Constricting

I always thought that to expand your consciousness was the way to go. Expansion. Back in the sixties, when I was growing up, “expand your mind” was not only a great slogan for doing hallucinogenic drugs, but also carried a positive onus for releasing yourself from those burdensome limiting beliefs that bind us to our past and weigh us down, restricting us from succeeding.

Now I am rethinking all this. Expansion only occurs when constriction has set the pace. Our DNA is what determines us. It starts from a constricted source. The great oak tree begins from a constricted source… an acorn. All seeds are the constricted beginnings of something expansive. An explosion begins with an explosive, a constricted mass. A great invention begins with a constriction… an idea.

In the reverse, we cannot begin to formulate a business plan without starting with all the considerations, like expenses, and funneling them into a number which will encompass all the costs and take into account what the net requirements are. The final number will be what we need to generate in order to make the whole thing work. Working backwards is a form of constricting.

If you plan to leap over a puddle of water, you must first crouch down and tense your leg muscles into a constriction. Only then can you launch yourself and unconstrict your muscles to carry you over the puddle.

You see, it’s all about first constricting in order to be released.

It turns out that in order to expand your consciousness, your mind, you first have to constrict your thinking (focus on what matters), by looking deep into yourself, and only then can you release what you find into a world waiting for it to emerge. But you must be careful. Make sure that before you start swimming around inside your own head that you don’t end up drowning in a glass of water.

I could go on and on, but I find that sometimes when a thought process is constricted, it allows the reader to expand on it him/herself.

Sam Green