16_thinking_possibility
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[00:00:00] Hello siblings. Welcome to the Sensory Siblings Podcast. I'm your host, Louisa Shaeri, and this is beaming to you from the solar system, the liberatory framework, and unmasking unschool for creatively identified autistic folks who are seeking another way to see no and be yourself. This is a radical re-imagining of what's.

[00:00:26] Possible when we redefine ourselves from within by unlearning who we are, not making self connection. Our goal, activating the languages of our sensory oriented perception and creating the culture shifts to activate futures and cells, it all starts within,

[00:00:49] Hey siblings, so. Last week's episode was about taking up full ownership of being the director, the playwright, and the main character in the play. That is your life on the stage of your life, right? Today's what happens when you step out on that stage. You make that decision to, to change things up, to take responsibility, take ownership, and then you find out that you dunno what you want.

[00:01:18] So that's what I wanna talk about today. So what happens when you don't know what you want or when you do know, but it's kind of vague and you've got no idea where to start. And if you try to explain it or describe it, you wouldn't be able to do it in a very tangible way. Okay? And the reason it's important to know what you want is because the deep.

[00:01:46] Desires seeded in you. If you've connected with them with knowing what you want, right? They, those will pull you through all of that hard, messy work. All of that courageous sorting out of your stage in your plate, in your life. So knowing what you want and being connected with the desire for that thing that you want to create.

[00:02:14] Becomes like a guiding source of decision making clarity. Okay. And this topic, um, has come about because recently I did a free training on visibility and how to be more visible for the creative work that you wanna do in the world. Why we aren't getting more visible and how to. Get into the mindset of, of being willing and being able to put yourself out in the world, right?

[00:02:48] And leading up to that, I was posting to you in the discord. Those of you that are are in there, you know this. I was posting different questions, different prompts, inviting. You to, uh, reflect, to respond on why visibility is so hard, right? What's the problem? What makes it difficult? What, where's the resistance?

[00:03:13] And people, you siblings in the discord knew intimately and exactly what the problem was, right? You could articulate it really well. Those of you that posted, and when you did post. There was a lot of resonance from others in the group and a lot of familiarity and a lot of, yes, this, yes, same, right? We, we know what the problem is.

[00:03:39] We know what's hard and I'll do another podcast on visibility if you missed all of this. But my point is that the problem, the problems that we have, the circumstances that we're trying to solve, we know a lot about, right? We are intimate with it. And when I posted, what do you want to create? Like what would visibility give you?

[00:04:01] Why do you want it? It was almost silence. It was like, like nothing Or what was posted was kind of vague, right? It was a little bit vague and. People didn't have much to say or were afraid to really share what they do want. Okay? And this isn't bad. This isn't that something's gone wrong. This is just that we're human, that we don't spend a lot of time actively pouring our energy and attention into.

[00:04:37] Things that we run into the big dream, into something that we deeply desire to create right into a future that we want, that we would love to experience. Why? Because that is beyond what we've already experienced. It's beyond what we know. Right? It's, it's unknown. It's an unknown. It's, and it's not that we don't know what we want, it's just that.

[00:05:04] It's over there beyond what our brain is familiar with and comfortable with. What we're familiar and comfortable with what we know is our past. We know what options have been readily represented to us, right? We know what other people think is possible for us. We know what our current life is. We know what we've done before.

[00:05:29] We know what is statistically likely for us, right? We know how much we may were able to make things happen that we wanted in the past, which may have or may not have been a lot, right? We know how it felt to want something and not get it. We know how much we had a goal but didn't have the tools to follow through, right?

[00:05:54] So. We know a lot of what is and what has been and what people think is possible, right? So what is quote unquote realistic? What's already been realized and your brain likes to stay there in the known, in what I want to call probability. Okay. So when you are thinking about what you do want, what you want to create, then what you don't want to do.

[00:06:28] Is thinking probability, right? So when we are thinking in probability where our brain likes to stay, where we are really familiar, where we are really comfortable, where we're very well acquainted with the problems, where we know how to articulate what's happening. When we think in that probability, what happens then is you create meaning from that about what your future is gonna be.

[00:06:54] And then you act according to that and then you end up recreating the past. You recreate your current life. You recreate what oth others people think what other people think is possible for you. You recreate statistics, right? You recreate what is realistic, what is in probability. So our thinking determines so much of how we experience and feel about ourselves and our lives.

[00:07:20] And the meaning that we give to, to those experiences. And so if your current life, if your past, if that thinking and probability hasn't fully acknowledged who you really are, what you really want, what the experiences that your body offers up to you are, what your true sensations are, right? How you actually experience your life.

