WHAT POTENTIALITIES!

Imagine holding a tiny little seed in the palm of your hand. Then with the other hand, you turn it over and over with your fingers, examining it and playing with it. And all the while in your playful examination, you wonder, really wonder—what potentialities are within this seed? What will it become? When the potentials here are actualized, what will emerge and will it produce?

That tiny little seed, if planted in rich dark earth and watered and given the right amount of sunshine, that seed could produce an abundant stock of corn with many, many ears of corn which could then be planted so as to create a whole field of corn which those kernels could create a vast field and then fields of fields, fields covering an entire county, state, country, or even continent. Such potentialities!

Or if it were another seed, it could grow into a vast redwood tree spanning centuries of time and reaching 100 feet or 200 or even 300 feet into the sky. Such potentialities in a seed. The Redwood tree and forest is there inside that seed—not actually, but in potentiality.

The potentialities in the small seed becomes so much in actuality if it is just given a chance. It only needs some good conditions for it to become all that it can become. And if that’s amazing, how much more amazing is your brain with its 100 billion neurons? Because from those 100 billion neurons there’s a combinatory possibility of 100 trillion connections. So the potential here isn’t completely determined as with the potential in the plant seed. In the human seed of a fertilized seed that gives birth to the human brain there is an incredible exponential power if only it is given a chance with some good conditions.

With human potentiality, it too needs good conditions to support its growth into full development. It needs to be unleashed from every limiting factor that holds it back. It needs to be liberated for its full self-actualization.

Human potentiality goes far beyond the potentiality of basic life forms also because of self- reflexivity. This means that you and I can participate and direct that development. We can play an intimate and intentional role in guiding and influence how we unfold and actualize our hidden potentials. And we do that to a great extent with our beliefs, understandings, metaphors, identities, intentions, language, and all of the other facets of our meta-levels (or meta-states).

What is possible for human kind? What potentialities are within the range of our trillion neuron connections in our brain? If it is possible for some humans to use their trillion neurons to create new paradigms, new models for science, physics, chemistry, electronics, psychology, music, art, etc., then these are the things within human potentiality. And what else is there? And how much of your potential do you think you’ve unleashed so far? How much more potential is there to find, liberate, and mobilize?

These are the questions for the psychologically healthy. These are the most basic existential human questions and they are the questions that, if you welcome and embrace them, will launch you on your adventure of self-actualization. Yes they are scary questions. And yes, there is no final answer to these questions. And yes, yes, you have to get used to embracing ambiguity, non- closure, and the not-knowingness of the adventure. Yet if you do, then you begin to awaken to incredible possibilities and the one and only pathway to genuine human happiness.

“The one and only pathway to genuine human happiness?” Yes, I’m sure that sounds like a right-wing statement, but I’m not talking about a particular technique, philosophy, belief, religion, school, etc., I’m describing the human experience, the self-actualizing experience. The one and only way to happiness, joy, and fulfillment is the pathway to be and become your potentiality. It is to self-actualize. You’ll never get there, but that’s not the point. The point is the pathway. The point is the journey itself. And this is the path least taken.

More common and more often we take the path of stopping the adventure. We want to know “for sure,” and so we settle for simplistic black-and-white answers. For pseudo-simplistic answers that do not really answer things, but make us feel comfort, “right,” sure, and confident. What then results? We stop learning, stop growing, stop actualizing. It feels safer. It feels more pleasant. But that’s just the limitation of the small perspective we allow ourselves.

If you’re reading this, you probably don’t play that game and don’t operate from that frame. You have tasted the delights and the ecstasy of peak experiences and know that the human adventure is one of continually actualizing to the next level. You know that your capacities clamor to be used and won’t cease clamoring until they are used well, and that when you use them well and actualize your best with them, new capacities then emerge and so the process starts over again, and again, and again.

Ah, such potentialities! To your highest potentials of value sand visions and to your best performances along the way.

We now have 3 Workshops that are designed for your self-actualization: APG: Accessing Personal Genius The Ultimate Self-Actualization Workshop: Construct, Crucible, and Zone Creativity and Innovation: Unleashing Your Creative Potentials