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Infinite Potential
However, LifeStream, as an approach to human change, says there are
other possibilities. If we look at the phenomenal range of life forms
on this planet, and if we remember that as far as we know, this
enormous variety all developed from the same bacteria and single cell
creatures, we can see that the process behind the variety has infinite
possibilities. The variety could not have developed if there was not a
potential for its appearance. The shaping influence of environment and
its connection with evolution then played its part in directing or
exploring the potential. Some of the latest findings in regard to the
quantum level of the universe, and therefore of our being, suggest
that at base the universe can be thought of as infinite potential.
If you stir enough salt into a glass of water it becomes a saturated
solution. No more salt will dissolve. The potential for salt to
dissolve has gone. Life on our planet is not a saturated solution. The
infinite potential is still within us and as the substratum of our
universe.
Up until the arrival of self-awareness, any change in human beings
was produced by evolutionary processes interacting with climate,
environment and the ecological situation. With the arrival of
self-awareness we could begin to work with our own inner potential.
Human beings began to develop methods to change their condition
physically, mentally and spiritually. Some cultures, particularly
those of the East, gave enormous importance to this. However, most of
us simply want to improve the quality of our life emotionally, our
relationships, our health, and our creativity. These are all within
the scope of what is possible with LifeStream.
So let us look at how it works, and how it can be done.
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Fundamentally LifeStream is about growth, about human potential.
Particularly it is about the potential still unexpressed within
us. Because it is about growth we can use the analogy of other
things that we see around us that grow. For instance a plant or
tree may attain a certain size, and in that sense its growth has
finished. But then it can produce flowers, fruit and seeds.
However, certain weather or soil conditions might inhibit either
its growth or its ability to produce flowers and seeds. |
Any seed, at its first stage of growth, still holds within it the
potential for fuller growth. My experience fo working with LifeStream
is that every person I have worked with discovers they still have
massiv growth potential, no matter what aget ehy are. The seed they
grew from is not yet fully expressed - in fact may never be.
With ourselves the way we are reared in childhood, the way we are
educated and the society into which we mature, involve many factors
that can inhibit growth beyond what is seen as normal around us. One
of the main factors of human growth is that we copy the behaviour of
those who rear us, and we learn the worldview or ideas of those around
us. But most of the people around us are often quite limited in their
perceptions, their creativity or their ability to reach beyond their
present state of growth.
A dramatic and extreme example of this inhibited growth -- or
perhaps it is better to call it inhibited potential -- can be seen in
those babies reared by animals. Cases of such children have been
recorded all over the world, where babies had been lost and female
animals such as a wolf or bear have succoured the baby. In such cases
the baby never developed into a human being, couldnot walk upright or
speak, but exhibited all the characteristics of the animals they were
reared with. Being 'human' is not innate - it is a learned skill. See:
Feral
Children.
Being Reared a Human is Limiting
Being reared by other human beings therefore suggests we inherit the
inhibiting factors and problems of being human. But because at the
core of our life process an infinite potential dwells, we can open to
and allow further growth. After all, do we wish to perpetuate the
murderous tendencies we see expressed in two world wars and continuing
national and local conflicts; in political, commerical and religious
manipulation?
Sometimes this wisdom at our core, this infinite potential to
change, expresses in very simple ways. Some years ago I was talking
about how our body knows how to heal itself, and a man told me that he
had suffered prolonged back pain. He said that while he was in a bar
he was talking to a friend about his back problem and realised as he
spoke that his body had started making a movement involving his hips.
He continued practising this movement afterwards and his back pain was
healed.
But the possibility of allowing our being to show us how to heal our
physical ills is only one of the possibilities that LifeStream offers.
Another man, K. P., on reading an article I had written about
LifeStream, e-mailed me telling of his own experience. While
meditating he had the urge to move spontaneously. When he allowed this
it led to blissful and rapid movements that lasted for about ten
minutes. He said that, "When I got up I found myself totally
euphoric and able to see in “artistic mode” all the time. I
have never felt better than that day. I was absolutely incandescent
with joy; without really knowing why."