[00:07:48] How you make sense of it in a way that comes naturally. If all of that hasn't been acknowledged, then when you're thinking and probability, those also remain unexpressed in your thinking, right? Those unexpressed parts, the potential of who you could be when you have the support, when you have the acknowledgement, when you are.

[00:08:15] Affirmed. When you get to do it your way, right, all of that potential and the possibility that your future offers when you aren't thinking that way, we need to allow that to be expressed in order us, in order for us to truly know what we want to create. Okay? So when we're being realistic, when we're thinking probability, then we then we are not listening to that.

[00:08:40] We're not hearing those parts of ourself. So who we are here to be in a fully fullest expressed version, right? Doesn't get a look in, it, doesn't get to, uh, speak into that future. So knowing what you want to create means giving space to that potential, to that possibility. Even though it's beyond, it's outside of what you know.

[00:09:12] Okay. It's outside and beyond of probability. So it means spending time and energy and, and attention for possibility, even when a thinking is that it's not realistic. Okay? We have to go there. So I want to go on a tangent now and tell a bit of a story. Some of you have heard this before. If you have, I want you to just re-listen through the lens of knowing what you want.

[00:09:44] So when I was, um, in my, I wanna say, uh, uh, when was it maybe 2010 onwards, I started to work as an artist, working galleries, giving workshops, and back then there was a lot of public funding for the big galleries too. Have this kind of educational provision, right? There was the, this idea that art is for everyone.

[00:10:12] And so a lot of the galleries would roll out these programs that would bring people into the gallery and then they'd have, they'd engage artists to lead workshops. And a lot of the workshops that I was doing were with school groups and this was. Uh, a steep learning curve, but it was also an opportunity for me to really figure out and play and try things.

[00:10:41] Essentially, it was like, you are an artist. Here's your group, do your thing, and not much else. And so there was a lot of freedom, right? There was a lot of, uh, choices that I got to make about how I did those workshops and what I want went into that thinking was. I want to create a space that is different and is affirming for all of the ways of thinking that are outside of mainstream education.

[00:11:10] Now, I couldn't have articulated that at the time. I, at the time didn't have the lens of being autistic as an option for considering how I saw myself. I didn't know there wasn't neurodiversity. There wasn't this idea of neurodiversity really. There wasn't. Um, and I think in my own thinking that put me within that lens.

[00:11:31] Okay. So what I did have was a hunch that there were other ways of being, that there were other ways of thinking and expressing and other languages. And that's what I wanted to give space to, right? So in these workshops I've, through doing them over and over again, and at the same time, making my own art.

[00:11:54] What I came to was a methodology for how to invite other ways of being and creativity and, and imagination into that workshop very quickly. And so what I wanna do on this podcast is, is share that methodology, but also share a story around it. Really, this is all about thinking and possibility, so. What I used to do is I would take a, take this group, uh, the group that I got, um, and I would take them on a workshop that I called, I eventually called the Lighthouse, and this was one that I, um, ended up then just, it just was my wedding that this was the thing I did.

[00:12:41] And so, yeah, so I take a group two, a pair of locked doors in one of the galleries I worked in that were. The same color as the walls. They were doors that you weren't really supposed to look at, right? It was like, don't look at these doors. These, this is staff or storage or something like that. They were locked.

[00:12:59] They were not somewhere for the public to go or look at. Right? So the things that people don't look at the invisible. I wanted us to go and look at that, and I take 'em to these locked doors and I'd say in a very. Um, a hushed voice that would make them come a bit closer and say, these are the doors to the lighthouse.

[00:13:18] And the way in is through closing your eyes, right? So I'd, I'd invite them to close their eyes and then enter the lighthouse in their imagination, and I'd give them a, a moment. And then I'd say, and then I'd ask them a bunch of questions. What is it like inside? How does it feel? Is it hot? Is it cold? Is it, is it warm?

[00:13:41] Is it inviting? Is it cozy? Is it spacious? Is it light? Is it dark? Is ows of stuff? Is it sparse? Are you alone? Are there people? Are there windows? What's going on? How does it feel? What's your lighthouse like? And without fail. Everyone could tell me what their lighthouse was like, and they were all wildly different, and some were really interesting, some made people laugh.

[00:14:09] But essentially just allowing that possibility and outlining this absence space created what I would call a projecting space, right? So. Their imagination. It was a void. It created a void. And so whenever you create a void, your brain doesn't like it. It projects into it, right? It projects, it imagines, uh, stuff to fill that void.

[00:14:37] So this became my methodology for making art myself, for coming up with ideas, but also for invoking the imagination in other people was just to outline an absence, to point to, or refer to, or generate. Some kind of void, some kind of inaccessible thing that we know that we could refer to, right? So other examples would be my neighbor.

