Spiritual Ambition: Discovering the ImpossiblePossible

A Sacred Interior Space

There's a place I've recently discovered - or perhaps it discovered me. I call it the impossiblepossible, though I suspect it has existed long before I had words for it. It's not a mindset or a philosophy or a technique. It's a landscape. A sacred interior space where dreams live and breathe without demanding anything of the world.

It crystallized for me while watching two of my students grapple with the same dream.

The Exile of Dreams

Both want to become world champions. One contemplates banishing the dream entirely, calling it impossible, residing in the gray wasteland of abandoned hope. The other has imprisoned the dream in the realm of results, making it a tyrant that demands constant proof of progress, constant assurance of likelihood.

Watching them, I realized they're both trying to make their dreams work in the wrong place. The first has no spiritual landscape at all - just the harsh territory of finite reality where dreams either happen or they don't. Where they rise or fall based on comparison and variables they were never meant to survive. The second is trying to force their spiritual vision to guarantee material results, which turns the dream into anxiety, the beautiful into the desperate. And when things don’t go their way, they’re suddenly face-to-face with the finite—forced to re-evaluate everything, because the dream was never allowed to live anywhere but in outcomes.

Neither has discovered the impossiblepossible - that interior space where dreams exist in their purest form.

The Geography of the Soul

In this place, the championship dream lives. Not as a demand or a goal or a future outcome to be achieved, but as something already complete in itself. Here, the dream grows in beauty as Kierkegaard described - "as the years pass, it grows, as he does, in years and beauty." It doesn’t need a finite event, medal, or spotlight to thrive. It exists beyond the realm where such things matter.

This is the spiritual landscape where your deepest longings are safe from the moths and thieves of finite reality. When your championship dream lives there as treasure, it can't be stolen by losses, destroyed by injuries, or corrupted by the anxiety of whether it will materialize.

And here's the profound paradox: "where your treasure is, there your heart will be also."

The carrier’s heart dwells in the impossiblepossible with his treasure, which paradoxically frees him to engage fully with the physical world without needing it to house what can only properly live in the spiritual realm.

The treasure is already safe. The heart can rest. The training can be pure expression rather than desperate accumulation.

The Carrier and the Pilgrim

There’s a way of being that the philosopher Kierkegaard once described through his idea of the “knight of faith.” He spoke of someone who holds deep love and longing inwardly, while moving through the world with calm, quiet strength. That image finds new expression in the carrier and the pilgrim.

The carrier of the dream holds something sacred within—an inward treasure that doesn’t need proof or permission to exist. He has grasped the profound secret that even in loving something or someone, one ought to be sufficient unto oneself. His longing lives in the impossiblepossible—pure, growing, beautiful—while the pilgrim in him moves through the finite world with full presence and honest effort, but never desperation.

The dream that was once “shipwrecked upon the rocks of impossibility is now turned inward, but it is therefore not lost nor is it forgotten.” It finds its proper home in the spiritual landscape, where it is no longer at the mercy of outcomes, timelines, or others’ approval.

This is why they remain entirely the same whether external circumstances align with his desires or not. His completeness comes from what he carries within—not from reality’s cooperation with his dream.

Training from Two Territories

When you've discovered this place, everything changes. You train as someone who will be world champion - not because you believe you can guarantee that outcome, but because the championship lives so beautifully in your spiritual landscape that it naturally expresses itself through complete dedication.

But you're sustained by the dream itself, not by its likelihood. The impossiblepossible provides what you need spiritually, so the physical training becomes pure expression rather than desperate attempt.

You roll with the intensity of someone who has everything to gain and nothing to lose—because that’s exactly what you are. Everything essential is beyond threat. You train from abundance, not scarcity—because what matters most doesn’t depend on external validation.

But this way of holding a dream is hard to explain—especially to those still learning how to carry it. As a coach, I’ve had to navigate this tension again and again, trying to speak to the unique relationship each student has with their own dream.

The Coach’s Paradox

This has shown up again and again in my coaching. One student needs to hear, “You can do it.” They’ve buried the dream, afraid to believe in something that feels too big. So I try to draw it out of them—to call it back to life. Another student needs to hear, “Let go.” They’re clinging so tightly to the outcome that the dream has become a burden. So I try to free them from needing it to prove something.

And inevitably, the one I tell to let go looks at the one I encouraged and wonders: “Why are you telling them they can be a world champion, and telling me to release it? Do you not believe in me?” But what they don’t realize is—I’m saying the same thing to both of them. I just didn’t have a name for it before. I didn’t have a place for them to put the dream that was safe from corruption.

Now I do. It’s the impossiblepossible. And when the dream lives there, it’s no longer about proving or clinging. It’s no longer about who believes in it. It’s about where the dream belongs. Not in fear. Not in pressure. But in the spirit.

The Return to Finitude

The profound natures, Kierkegaard says, "never forget themselves and never become something other than what they were." They carry the impossiblepossible with them into every mundane moment. They can be completely present to technique refinement, to the ordinary struggle of training, to the simple pleasure of movement, because they're not constantly calculating whether these finite activities are getting them closer to their infinite desires.

They land perfectly in reality every time - no wavering between spiritual and practical, no sense that ordinary life—or the people in it—is beneath them or disconnected from their deepest longings. The sacred landscape infuses ordinary reality without demanding that it be anything other than what it is.

You become indistinguishable from others in your dedication and effort, yet internally you dwell in the impossiblepossible. You act with the urgency of someone who believes anything is possible, combined with the peace of someone whose treasure is already safe in a place that cannot be touched by external circumstances.

This is what I see in those who have made peace with the paradox. And yet for me, the journey into the impossiblepossible is still unfolding.

The Spiritual Architecture

I'm still mapping this territory, still discovering what it means to let dreams live where they belong instead of forcing them to work in the wrong realm. But I know this: the impossiblepossible isn't something you create or achieve. It's something you discover was always there, waiting for you to stop demanding that reality house what can only properly live in the spiritual landscape.

Your deepest longings have a home. They don't need to be exiled to the wasteland of "impossible" or imprisoned in the anxiety of "must be possible." They can live in their proper place - growing in beauty, sustained by something beyond circumstance, expressing themselves through complete engagement with finite reality while remaining forever incorruptible by its outcomes.

This is the geography of the soul that profound natures inhabit. This is where the carriers of a dream make their dwelling. This is the impossiblepossible - not a philosophy to adopt, but a place to discover you've always been meant to live.