Impulsa-A-Looza: How I Discovered I'm The Party & My Impulses Are the Beat
You choose the stories you tell yourself. It might be time for a new one.
About a week ago I shifted the story I had been telling myself about my impulses—their value to me and others—and I started to radically rely on a new one instead. The new story I discovered was that my impulses are necessary, treasured, and valuable sources of information. I realized I did not need to know why or how they were valuable or to whom. I decided that someone out there would receive the information from my impulses, make the meaning out of it, and interpret what they needed. All I had to do was to get the information out in the moment that the impulse arose.
I have been working to unlock my impulses for just over a year. I remember when I first declared that I have important information to share but had been keeping it in, rather than delivering it. I feared the consequences of sharing my impulses as wildly as they came. I was afraid I might truly go crazy or that other people would see me as valueless because I could not distinguish important information from random impulses. The problem was that I had labeled all my impulses as random, useless, or less important than those of the person next to me. This is a terrible story to tell about your impulses if you are indeed trying to unblock them.
The thing about impulses is that they are delicate, fleeting, and—for me— very shy about revealing themselves.
Close your eyes and have someone read this to you (or read this then close your eyes). Travel deep within your body to the place where your impulses come from. It is a quiet place, a still place. The only movement here are delicate flutters from the point of origin where your impulses emerge. At this place, the impulse is very small, the size of a poppy seed. You can feel it beginning to move if you connect to the exact moment where they start. Pick one of these impulses. Stay with it as it doubles, then triples in size, moving slowly and fluttering like a butterfly through you. Open yourself up to it; allow it to grow. Let it keep expanding. Resist the urge to figure out what the impulse is or what meaning it might hold. Track its flight pattern. Notice where it bends, bumps into something, or quickly changes direction. Notice where it squeezes though, where you start to restrict it with your need for understanding. At this point, your impulse has already navigated a maze made up of your judgments, logic, and neurotic rationalizations. Even so, it is still here, waiting to be acted upon. Now let it into your heart. This tender impulse has certain qualities-let it reveal itself to you. Let your body want. Let your body speak. Let your body move. Let the impulse out.
What happened? What moved in you? What did you notice?
You can live your life connected to your impulses. There is valuable information in shifts in temperature, tightness in your body, the sudden arrival of low-level feelings, impulses to move, being drawn to or repulsed by something, and waves of sensations and awareness just beneath your skin. Sensitizing yourself to these movements and attuning to the information they contain can serve as a doorway for other ways of knowing to reveal themselves.
To practice this skill of tuning-in and sensitizing to your impulses— or any other subtle source of information—the first thing that needs to change is the story that you tell yourself. When you constrain yourself by assuming that you have the ability to determine what is or is not important information for others (ie. what impulses you deem useful and are willing to share) you take an incredibly presumptive stance. This limits the vast possibilies of nonlinearity and the potential of human creativity.
I stumbled upon my new story by accident in a Constellation Discovery Space where I energetically role-played Gaia (the consciousness of Earth). Standing in the constellation, I declared that I would allow her to work through me—and she did. Suddenly, the impulses moving through me had tremendous value, as they revealed information about the dynamics at place in the relationships we were researching. My reactions to others in the space—my feelings, longings, pains, and movements—were meaningful. I did not know how they were meaningful. My only goal was to let them be. In this process, three people held space, observing, while six others interacted with me. I decided that it was their job to discern whether my impulses held meaning for them and to figure out their value without my involvement. I also decided that if there was no value, the impulse would pass without consequence. I stepped away from being the meaning-maker and I made my purpose to perceive and express every impulse that came to me.
It worked. As I gave more attention to these impulses I could perceive more, communicate more, I could move more. I could interact with others and allow the discovery of what was happening to unfold over time. I did not need to understand my impulses before acting on them. My new story did not require me to.
This way of relating to my impulses shifted my attention inward to my experience rather than to my understanding. This allowed more energy to fuel my impulses, which, in turn, brought more information. By directing my attention—thus my energy— in this way, I open myself up to be used by other resources like possibility, nonlinearity, coincidence, love, and aliveness, even without knowing who they were affecting or what purpose they served. What I can sense is when the source is being used well through me—when I am let the impulse move out of me without restraint— and I leave the rest up to the universe or others.
I feel scared to be detached from my sense of knowing what is or is not valuable to someone else before I let an impulse move me. But I am realizing that the alternative is relying on my old, unconscious discernment system based on values like: Will this make me unique? Is this achievable? Is this acceptable? Will it make me clever or dumb? Will I look beautiful or ugly?
Changing my story about the value of my impulses during this process left a lasting impression on me. As I continue practicing, I find I now have access to this form of attention and allowance. that my impulses are still coming to me. I still go into bouts of numbness, Even when I fall into bouts of numbness, I can trace my way back to feeling, reconnecting with the impulses that are present, and create enough necessity for them to flutter up and move me.