state of fear to one of hope. ITP provides wonderful tools to embody this shift, such as “the two step.” To try this out, we could start from a position of an experience of fear, and as we pivot and face the opposite direction, we could inhabit a position of hope. Keeping awareness in the hara, or center, we could experience moving between perspectives from this grounded yet flexible state of being. This exercise could be adapted to allow more time to move toward and experience each state without judgment. We can inhabit both perspectives as they are really a continuum that we traverse as we move.

Some pivots, like the above examples, are slow and considered. We have time to think, to choose an alternate response or action, although it may not be easy. Others are radical, catapulting us in an entirely different and unexpected reality, shaking us to the core. We do not choose them, but we can choose how to respond, how to be with the experience. Here, we have moved beyond a pivot. We have been rocketed into a new reality altogether. We have been flipped. [1]

What new avenues are open to us when we shift our perspective? We may not perceive them if we're wedded to our initial idea or stubbornly cling to the way we are or the way things should be. This can be a function of homeostasis -- on an emotional level, our tendency to stay in the safety of the known, to stay in our comfort zone. (On a physical level this dynamic balancing keeps us alive). But sometimes we need to shift, to venture beyond the known. This is how we grow. So there can be resistance, but if we can get past that, we may be able to see what we couldn't see before. Doorways may be open to us that we weren't even aware of.