K. P. told me that by the term artistic mode he meant the ability to
see his surroundings in a way that he never previously experienced,
enabling greater artistic expression. The joy he experienced is
something that comes to many people who learn to open to their core
self. Infinite potential means exactly what it says. There is no end
to the wonders we can experience or the person we can become.
What Are You Really Capable of?
Lyle Watson, a scientist and biologist, in researching human
potential for one of his books, was asked by a boy's father in Italy
to observe his four-year old son. In Watson's presence the father
rolled his son an ordinary tennis ball. A little while later the boy
rolled it back. The ball was turned inside out without any cuts or
damage to its surface. Watson then signed his name on another tennis
ball and the boy repeated the change. Later Watson cut open the ball
in front of witnesses, revealing his signature on the inside of the
ball.
Thousands of such cases exist of children or adults doing what are
seen as impossible actions by our present and outdated Newtonian and
dualistic scientific understanding. To do want that child did, the boy
would need to have been able to function in dimensions, or in ways,
completely beyond what many people consider to be the real and only
world of three dimensions in time and space. Fortunately the leading
edge of science now begins to explain how such things may be possible.
They are, in the end, not supernatural or impossible, but involve
aspects of the universe around us that the worldview we were raised in
completely denies. This is why it has been said earlier that being
raised as a human being within a certain worldview is one of the great
limitations inhibiting our potential and growth.
The case of the four-year old boy changing the condition of the
tennis ball is an extreme case, but history and the present-day is
full of people's descriptions of their discovery of, entrance into,
and exploration of, dimensions of experience that are beyond everyday
three-dimensional sensory based life. This is often named the
spiritual or psychic world. I am simply calling it human potential,
and am not claiming we will all be able to turn tennis balls inside
out by the end of the year.
What I do see in connection to LifeStream is that there is MORE in
your nature that you can unfold when you learn to allow the streaming
life that grew you from a seed to continue its unfolding. There is
MORE when you learn to consciously cooperate with the mystery of life
in you. Mostly we tend to block or interfere with its attempts to heal
and unfold us.
There are many ways of doing this, some more profoundly affective
than others. Here are some pointers.
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Life is a mystery that as a species we try and try to learn the
secrets of, but so far often fail to fully understand. You are an
expression of that mystery. Therefore, although you may not
intellectually understand the depths of what you are,
nevertheless, you are that mystery discovering itself. By allowing
the depths of your being to unfold, you move closer to knowing the
mystery you are. You can take the first steps toward this by
recognising that any beliefs you have about what you are, are
incomplete. You do not know the full nature of your body, mind, or
the universe, and therefore you do not know, even if you are very
well educated, the full extent of what you are. To drop such
preconceptions, opinions and beliefs is the first step. To stand
before oneself naked of preconceptions is to begin the process of
opening to your potential.
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We can allow life to unfold us by recognising that our conscious
identity has the tendency to believe it knows what it needs, what
is true, and what is false. However, life on this planet has been
around for millions of years and has a lot of unconscious
information about how we are formed and what we are capable of.
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Life expresses as movement, feelings, sexual drive, awareness,
along with the other fundamentals such as absorption and
excretion, self regulation (homeostasis), breathing and ability to
respond. Life in the form of animals, without any self awareness,
expresses in these ways. Recognising this shows us that it doesn't
take conscious will and self awareness to exist and live within
the environment. In fact a fundamental of LifeStream is that to
remain healthy physically and psychologically we need to let go of
our conscious personality regularly and allow Life to move us in
its own spontaneous way. When we sleep our conscious needs and
desires are surrendered. But Life still maintains all our systems
without our conscious help. At that time it creates dreams during
which we move and even speak spontaneously without conscious
volition. It is this deep core of self we need to open to often,
allowing our infinite potential to express.
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