On Being Limitless

(I write a weekly “Pawsitivity Post” for Higher Running on social media and while I’ve written about being limitless before, https://adogandhergirl.com/2024/07/23/limitless-2/, I thought this was a good reminder… and I don’t know about you, but sometimes I need SEVERAL reminders before something actually sinks in.)

“You ARE limitless.” -Coach Pacer

Pawsitivity Tip Friday!

Coach Pacer is fast, but she’s probably not the fastest dog out there, nor the most talented (she knows other ways to get treats). It doesn’t matter to her, because she knows those things don’t define her. She’s not weighed down by stories of low self-worth because of what she can and cannot do. She knows that her mom, Coach Ray, could not love her anymore than she already, infinitely does. Truly, her energy is boundless, going beyond physical limitations and mental beliefs. And that is what makes Coach Pacer limitless!

As energetic beings inhabiting physical bodies, there are physical limits. Many of us will not run a sub 4 min mile or be the second person to run a sub 2hr marathon, no matter how hard we try (pushing and forcing is usually fear-based). Those aren’t actually limits. First, we could imagine ourselves running those times, and our imaginations are great sources of play. Second, and more importantly, the only thing that actually weighs us down and holds us back from our true potential are the stories we tell ourselves about our worth based on our physical and mental abilities. Once we can unravel ourselves from those stories (which does take work) and we can accept and love the bodies we’ve been given, we become free. We realize we ARE limitless.

Limitless

I have spent most of my life trying to figure out how and what it means to be limitless.  Despite hours and hours of hard work as a pre-teen and teenager, I made little progress in increasing my vertical jump, let alone dunking a basketball at the height of (almost) 5’4″.  Actually, I most likely stunted my growth by using an eating disorder as a coping mechanism.  Stil limited, I thought.  Currently, I would like more than anything to run 20 miles in the mountains with my dog, yet that sounds both painful for my Achilles and a little more than Pacer would want to do.  I have not learned how to magically heal my Achilles or prevent Pacer from getting physically older, despite doing my best to pretend otherwise. 

Still limited, so I think. Helpless, so I feel.  

What am I doing wrong? Are we not supposed to be able to do whatever we set our minds to?  

“You’re not living up to your potential.”, fear says.

But what about when our minds are not aligned with our hearts?

No one told me as a kid that when I practiced basketball, I was doing it wrong…  I was working instead of playing. Because if I’m playing and in joy, then the physical doesn’t really matter.  The outcome, the achievement, the goal doesn’t really matter. If we withhold love from ourselves because of physical limitations, then we are bound by them. Yet when we allow joy to rise, we transcend them.

You see, the physical body and our physical reality may have limits, but the soul does not.  

When we perceive physical limits as true limits and let ourselves become upset by them, we cage our soul and prevent ourselves from experiencing the bliss of the present moment. 

What I have come to realize in my wanderings is that the energetic world is more real than the physical world that we, at some point, chose to temporarily come down to visit.  Not only gravity but dense emotions weigh us down, while our soul always wants to rise. And while it is our emotions that point us to truth and give us this beautiful shared experience of this thing we call humanity, it is expressed emotions in the absence of mental stories that bring us into connection and frees our soul to move into higher states of peace and joy. This is the integration of the human and divine experience. 

So, it is when our souls rise above physical limitations, when we choose to be happy despite the situation or circumstance and earthly reality, that we are no longer trapped by the wants of the mind and are truly free to experience the limitless of our true selves. 

In summary, to transcend and become limitless is not to overcome physical barriers and the density of human emotions but to allow our energy to rise above it.  To feel joy in the midst of failure, to love after loss. The body may be ruled by gravity but the soul is free to wander and expand. (You are not your body, you are not your mind.) All that matters is that you are enjoying the process, the journey- the adventure of the human experience. 

It is only in that transcended state of joy that one may actualize potential, for it is when we understand the laws of energy that we can bend the rules of gravity.