I am a Scorpio Rising. Mercury, which has been in retrograde, is now no longer, and its in Scorpio. We just had a New Moon Solar Eclipse in Scorpio as well, and for whatever you think that's worth, that's quite a heavy alignment for communication. And also for understanding things and being able to untangle and decipher and learn and listen.
So that's probably why I am getting these flights of reverie and heavy thought this evening, about the Great Wide Whatever. Heavy musing, cue hippie sitar music.
I started thinking about possibilities, versus probabilities. My favorite thing in the world is probably Quantum Physics, and that is largely a theoretical science. Black holes and anti-matter and multiverses and the Sloan Wall and other creepy, yawning, black, sonorous, massive, invisible things. But you are dealing in probabilities alot of the time here. You are saying, "if i extrapolate backwards mathematically, then the big bang would have happened this way". this is a probability, and not a certainty. its based on physical laws and likelihoods and there is that word again, probabilities. It PROBABLY happened that way. It most likely did. When it rains, and you go outside, even if it isn't raining anymore you see a wet ground and you can say, "it PROBABLY rained", and people would think you were an idiot. Because there is no PROBABLY about it. its a given that it rained.
If you writ this larger, you can probably start to see what i did, that probabilities are what most people live their lives on, and not its more ephemeral and fun counterpart, possibilities.
think about it.
you get in your car knowing that you are probably going to get to work or the supermarket or the daycare or wherever. you are on a track of probability. you turn the stove on and put a pot on to boil and you know that probably when i come back ten minutes from now the water will be boiling. and ad infinitum, on through the day, through your life.
the problem with this is is that it puts us in a mindset that deals only with probabilities, with what we like to call certainties, and which certainly do not exist. we take the probabilities in our life and we try and graft that way of thinking onto what should be a separate mindset, that of possibility. we think that we should only deal with what we have some kind of legitimate reason to believe could probably happen. we don't have a lot of time to daydream, to think out side of the box (i loathe that term, is got all these corporate connotations for me, but i digress).
but this- this is the thing that i am realizing sets us up for a life wherein we do not allow ourselves to truly absorb and understand the fact that there are NO certainties (barring one), which is actually really good news. of course by certainty i mean, something that is going to happen every time the exact same way, or that every effort and action you make will have a reaction that is reciprocal. we all know that is not true. my physics class taught me that- that you can work your ass off and still get nowhere. and by nowhere i mean "not where you thought-and farther behind than you hoped". the only certainty in this life is death. everything in between is totally up for grabs.
not having certainty is something that the anxiety-prone classically struggle with the most. you can start worrying that a piano is gonna drop on your head out of a clear blue sky, or equally fantastic and improbable things. its funny in a way that the anxious seem to realize that there are no certainties and that this sends them into a negative headspace when really, its pretty amazing WHAT could happen, but they never feel good about that. if anything can happen, then certainly, statistically, some of that is gonna be great. its the old adage, the bad news is that there are no certainties. the GOOD news is that there are no certainties. but they only seem to be able to deal with the negatives. THAT makes sense to them. its like a gravitational pull on your psyche- naturally everything must go downward. there is really no reason to not be as transported by the glory of possibility as opposed to your fears of what could happen. think about it.
what it is about certainties that make us feel so safe? why is it that we are so prone to building foundations on shifting ground, literally and figuratively? we have to have security, some kind of security. i've always noticed that gypsy types, travelers, seem to have an internal core that gives them some sort of home inside themselves. they are at home everywhere.
but again i digress.
what i am leading to here is that we take great chances on only allowing ourselves to see what is probable. what is probably going to happen. it brings us comfort. it also boxes us in, and denies us other realities. we get caught in the workaday world, and think that the entire other side of things, that which is possible, is actually only what is probable.
when i think about it really alot rests on this- its like a yin and yang, good and evil, black and white thing. probabilities and possibilities. they are two entirely different forces acting on us all the time.
if you jump off a building, there is a high probability that you are going to hit the ground. but the possibility exists that a freak wind stream could come along and bear you up to land on the next roof unscathed. babies are tossed about by tornados and are planted bottom down in a field, just fine. the probability of that baby dying is quite high. but the possibility always existed that it would NOT die, that it would it be just fine.
possibility runs both ways, of course. you could put water on to boil and take a shower and come out and your entire electrical system has gone haywire and the wiring in your wall is on fire. you can't PLAN for possibility. it just is, right there, all the time. its the multiverse in action- the innumerable possible worlds that probably do exist, but we can only imagine the possibilities (the word probably used on purpose here).
if you were to really absorb that concept, its pretty heavy to realize the ramifications. the power of positive thinking and the law of attraction is something i have been studying for a while now. i have been in a sort of mental bootcamp for the past several months, especially, trying to root out and unlearn a lifetime of inherited and naturally rotten thinking. i am still in the process. i am sure i always will be. to some degree.
but really taking a moment to realize that staking all your claims on the probable might lead you away from fantastical happenings.
i understand that not everyone is like me or most of my friends. most people are content to follow, to not question, to raise their kids and just sort of get on with it without alot of pondering. i always marveled how many people in the world were content to work the same job for years without blowing their brains out. most people don't need the level of stimuli and change that i need. not everyone would be happy cozying up to absolute possibility. this isn't a putdown. some people don't ask why. people that do are sometimes tortured by it. its not always fun and its not always productive. its sometimes a great pain in the ass.
but i think that learning to embrace that is something that must be an essential part of any life-affirming practice. getting out from under only what is probable is akin to realizing that your past does NOT have to dictate what your future is. that just because something happened one way in the past doesn't mean that its going to happen that way in the future. getting out of the prison of probability sometime and allowing yourself to graze in the land of possibility helps you ideate what exactly you want- and don't want- from this life.
that is a really heavy realization, no?