[00:15:04] Okay? So if I say my neighbor, your brain will, will, will want to try and fill that up, right? Or try, try and fill in the gaps. Who is that neighbor? What do they look like? And you might start to imagine. Another example is the future. The future is this void. We have no idea, right? We have no idea what the future involves, but we like to project, uh, into it using our imagination, right?

[00:15:30] We project stuff. Another example is, uh, if you think about when the media or political propaganda invents an enemy overseas, right? So something bad, right? Someone bad, some bad agenda, and so invoking fear and then projecting all of your imagination into worst case scenarios. We can also think about Web3.

[00:15:57] Web3 is another example of, well, it currently is just like cyberspace was, uh, of a space that we don't actually know what the technology could create. We don't actually know what's possible. And so you have a lot of different fractions of society, of projecting their ideas of what that means, of what it's gonna be, of what Web3 will, uh, bring to bear.

[00:16:23] Right? So all of those are voids. Uh, unknown absence. Uh, unknown. Unknown. Unknowns are outlined. Absences, right? And I also think of marginalized. Um, bodies in this way, right? As a kind of outsider, absent bodies that have had things projected onto them, right? So the autistic body is an example of that. It's like, I don't understand this thing.

[00:16:54] I'm gonna project meaning onto it. So, and then that meaning projected onto it, uh, effectively makes it stay invisible. And when we reclaim it, when we reclaim that, that imaginative space as a space of possibility, of dark matter potency of imagination, then we get to reimagine it, right? We get to re uh, redefine it.

[00:17:23] We get to project what we would want it to mean. So. So that's what I would do. And so they would, um, end up very quickly in a matter of minutes with a very clear experience of what, of the inside of their lighthouse and that, that were most made possible because they knew it didn't have to be realistic, right?

[00:17:44] We are not sticking to what is known what is possible. If I'd got them all to sit down and draw a lighthouse, they would've all drawn very similar things, right? So. What this meant was that they all had a very unique, um, experience of the interior, of their lighthouse that was coming. That was enabling some part of them to be expressed.

[00:18:08] And then what we would do is, I would say, move around. Right? Get them to physically move around a little bit. How does it feel to move around it? And then we would open our eyes and. Go looking and hunting and searching for remnants clues, hints of their lighthouses in the artworks on display. So people would find, oh, this color, this color, this color, or this shape, or this, um, object or this texture.

[00:18:40] And they would collect them along the way, right? Take pictures or whatever it was, or drawing or whatever materials that we were using. And then eventually we would. Um, recreate them using acetate or using some clear, um, materials and paper, and then project those lighthouses, uh, onto the wall, and then they got to stand inside them.

[00:19:04] So the reason I'm saying that is because, yeah, if we all, if I'd started by saying draw a lighthouse. They withdraw what they extinct is correct and what, what a realistic idea of a lighthouse should be. Right? When we allow for not having to be constrained by being realistic, when we create a void, then something else gets to exist, something that is yet to be expressed.

[00:19:37] So. And just to finish the story, one of the things that then happened in one of those workshops where I was trying to create these spaces where other languages, other ways of being in a body could exist. What happened in one of those workshops was that a group of autistic teenagers from especially school that no longer exists, um, came and were participants in one of my workshops.

[00:20:05] And they were around the age of 13, 14. And it was in that workshop that I saw myself in them that it first dawned on me. Or maybe, maybe I'm autistic too. Right. So, and the reason that that was happening was because this group was being fully supported by their teacher, by the, the adults that they were with.

[00:20:31] To learn in the ways that they needed to learn to express in the ways that they needed to, to do things, in the way that they needed to do, to do it. So one student was non-speaking or prefer not to speak, uh, I dunno, which, and every now and then they would suddenly be on the floor scribbling in their notebook.

[00:20:51] Quick, quick, quick, quick, quick. Writing, writing, writing, and much to my surprise, the whole group would just stop and pause and wait. And then when they'd finish writing, they'd stand up and someone would read out their, their writing, right? And then we would carry on other, other students. Were right up close up front at the front of the group with me asking loads of questions, asking for more context.

[00:21:15] Why is this, why is this here? What's that decision? Why are you saying that? What does this word mean? And so in. Using that void of the workshop that I'd been offered. Like, here's your, here's your hour and a half. Do what you want. And in using that as a space to explore the unexpressed parts of me, I then it, the, the, the things that I was trying to create then became possible.

