…Hermes only leads us to clarity when we abandon our preconceived plans. As with the Greek principle of aporia, only when we reach the point of pathlessness can a new way open before us.
~Aaron Cheak, PhD~
The other day, I was doing some reading and research and stumbled across the term “aporia.” Being the lover of words that I am, I had to check out the online Oxford English Dictionary to get a definition of this new-to-me word.
Aporia: an irresolvable internal contradiction or logical disjunction in a text, argument or theory.
Another definition is: impasse, difficulty of passing, lack of resources, puzzlement in philosophy.
This made me think about how often the people I work with on a regular basis–writers and creatives–face impasses, lack of resources, puzzlement or an internal contradiction that appears irresolvable in their work on a regular basis.
For example, you just published a book but when you sit down to work on the next one you hear that internal message of “you can’t write.”
Or you want to write but the fear makes challenges like time, money and energy seem insurmountable, irresolvable.
Or you find yourself in the middle of your work, unsure of where to go next and wonder what the heck you are doing and who do you think you are.
Aporia makes you feel like this card from the Major Arcana of the tarot—the Hanged Man.
Hung up. Unable to move forward. Unable to do anything other than flail helplessly while hanging by one foot.
This is how you can feel if your work isn’t selling and bills are piling up. This is how you can feel when you have the deepest driving desire to do your work and everyone around you is telling you to get real, to be practical, to stop daydreaming.
But, the Hanged Man shows you how to move out of creative aporia.
- Surrender to the experience. Stop flailing, trying to get loose, and cursing your helplessness. The more you flail, the tighter the knot gets in the rope around your foot. The more you flail, the more you spin in circles from that rope (which would make me dizzy and ready to send up my last meal). Didn’t you ever used to hang by your knees from the monkey bars? Pretend you are doing it again. And take a deep breath—or several.
- Abandon preconceived plans. Too often, the temptation is to think you know what you know. You are certain that the story or the image or the melody should develop this way. So you keep pushing forward even when your intuition, or instincts or inner knowing urges you to do otherwise. Aporia is this internal impasse, an inability to move forward because you won’t abandon your “plan”. What would happen if you considered the impasse an opportunity for initiation into the deeper work? What if the impasse is actually a rebirth?
- Look for new insights and perspectives. If you can let go of your notion of how the work should go, how your career should develop, etc. then you can give time and energy into looking at things upside down. Or you can ask, “How can I integrate what seems to be two contradictory notions? What is the big picture here? What am I not seeing that could free me and my work?”
There are many times and many ways you can experience aporia, can get “hung up”. It is how you co-exist with that experience that can make the difference.
As I tell clients when the Hanged Man shows up in a reading, recall the times as a child you lay on your bed with your head hanging over the edge as you viewed your world upside down. Remember how different things looked from that perspective? Consider trying it now and be aware of how vulnerable you feel in that position, prone on the bed with your throat exposed.
And be conscious of how you see things anew.
Aporia is an opportunity to cross a threshold into a new way of seeing and being…with your creative work.