One thing I have been thinking about lately is capacity. I have realized that subtle labels about my lack of capacity end up erecting invisible barriers to my progress.
The first time I remember encountering this issue was about sixteen years ago. I was embarking on an intense discipline with Workbook practice and I made the pivotal decision that I had tremendous potential in this area. That single decision made a very big difference, reversing my earlier judgment that I lacked the capacity to really do the Course’s spiritual practice well.
So anyway, this past month, this idea came up again a couple of times. In one case, it was in meditation. I feel constantly discouraged by how much my mind wanders. In my meditations, my focus is God. Rather discouragingly, my mind is constantly wandering from that focus, onto things that are far less important than God. I realized that after all these years of abundant wandering, I had formed the idea that I just don’t have the capacity for keeping my focus trained on God.
It seemed like a reasonable conclusion, but suddenly I noticed that it was holding me back. It was keeping me in that state of wandering. If I decide that all I can do is wander, then you can guess what I will do. So I noticed that, actually, I do have the ability to keep my mind focused on something for long periods of time. I’m really not bad at that. And that I have at times kept it focused on God fairly exclusively and steadily, to a satisfying degree. So the capacity is there, I just need to exercise it—that’s all. That has made a difference. My meditations have definitely improved since. I’ve had some nice times of being steadily present to God.
In the other case, it was about concern for others. I’ve been focusing on realizing that another person’s interests and mine are the same, so that all I need do is be concerned about bringing gain to the other, and then I will experience gain as well. Here, too, I realized that I had a really strong label I had put on myself, which said that in this area I have diminished capacity. It is too hard for me to get outside my own skull and really identify with the importance and needs of others. I was just born without that chip in my brain.
Yet in this case, too, I realized that label acted as an invisible wall, which seemed like an objective barrier but was actually just a mental barrier. In this case, too, I looked around and realized that I really do have the capacity to identify with another. I do have that chip. The capacity is there. I just need to exercise it more. That decision, like the one about meditation, also helped. I felt more outside my bubble after that than I have felt in ages.
Finally, this same topic came up in a recent class, where a member shared that he had labeled himself as lacking the capacity to hear the Holy Spirit. He too noticed that this was holding him back, and he too had observed evidence to the contrary.
All of this makes me think that this capacity issue is huge, I expect for all of us. So you might want to ask yourself: What crucial capacity needed for the spiritual path do you tell yourself you are lacking? Then you might want to look inside yourself and see if this label is erecting an invisible wall that arrests your progress but that exists only in your imagination. And finally, look around your life and see if you don’t in fact display this capacity, to some degree or in some related form. And then, as best you can, change that label and replace it with a new one that says you do have this capacity.