[00:21:48] Right? I started to. See them and then full circle moment, they came right up front, visible, realized, materially realized as other people that I could then see myself in because they were being fully expressed, because they were expressing the things that I was trying to find a language for. So I'm saying all of that because, oh, and side note, those locked doors are now the entrance to.

[00:22:20] The, uh, the big, um, tower. So this, so this gallery is Tate Modern. I dunno if you know it, if you don't know it. It's like a, a, it used to be an old, um, sugar, like Colonial Sugar processing factory by Tate and Lyle. It's now called Take Modern and it's got its huge tower. And at the time the tower was inaccessible, like you couldn't go in.

[00:22:48] Now you can go in and you can go up to the top and you can look out. So those locked doors then got built out and became the entrance into the tower, which I think is an in another interesting full circle moment. Anyway, so what I'm trying to offer is that when you allow for. That possibility to be expressed.

[00:23:14] That is when you start to hear and you start to allow, and you start to invite what you deeply, truly actually want to create that hasn't yet had space within the thinking that is based on PO on probability. When you lift off and allow that, when you lift off what? Being realistic and don't impose being realistic, even if it's just for a little bit, you also take the discomfort out of thinking in possibility, right?

[00:23:47] So. There's no wrong answers. There's no, um, there's no need to think about how, you don't need to know how. Yet you also take off caring what other people think just for a moment, right? So when you are allowing yourself to dream beyond what's so-called realistic, and you're just thinking possibility, you're thinking about my future isn't unknown, that I get to create, what could it be?

[00:24:14] And allowing yourself to dream. Then it becomes about what's not impossible, what's in me that is wanting to come out and be expressed and be realized? What is asking me to steward it into fruition? What sides of myself have I not yet met? What is it that I could make happen if I went all in on that possibility?

[00:24:43] So the same is true of your future. The same is true of the best friend you haven't met yet. The same is true of the business that you started or the artwork that you created, or the life that you crafted, right? You have no idea. And when you allow for yourself to have no idea, when you allow for that void, then you can also allow for parts of you to sing into that and.

[00:25:12] Project into that, the unexpressed parts of your experience of yourself and of your potential. So my invitation to you is to go and explore your known unknown that is your future. So who is that? Who is you? Who are you in the future? What are you doing? Who might you want to be? If you could choose anything, right?

[00:25:36] If you could literally go and buy it off the shelf or press a button. Right. What, and, and you could design it. What would you choose? So allowing for that conversation, allowing for those squashed and suppressed desires to have a voice is a really important component of knowing what you want. We find out when we do this that we, we do know what we want, right?

[00:26:07] When, when we say, okay, I don't have to be realistic. If I could choose anything, what would it be? Then we find out that we know exactly what we want, right? We, we just think it's unrealistic or we can't see how, so we smother it, we push it down, we defer it. We, it's just that we don't yet have the full belief, right?

[00:26:28] We are habituated to thinking in. Probability. And when you lift that off a minute and you allow yourself to dream in possibility, yeah, you're not gonna have the full belief yet, but it's important to go there anyway, so next week we'll get even to committing to possibility when you don't yet have belief, the My invitation to you is to.

[00:26:57] Allow yourself to be in that space of possibility without imposing what's realistic, without imposing probability on it yet, so that you can connect with what you do desire, what you do really want to make happen, what you want to create, and start to have a relationship with it. If I could have anything that I wanted, if I could create anything I wanted, what would it be?

[00:27:25] Start to allow that to materialize in you as a set of hunches, as uh, a vague sense of, oh yeah, there's something there. There's something there that's pulling me to it. There's something there that is calling to me. And then start to keep an eye out for those clues, for those remnants, for those hints and collect them.

[00:27:49] This resonates. I dunno why, but I like it. I'm collecting it. This image I've come across, this resonates. I'm collecting it. This thing that someone's doing in the world that resonates. Uh, it's something along that, along those lines, I'm collecting it right? So start to collect the things that resonate with that, that thing that you are desiring, that possibility that you've allowed to have a voice.

[00:28:16] And in the next episode we'll explore committing to that possibility even when you don't yet believe. Okay, and I'll talk to you then. Bye.

[00:28:30] Thanks for listening to this week's Sensory Siblings podcast. Head over to Solar Systems dot XY z, where you can join the plus Siblings Discord server and discuss the topics explored with other listeners. And if you are ready to go deeper into activating your future self, I want to invite you to join my six month unmasking unschool called the Solar System.

[00:28:54] And plus siblings, you're going to unlearn the habits of self negating, then create self-esteem, self clarity, and the self-belief to model the social esteem that will create culture shifts first in yourself, and then rippling out into everything you do and beyond. Head over to solar systems. Do xyz slash.

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