Becoming Emerging Potentials

Masks

You think you know who you are. You don’t. You think you are a self with a name, an identity, and a set of beliefs. But aren’t all of these accidents of birth and culture? Is it not true that you would have another name, gender, identity, and set of beliefs if you had been born elsewhere, to a different set of parents? Do appeals to destiny, fate, or karma really explain the comfortable delusion you maintain that you are an autonomous, independent, permanent identity?

What we experience in life are processes, not things. “Things” are static distinctions pulled out of the flux of life and defined as real by language and cognition. They are useful tools that we need to talk, think, and communicate. But does that mean that they refer to anything that is real?

IDL encourages you to consider the possibility that you are not a singular soul or self or Self, but multiple emerging potentials. The one that is the forefront at the moment is who you think you are. Most of the time these are merely routine socially-conditioned roles: partner, parent, worker, cook, driver, sleeper, emailer, internet surfer. But there are many more, and some of them are vital to your development. If you are aware of them, you grow faster. If you ignore them they are likely to manifest as “wake-up calls,” first as dreams or waking disturbances at work or in your relationships, then, if ignored, as nightmares and major life conflicts. If they continue to be ignored they can show up as the externalization of nightmares: accidents, major life disruptions, addictions, disease, and death. Of course these things can be due to other causes as well, but ignorance of your greater identity invites them.

IDL invites you to get to know some of the other facets of the infinite diamond of your multi-perspectival self and to learn to both experience and think of yourself as one of many emerging potentials that is not permanent but forever in transformation.  Don’t take our word for it; we not only encourage but insist on your skepticism and doubt, because it is only through personal evaluation that this belief can turn into a living, valid experience of who you are.

IDL will prove to your own satisfaction that who you think you are is both much more and much less than who you think. When you become a dream character, the personification of a life issue, or a person or object from your waking life, you have the opportunity to step out of yourself and view your life from entirely different perspectives. Some of these perspectives are transformational and personify your potentials. You can feel their transformational nature. They may be full of fearless confidence, compassion, wisdom, acceptance, peace, objectivity, or other core qualities of life. Such emerging potentials first become inner guides, totems, or muses; in time they are incorporated into an expanded sense of who you are.

Emerging potentials will continue to exist as guides for you to greater healing, balancing, and transformation. Because they are parts of you, they will never leave you, like people do.  Because they are more than you, they will challenge you to be more and show you the next best steps for you to take in your awakening. Unlike other people, and even yourself, you can’t lie to emerging potentials, because they know you better than you know yourself. Consequently, they afford you a priceless opportunity to build intimate, trusting, I-Thou relationships without pretense, drama, pettiness, or fear. When you make friends with emerging potentials you will never be lonely again. More importantly, you will build yourself a supportive, nurturing culture that will guide you through the thicket of good intentions of your parents, family, parters, friends, bosses, social, and spiritual groups. Your relationships with your emerging potentials are built on intimacy and authenticity. They are manifestations of the “we” aspect of divinity and create a devotional or “I-Thou” relationship with yourself, others, and with the entirety of life.

Why should anyone listen to an imaginary table, carpet, or cartoon character?  The answer is simple:  Unlike you and me, life does not differentiate between the real and the imaginary, good and evil, the sacred and the profane. It uses anything and everything as a wake-up call to allow you to access the emerging potentials that are exactly right for you right now, at this point in your life. When an emerging potential represents a perspective you hold that is stuck, like an addiction, depression, anxiety, or self-criticism, then you will learn important information about how you are stuck and concrete steps to take to get unstuck.  If your interviewed emerging potential scores higher than you do in qualities you seek, such as confidence, compassion, wisdom. acceptance, inner peace, and witnessing, don’t you think it would be wise to listen to what it has to say to you?

You are an emerging potential for those around you and for the entire world. We all need you and your unique gifts and capabilities. If you do not free yourself so you can give them, we all suffer that loss. IDL can help you to sing your song, speak your truth, and make a real difference for your family, friends, work, and the entire world.

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For more information, contact joseph.dillard@gmail.com. While IDL does not accept advertising or sponsored postings, we gratefully accept donations of your time, expertise, or financial support.