As Without So Within

Opening minds to possibility

My aim with this was to encourage readers to open their minds to possibility, before engaging in some serious and potentially life changing introspection.

Familiar bubbles

If you think about it, most of our waking moments are spent as slaves to routine.

We enter familiar ‘bubbles’ in which we dutifully play out the roles we assign to them, be it working for the next pay cheque, completing household chores, parenting, cooking meals, or polishing our social media presence and profiles.

For many of us, the day-to-day routines, dealing with what life throws at us, are both stressful and tiring. This causes us to retreat into a semi-vegetative state during the little downtime that we do get.

Time to think deeply about life, its meaning, and our unique place in it, is typically not something we allocate priority space to in our busy calendars.

Outrageously spectacular

And yet, as I argued in my book, the Universe teases us to think again by presenting us with a backdrop to our existence that is, at the same time outrageously spectacular, awesomely brilliant and impossibly mysterious.

As above, so below

The ancient Egyptian civilisation had a saying:

“As above, so below”

This captured their fascination with the heavens and the spiritual realms, and appropriately described their mission to recreate the wonders of the night sky here on Earth.

The Nile River was viewed as nature’s representation of the Milky Way and the pyramids were built to represent the celestial bodies of Orion’s Belt and Sirius.

We have a lot to learn from the importance and meaning the ancient Egyptians attributed to the cosmos that envelops Earth.

Today, with the advent of the digital world, social media and personal devices, we have become preoccupied with the world around us rather than the world within.

As without, so within

That despite the compelling signals from our Universe to embrace what I believe to be an even more powerful realisation:

“As without, so within.”

Put differently, I believe we are being invited to marvel at the sublime creative power of the Universe, as it provides the catalyst for our appreciation and realisation that an equally sublime creative power resides within each of us.

Scientists mesmerised

Scientists studying the workings of the Universe are increasingly mesmerised by what they see.

That incredible piece of engineering, the James Webb Space Telescope, has opened their eyes to many mind-blowing possibilities.

Here are just a few:

• The Universe may be a lot older than the 14billion years we have always assumed it to be.
• Or it could be that the big bang theory is misplaced.
• It may be that our Universe is just one of many that exist in a so-called ‘Multiverse’.
• Universes within a Multiverse may be connected, perhaps by black holes.
• In our own galaxy, a light pattern identified on the surface of a planet some 40 trillion kilometres from Earth could be indicative of the presence of an alien civilisation.
• And, closer to home, Mars may have been the home to an ancient advanced civilisation. New evidence of the abundance of an isotope of Xenon in the rocks on the surface of Mars suggests that a nuclear calamity took place many millions of years ago.

New possibilities, without and within

The point is that we are becoming increasingly open to possibilities that would once never have been seriously considered.

And, I believe that this presents an invitation, and the necessary encouragement to us, to awaken to equally amazing possibilities that exist within.

Amazing inner power

When we learn how to strip away the beliefs, values and rules that have been imposed on us, or self-imposed, to limit our capability, and we open our eyes to once unimaginable new possibilities, we start to glimpse the truly amazing inner power that exists in all of us.

This very principle is embodied in life coaching and its power for personal transformation.

I find that so uplifting.

I hope you do too.