Permissions
Mar 26th, 2008 by Kathy
This morning I woke up thinking about the word “permission.” It’s a really interesting word when you open up the hood.
The “per” part is way cool — it means “through,” “thoroughly,” “utterly,” “very” — as in “pervert,” “pervade,” and “perfect.” (All my references, by the way, I got by clicking around Dictionary.com if you want to go play on your own.)
The “Mittere” part is a bit more complex. When used with Permission, it’s defined as “to let, or to make (someone) go.” When used with “Admit” however, they define it as “let go, to send” as in a mission. And when used with “Commit” it’s defined as “to send, give over.” The key thing I get from that is an active sending out and releasing.
So, in one way of looking at it, permission is an extremely active, maximum amount of sending out, releasing, and letting go. An active non-grasping. A conscious opening of the hands for the express purpose of releasing whatever is being held.
In software development, “permissions” are something a bit different. When a user is give a set of security rights, those are called his permissions. So you can have permission to edit one set of documents, but be in “view only” mode for financial spreadsheets. This kind of goes with this other sense of the word, which is “Consent, especially formal consent; authorization.”
So it isn’t just this opening up and sending out. Sometimes it’s very very formalized. The “permit” is a legal document that authorizes availability to something. A permission is a physical (or digital) locking or unlocking that enables access to functionality.
Which makes me think we could do some interesting things with this word. Like, write down, physically, our permissions. What we are going to permit ourselves to do in this lifetime. Give ourselves a permit to make money, say, from our chosen dharmic path. (I so hope that’s a word). Give ourselves a permit to be recognized publicly for our teachings and our creative skills. Give ourselves a permit to stop once in awhile (that’s for me). Give ourselves a permit to breathe (that’s also for me). Give ourselves a permit to be really, truly happy in relationship. Give ourselves a permit to love and be loved. On and on and on. Like a physical, written unlocking of some things.
Because it’s not all about our grasping of stuff. Sometimes stuff has us in its grasp (inside our heads). Being locked in or out of something is a form of grasping. Having this deep feeling of not being deserving of something, is a locking in, like being inside of a clenched fist. Having a deep feeling of always being secondary, or invisible, or not enough… that’s a grasping. It’s a different form than we’re used to thinking about. We usually talk about grasping in terms of aversion or attraction. This is when we are grasped, surrounded, kept from, not permitted… by our own thoughts. So the opening up and letting go is a permission. An active releasing. A conscious opening up of the grasping that surrounds us.
Little kids are taught to ask us adults for “permission” to do something. This is ingrained in us, this sense that we need to ask a higher authority for the ability to exercise a certain amount of freedom. When we’re small, this makes a certain amount of sense; permissions are installed to keep us safe from dangers we don’t yet understand. In software, this is known as a user’s “security” setting — if you are too inexperienced or too dumb to really be able to use all the functionality safely, you are constrained by the software itself to limit your freedom and access to certain pieces of the program.
But we’re no longer kids, right? At least not in many areas. Maybe we need to look at the places that no longer need to be kept safely kept out of reach. Like excess money. Like excess creativity. Like excess love. Within moral bounds (like we can’t give ourselves permission to go kill our boss when he pisses us off), we need to trust ourselves enough to use the entire program. Our security settings may need to be adjusted to accommodate the fact that we’re no longer new to this life, we’re no longer inexperienced, and maybe it’s time for us to spread our wings and use all the tools available.
(Cross posted with my other blog at www.aphroditeinjeans.com. And special thanks to “L,” my muse and playmate and partner in extraordinary conversation these days. You didn’t exactly give me permission to repurpose my email to you this morning, but I’m doing it anyway.)
