Who Decides What's Possible?

I've been listening to Dan Brown's new book, The Secret of Secrets, and there's a scene that got me thinking. Professor Robert Langdon is explaining to two detectives why he jumped out of a hotel window at precisely 7 a.m., around the same time a bomb was supposed to explode. He had no idea there was an actual bomb. What he did know was that his partner, Katherine, had a nightmare the night before that included a bomb going off. After hearing his story, one of the detectives yells, "Bullshit! I don't believe a word of this!" And I'm thinking, who gets to decide what's possible and what's impossible?

We Believe in Invisible Things All the Time

Think about Wi-Fi. We can't see it, yet we use it every day. The same goes for radio waves, microwaves, magnetic fields, and gravity. All these invisible forces affect our physical world. Of course, science has ways to measure and explain these things. We have evidence that they exist. But what about things we haven't figured out how to measure or explain yet? Sometimes when I mention that I read tarot and follow astrology, people say, "I'm not into that. I'm not spiritual. I'm rational."

Whenever I hear that, I wonder what they mean by rational. Do they mean they're willing to look at evidence and question their beliefs? Or have they already decided what they're willing to accept as real? I believe in science, and I think science is cool. What concerns me is when people dismiss a subject without taking the time to learn anything about it. How can we know what's possible if we're unwilling to question what we don't understand?

Who Decides What Gets Studied?

Here's something else I've been thinking about. For something to be studied by scientists, someone has to decide it's worth the time and money. Researchers need equipment, funding, and sometimes the support of a university or another organization. Who makes those decisions? And what happens when the subject is something people have already decided doesn't exist?

Research costs money. The people and organizations paying for it help decide what gets studied. Sometimes those decisions are based on what scientists believe is important. Other times, they're shaped by business interests or the goals of the people providing the money. That means some questions receive a great deal of attention while others receive very little. I wonder how much of our understanding of reality depends on what we've chosen to study. And how much remains unknown because we haven't given those questions the same attention?

The Telepathy Tapes and the UVA Files

I love listening to The Telepathy Tapes, hosted by Ky Dickens. It's a podcast about extraordinary experiences, including reports of nonverbal autistic children communicating through telepathy. Some describe meeting one another in a place they call the Hill. These stories raise fascinating questions about consciousness and communication. The claims are still debated, and there isn't strong scientific evidence that telepathy is taking place. But does that mean it isn't happening? That's the question Dickens is trying to answer by speaking with families and researchers.

In the podcast's third season, she looks at research from the University of Virginia's Division of Perceptual Studies. For decades, this group has studied unusual human experiences, including near-death experiences and children who say they remember past lives. Researchers have collected thousands of reports, spoken with families, and checked details that children claim to remember about people who died before they were born. Some details have reportedly matched facts about people who died. Researchers continue to study these accounts and consider possible explanations.

What I find especially interesting is that this research takes place within a university's medical school. Researchers have the support to ask questions about experiences that many people would dismiss without a second thought. Someone decided these questions were worth exploring.

What Do We Believe Is Possible for Ourselves?

All this thinking about science, consciousness, and the supernatural brings me back to how we think about our own lives. How often do we dismiss our own ideas before giving them a chance? Maybe there's something we've wanted to do for years, but we've convinced ourselves it's unrealistic. Maybe someone told us we weren't capable of doing it. Maybe we've never seen anyone like us accomplish it. And so we don't even try.

I started doing the work I now teach in New Moon Life Design by saying yes to things I felt like doing because I wanted to do them. I followed my curiosity. I tried things that interested me, even when I didn't know where they would lead. Sometimes people thought I was crazy for talking about those interests in public. Over time, those experiences became part of my life, my work, and eventually YesSpiral.

That's also why I work with lunar cycles, tarot, astrology, and journaling. These tools give me a creative way to think about my life, question my beliefs, and consider what I want to do next. Each New Moon begins a cycle in a zodiac sign. I use the themes of that sign to think about different parts of my life and set intentions based on what comes up.

For example, we recently began a Scorpio New Moon. Scorpio's motto in New Moon Life Design is "I Transform." In my journal, I wrote, "I transform my life as I know it. I transform my perspective." If the New Moon hadn't been in Scorpio, I probably wouldn't have been thinking about what I could transform in my life. Now I have an intention to work with, and it raises questions I may have not have asked myself. What is my perspective? What does my life as I know it actually consist of? As I consider these questions and take action, I could find myself heading in a direction I hadn't thought about before.

An idea begins as something we imagine. We put it on paper and think about what it could look like in our lives. Then we take steps to make it happen. Along the way, we learn what's possible, what needs to change, and whether we want to keep going.

I don't believe everything we imagine will automatically become reality. Our circumstances affect what we can accomplish. As Kamala Harris said, "You exist in the context of all in which you live and what came before you." Our past and the world around us shape the choices we have. I do wonder, though, how many possibilities we never consider because we've already decided they won't work. And that brings me back to Langdon and the detective. What if the detective had been curious enough to investigate what happened before deciding what to believe? What might we discover about our own lives if we were willing to question what we've always believed?