We all feel the ache - ignore at your peril!
I’ve been intrigued by a phrase I heard in a great discussion ‘Cultural Coherence’ with Philip Carr Gomm and Dr Gwilym Morus Baird, which you can listen to here.
The phrase is ‘the ache of potential’, which I have always identified as ‘the yearning’. Do you share it, I wonder? - the ache for some indefinable ‘other’ which is real and ever-present. If you’re reading this, the chances are that you do.
Feelings around the fascination of ‘the ache’.
For me, this ache or yearning is the call of spirit whispering constantly to remind us of its needs: for quiet, for space and room to open into a consciousness that expands and connects us. Philip made a good point; the ‘ache’ is not sad. We identify aches as problems to be solved: but not this one! It is nothing to do with personal circumstances or where we are in our lives. It is a profound but not unhappy awareness of something missing. And the reason is that, as human potential is limitless, we can never fully explore all its possibilities in this incarnation. If we take one bright road, we choosing not to go down another.
‘The road not taken’ - always a source of sweet regret!
And we will always feel the untapped ache of potential, the urge to extend ourselves a little more. And so we should.
So how do we cope with living with this intriguing ache, this yearning?
Befriend it
Embrace it
Tell it you appreciate it keeping you aware of the needs of spirit.
Use your meditative time to allow a passionate yearning. Imagine it filling you in a way that increases your feeling of connecting and freedom. You are connecting to the abiding quality of the world and life: mystery.
All those opportunities! All that talent! All those whispers of potential from Spirit and ways of expressing ourselves! Possibilities that are endless and miraculous. And every day begins a bright new season in which to explore them. Who wouldn’t be thankful?
And now the practical bit: how to make a story with your ache?
We do that by making a relationship with anything/one else.
Start talking to it
Include it in that inner dialogue that, misdirected, can drive us nuts!
You know the tricksy internal dialogue, feeding an internal nagging anxiety, a poor self-image and self-sabotage. How often have you come away from a wonderful time, only to enter a ‘post mortem’ phase of self-doubt? ‘Did I talk too much? Was the thing I said silly? How would I rephrase it, what should I have said/done/ How should I have acted?’
So what happened to the wonderful time during all these pointless internal conversations? The feeling of it is diluted, or disappears. Why can we not just let things be what they were? Because of the logical brain, the critic, in full flow, drowning out that ache of potential; the whispers of spirit.
It does a similar hatchet job when we organise our practical lives. I know a person who had employed someone who nearly ruined their business. There was a panel of four interviewers. All intuitively felt the person was wrong, but no one mentioned that: she scored highest on their tick-box criteria check. She got the job, and it was a disaster that took six months to unfold and years to put right. What a sad little story!
Logical - not always right, in spite of the tick!
Logic and common sense are both valuable tools, but they are not the boss of the nuanced, exquisitely complex organisms that we are. They want certainty; they want answers. We straddle dimensions so we need to trust our subtler senses in conjunction with common sense. If we give an equal voice to our intuitions, we will be entering a celebration of the mystery that makes us permanently, deliciously uncertain. We will learn to relish the ache of potential that reminds us of our incredible stature.
Let’s put these subtler tools first for a change. Let’s try it this way:
Before considering practicalities, before devising a route to a goal, make the story with your more reflective self
Relax, breathe, feel that you’re connecting to a deeper place in yourself
Allow that yearning for spirit to emerge
Let it fill you and enjoy the feeling; it often comes with a sense of relaxing barriers and starting to feel more fluid
From that expanded sense, gently consider and problem, topic or decision about the future.
Be playful, be objective
Most importantly, see what thoughts make your heart sing
Is what you’re considering harmonious with a feeling that all is right, that you are enough within yourself, that your spirit has infinite potential?
‘Thinking’ firstly with the senses and feeling turns our usual process on its head. Rather like the image of the Hanged Man in the tarot, it gives us a whole new perspective. It removes our usual obsession about outcomes from the planning process. How often have you worried yourself into insomnia and anxiety over a problem? Has it helped? It never has with me.
Different perspective - and looking pretty relaxed and peaceful!
Giving space and time to experience ‘the ache of potential’ allows us commune with the part of ourselves that maybe should be running the show; the part that gently encourages to expand into the rich, fully-rounded person we can be.
When we get a clear sense of the reality that we are whole, not lacking, the pressure we always thought was just a part of life seems to lift off. We trust that our judgments will be more in tune with the tides of life; we will learn to ignore that inner critic who does us so much damage. Events will seem to flow and synchronicities may occur, indicating that we are on the right lines.
Why and how does this happen? Because we have combined two halves of our essential self that – certainly in the West – major religions have tried to split. Body and spirit: not in opposition, but complementing each other. No mortifying one to elevate the other and no judgment on the merits or demerits of either. They are intrinsically entwined and the sooner we start giving the subtler form more agency in our lives, the more magical it will become.
Half a lifetime faithfully following the maxim of formal education – that the dictates of logic are the ultimate problem-solver. What a pity!
I’m proud now to have fallen in love with being incomplete and uncertain, to ache with potential joyously in this adventure called living, and see where that takes me.
I can only say that it’s working for me; every day. So what do you think? Worth a try?