The Power of Understanding Our Limitations

Recently my husband and I hosted a workshop on nourishment. I expected it to center around food, the Mother archetype, processing information and anything else we need to take in from outside of us. What came up for me unexpectedly during the inner work was limitations. Interestingly, it fell on the evening of a new moon, a time of quiet, inward attention. My first thought was that a full moon would be more appropriate for a nourishment workshop. I imagined nourishment like bathing in the clear, abundant illumination of the moon, a glowing circle with no beginning and no end to its definition. But as we sat together under the cool dark of the new moon, I realized true nourishment isn’t about external excess. Nourishment is the inner process of parsing what can be held. It’s all the little metabolic systems breaking things down and distributing them in the dark. Sometimes it’s the integration of healing or insight that trickles slowly into the newly open spaces. It’s not access to exorbitance. It’s the allotment of time for each step of a process, the amount that can be extracted from the present material and moved into the places it’s best used and the energy it takes for that to happen. True nourishment is a process of ideal selection and usage based on the limitations at play. 

Spirituality is always informed by the culture it was born of, despite how many schools of divine thought present themselves as universal truth. After its birth the divinity of the time and the ideals of the culture reinforce one another in decided loops. The New Age beginnings can be credited back to the early 1800s with the New Thought movement. It didn’t become visible to the mainstream until the 1960s when Eastern teachers and philosophies were spotlighted in pop culture by many famous musicians - and quickly westernized to fit the cultural framing and mindset of the Americans and Europeans digesting it. At the same time the United States was still soaring economically in the post war boom and a significant chunk of the post war generation was challenging cultural barriers of many kinds. I imagine, for some, there must have been a sense of limitlessness or that the only restrictions in the world were the ones imposed by the cultures of old. Wealth and social power have been associated with spiritual power in many spiritual traditions in written history. The New Age movement easily adopted this principle. It became a central focus of the New Age to believe in “manifesting” material goods and that there was infinite abundance available to those spiritually adept enough to will it into their lives or one could be rewarded by a divine source that found favor with them. These beliefs have been repackaged and remarketed repeatedly up until the present day. For many people it has been accepted as universal truth because it was or was close to the lived or perceived experience for so many, especially Americans, over the second half of the 20th century. Disincarnate beings joined in on the party, happy to receive the attention garnered when they and their channels told us “You are God, You are everything, You are infinite, Abundance is infinite, Limitations are only in your mind”. 

Maybe the focus on our individual divinity, unbridled material potential and general boundlessness is all true or mostly true or true enough in a moment of time, in a specific location and for a specific group of people within that location. There’s value to the relative, fluid truth of times and places. It helps motivate us to change and especially when widespread change is necessary, it motivates groups to change. We love the idea of Truth, that there’s something that will always be correct, will always be the answer, like the secret information from which we will be able to transcend any situation. But most truths are relative to their context and like all attachments we form, eventually they find themselves out of context and can stunt, stop, or poison our spiritual development and our lives.

In the same conversation about the new moon on our nourishment day, a present astrologer mentioned that Kali is also considered to be the new moon. At that moment I saw Kali’s lightning in the darkness and remembered the power in the hidden processes: power in waiting, power in resting, power in turning inward without clarity, power in invisibility, power within lacking and power within limitation. So many modern people were stripped of this power by being made to think that there are infinite choices, infinite opportunities and infinite time. Anything short of this can appear to be personal failure. This has never been true, but easier for certain populations to believe at different times. We’re entering a time where more limitations are visible, more patience is required, more skillful assessment of our and our community’s resources are needed for our survival. Our energy and attention is in high demand by media outlets, advertisers, political groups, ideological groups as well as our loved ones, personal passions and responsibilities. Choosing the parts of this world we’d like to illuminate, knowing that there is a finite amount that we can do, is an act of power. Choosing to explore what’s most important to us so we know the direction we’d like our attention to take is an act of power. Choosing to say no either outloud or in action to the things we cannot comfortably fit on our plate is an act of power. Seeing our plate, infinite in shape but limited in surface area and deciding what we want to strive to put on it is an act of power. Sharing with intent to those who can take and use what we’re offering is an act of power. 

For the generations that preceded the newest ones, finding power through freedom and openness and a sense of potential yielded many gifts we currently enjoy. Now we need to begin finding power in other places as we enter a world that’s changed and changing rapidly. The ideology of infinite growth has failed us. We’re experiencing the consequences of pollution and destruction of the natural environment. There is no more mainstream culture to relate to or draw  from. The internet has allowed us more information and opportunities but with them has come increasing demands and social navigations. People are emotionally burdened and empowered by ideological groups to express their burden as unkindness. The world has always been complex, but we’re carrying far too much of that complexity as individuals now. It’s time to look at the excess on our plates and acknowledge that even if a bigger part of us is infinite, our lives are not. We can’t have it all, and we don’t actually want to have it all. The emerging power in this realization isn’t the ability to gain, but the ability to choose. 

Now and in all transitional, difficult or demanding times we can still retreat into the small things that are sacred to us. We can still enjoy the blooming of flower fields, the ripening fruit of old citrus trees and the full moon time while addressing what’s going on beneath the earth in its quiet and distinctive magnificence. We can enjoy our bright seasons, prepare for our cold ones and accept the unexpected storms in joy and clarity. For those of us who punish ourselves for not doing enough, being enough and having enough, it’s time to retrain our thinking. 

May we all learn to celebrate doing within our boundaries, being what we are and feeling satiated with what we have. May we have the courage to make choices that might be wrong and the trust in ourselves that we can move through our mistakes. May we grow at our own pace, comfortably and patiently. May we shed the truths that don’t nourish us, our lives or our communities. I look forward to the peaceful freedom and the tranquil power in this stream. 

*I wrote this before the war against Ukraine began. First I’d like to mention that this advice isn’t for those having their lives actively stripped from them. I strongly believe it’s never for anyone else to decide how to deal with their personal hardships or encourage positivity in survival situations. Survive however you must, coping with immediate trauma is a natural or previously learned reaction that doesn’t need direction. 

Second, I’d like to share a thought I’ve had for a long time about the generation of people currently affected or considering the potential effects of this war. I’ve thought for a long time that if the world war generation could really see us, not through the eyes of their children and the media intentionally dividing us, but really see their grandchildren and great-grandchildren, that they would be proud. I know many people who have cultivated practical skills; gardening, foraging, making medicinals, cooking from scratch, preserving food, making clothing, making tools, making art, cultivating emotional stability, empathy and spirituality, navigating ways to use modern tech to assist others while working extremely hard to care for themselves and their families and communities. Whatever the future holds in the short or long term I find it extremely hopeful looking at those around me. If anyone is expecting us to be rattled they haven’t been paying attention. And last -unrelated but worth mentioning in all these conversations - is to remember those who have suffered through unjust wars that have not received the support, media coverage, visibility, well wishes and empathy present in the conversations about Ukraine. May it serve as an example of how we can react to conflict in the future.