The other day I was watching a video of Thomas DeLauer speaking at the 2022 Crossfit games about metabolic flexibility, and he mentioned that he does better when he puts himself in a box (referring to diet), and I agree. I abstained from meat for about 23 years (not anymore, though), and I can attest to the fact that when I am given too much freedom, it is too easy to deviate, and I will keep giving myself inches and taking miles. One approach that makes things easier is to just put myself in a box.
Now, the infinite does not like to be limited and "put in a box". Limitation is the one thing in which the omnipotent, omniscient and omnipresent lacks. Yet, when we put ourselves in a box, limiting ourselves, then we know liberation and can come to know the infinite. Endless possibilities emerge when that pressure of limitation is imposed. Freedom is sometimes your cage! Having too many choices is what, ironically, can debilitate us. How many times have you procrastinated when you thought you had "all the time in the world"? By setting limitations on ourselves, we actually can become more creative and produce more. It's a starting place that springboards us into a space of creation. Chess has rules. Music has rules. Want to write a screenplay? Give yourself a person in a place doing a thing. Plug that into a 3-act structure. Rules make a good story. When I took filmmaking and screenwriting classes in college, they told us to give your character limitations. Put your character in a box and let them try to get out of it (they have the key).
We must realize that we have the key and we shouldn't struggle to get out of the box, focusing on the bars themselves. Too often we get depressed or anxious about the idea of the restriction and of the feeling of being limited or denied. What if we looked at this restriction as a way to really shine and become better? What if we could become closer to God--the ultimate liberated infinite--by allowing ourselves to realize that we are not liberated and infinite? (Negative Theology--See **ETA below.)
In one of his older talks, Jordan Peterson discusses a powerful metaphysical idea; how "being" is not possible without limitation. He goes on to say, "So what's the price you pay for being? The price you pay for being is limitation and the price you pay for limitation is suffering. So the price you pay for being is suffering."
Maybe to know God, the infinite which lacks limitation, we must be in a place of limitation and suffering. How can we intentionally limit ourselves (even beyond the limitedness of our being, itself) to become closer to knowing our own beingness, and the heart of our limitless God?
**ETA: I was just reminded of something. The Cloud of Unknowing, which influenced Christian mystic and theologian Julian of Norwich, is used not to figure God out, but to strip away all the falsities so that one could become One with the Father. It's kind of like negative space--knowing that which is NOT reveals what IS. We are not God and we are limited (the nature of beingness). Therefore, we know what God is not. Through Apophatic prayer, we are receptive in stillness and silence without imaginings, and we may come to know God's ISness through our beingness of NOT being God.
"...We must recall that "between Creator and creature, no similitude can be expressed without implying an even greater dissimilitude"; and that "concerning God, we cannot grasp what he is, but only what he is not, and how other beings stand in relation to him."
--Catechism of the Catholic Church (Ch. 1 Paragraph 43)
No comments:
Post a Comment