“Embracing a limitation could actually drive creativity. Learning to be creative within the confines of our limitations is the best hope we have to transform ourselves and, collectively, transform our world.”
Phil Hansen
This thought belongs to an artist who, before graduating from art school, developed a shake in his hand, caused by permanent nerve damage. With it, his vision of a future career in art – at least the way he had imagined it – collapsed. When he visited a neurologist, the doctor told him, “Why don’t you just embrace the shake?” And Phil Hansen did exactly that – he went on building a highly successful career in art, albeit in a very unorthodox way. He later reflected: “Looking at limitation as a source of creativity changed the course of my life.” How this shift transformed his life is best heard told by him rather than explained (see the video below), because his work consists of artworks that astonish with an imagination inspired by nothing other than limitation itself.
“Limitations may be the most unlikely of places to harness creativity, but perhaps one of the best ways to get ourselves out of ruts, rethink categories and challenge accepted norms. And instead of telling each other to seize the day, maybe we cam remind ourselves every day to seize the limitation.”
Phil Hansen
On the surface, limitation appears as an obstruction, a deprivation, a constraint, something unwelcome. Yet a deeper look reveals it to be the very condition that makes creativity possible. Since a limitation’s essential function is to confer form. Phil Hansen calls this “creativity within limitation”; I would call it “creativity that transcends limitation,” the truest celebration of the human spirit and the highest expression of freedom. According to esoteric teachings, this is the very meaning of the Spirit’s incarnation in matter. The human body is the densest form of Spirit and therefore the most constrained; yet precisely for this reason it holds the greatest creative potential for the eternal and infinite Spirit. It seems that the greater the limitation, the greater the possibilities for creativity.
When it comes to forging our own lives, the work of art we are shaping is our “unique and inimitable individual Self” which is the ultimate purpose of life in a human body. The alchemists called this the philosopher’s stone. And so, the alchemical recipe for transforming the resistance to life’s inevitable limitations into the gold of individuality is simple: it is called creativity. It urges us to transcend ourselves, to do something different, seek elsewhere what we have been searching for. And when we are dealing with inner processes, that “elsewhere” is actually within us. When one looks impartially at the limitations one has had (or still has), it becomes clear that it is precisely in the moments where one has felt most constrained that the greatest creative possibilities lied.
Every absence of one thing contains within it its opposite: the presence of something else. The true challenge is the ability to see it that way.
In a recent session with a client, we explored her deep sense of dissatisfaction. Her contact with life’s legitimate lacks and limitations had generated a subtle, destructive anger, along with an anxious feeling that something was wrong and that she needed to act upon it and try to change the situation. Yet the facts showed that for a long time she had been giving her very best in an attempt to improve what felt unsatisfactory to her. It was also a fact that these limitations laid outside her control. When she managed to align her thinking with the reality of her life, something within her shifted. The poisonous dissatisfaction suddenly evaporated, and her eyes lit up. What had previously made her feel weak became a source of strength. The thought that triggered this transformation was simple: “I feel a lack, but I can bear it – and that is a source of inner strength.”
As an external observer, it was deeply moving to witness this transformation, and yet another confirmation of the immense role of thoughts in “turning lead into gold.” For some people, limitations are a source of discontent and unhappiness. For others, they ignite creativity and open a way beyond well-trodden paths. The sole difference lies in our choice: what we fashion from them, and how we let them guide us.
Phil Hansen chose to embrace his shake and to create art that transcends even the most extreme limitation of all: death. It is therefore with great pleasure that I pass on his message in the TED talk below.
The embrace is a beautiful thing; it is inclusion, not exclusion. That is why the message to embrace the limitations in our lives is so beautiful. More importantly, however, it is true. It speaks the language of paradox, and that is the language of the Spirit. When we succeed in embracing even the most extreme forms of limitation, we will also be able to encompass infinity and understanding from our own experience Jung’s thought that “the feeling for the infinite… can be attained only if we are bounded to the utmost.”
Kameliya Hadzhiyska
