Misery is like an ocean.
You can drown in it or float on top of the waves.
A great idea releases a thousand thoughts
The reversal of Lao Tse’s “A journey of a thousand miles, starts with a single step”, is true when it comes to ideas.
Great ideas are like a perpetuum mobile, generating new thoughts, ideas and energy. And as it happens, in the nothingness on a Planck scale level, it’s the energy that turns nothingness into being, into a new reality, the ultimate form of creativity.
The bucket and the drop
A story to solve emotions and creativity.
Drip, drip, drip and then the final drop that makes the water in the bucket overflow.
It’s a useful metaphor, both on behaviour and creativity. Let me start with the first.
Imagine the bucket stands for bulging emotions.
When you’re not actively dealing with emotion, through time, only little water will evaporate, so at any time it doesn’t need a lot of drips to overflow. It’s better to actively empty the bucket now and then to get rid of old (pointless) emotions.
On creativity.
When the bucket is a representation of old ideas and ancient knowledge, any new piece of information becomes too much to handle, so we tend to ignore them and will get stuck in re-using old ideas and what used to be inspiring and interesting, is now out of time and irrelevant.
Stagnant water becomes cloudy, so throw the buck half way empty and fill her up with fresh water, i.e. new ideas, insights and pieces of information that can come from anywhere. It’s all in the mix. The old ideas that are still valuable will pop-up again anyway, but can form new connections that lead to inspiring, new, sexy ideas.
Of course there’s an alternative: Get a bigger bucket, and keep stirring.
What if
What if you stopped thinking about your ideas as things you need to let out of you, but things you need to let in to you? Things you need to be ready to receive?
Become the watcher
Your mind is in a constant mode of doing marathons. Most of the time you’re not knowing what you’re thinking, that you’re thinking, how you’re thinking, who is thinking and why ‘it’ is thinking. So many unfinished thoughts, just lingering in your mind.
It’s a busy place up there.
Now imagine driving a mountainbike (it could be a car, but then it is difficult to end the story…). Fortunately, our brain has a sub-routine that is able to manage the constant stream of thoughts while doing a complex thing like biking.
But sometimes you’re too pre-occupied with thoughts and not paying enough attention to biking, the road and the obstacles, Suddenly there’s an abyss.
In a reflex you turn your wheel, your whole life passes in an instant before your eyes, you fall on to the ground, your bike keeps sliding, but you somehow you’re able to grab a branch of some kind and manage to hold.
Then there’s this silence.
A few seconds later you hear your bike crash.
In the reflex, your mind stopped thinking instantly. It is exactly then when your consciousness takes over. This reflex is the deepest part of your being that reacts. The thinking of the mind becomes obsolete. It is this sensation I believe we should embrace more often.
It is the angel in you. And you can use the angel, because she’s is in anyone of us, spread your wings, fly up and look from a distance at yourself. Become aware, as a watcher, of your own thoughts. You’ll probably have a lot of laughs! It doesn’t have to be on a constant basis (that is impossible), but be aware.
Just now and then, during the day, become the watcher, release the angel.
Wandering Spirit
It is funny.
The contradiction of independency.
We believe we’re independent, but we’re not.
We’re attached to habits, rituals, things, a job, a car, certain friends, things we know, we have or we believe. And we like to talk about it, show it, or just think about it, so we feel good and confident. We feel these things are part of who we are.
Now imagine these things are taken away.
What’s left of you?
Everything and more!
It is not the things that make who we are, that is the ego that attached to these things. The true you, your spirit is unattached and doesn’t need things to be the coolest being on earth. Yes, that’s who you are, without things, isn’t that amazing?
It is like going parachute jumping.
Sitting high up in the air, with the parachute strapped on, frantically holding on the the handles. Thinking about that, it is not a nice place to sit. The only thing from keeping you from flying, instead of sitting there stuck, is letting go of the handles. Then you’re free as a bird, weightless, majestic and a great view.
Sit back, relax, keep breathing and let go.
And let go again and again, until it becomes a natural habit,
Like a wondering spirit.
Remember: Even statues can fly, they just need stronger wings.
Wandering Spirits is part of the Heavenliness
The Path
In one of his rare writings, the Sufi sage Hafik comments on the idea of travel;
“Accept with wisdom the fact that the Path is full of contradictions.
Many times the Path will contradict itself, just to stimulate the passenger to discover what will happen at the next curve. If two travelers take this journey together, it is almost certain that one of them is on the wrong Path.
Each person must run his own risks along his Way, because there are no set formulas to achieving the Truth.
Only the ignorant try to imitate the ways of others. The intelligent men don’t waste their time with that, and develop their own set of skills.
They know that no two leaves in the forest of a million trees are exactly the same. No two Paths on the Journey of Life are exactly the same.”
I like to add a last thought. Either as inspiration or as a post-rationalisation. Whatever fits best at the time or situation: “Diversity is the path to enlightment”.
Words
There’s a difference between arrogance and convinced.
And that word is not stubborn.
Animal Zen Masters: The Gecko
The word Gecko comes from Indonesian-Malay word gēkoq, which is an imitation of sounds that some species make. In Indonesia we call them Cicak and children love to sing about them. We’re happy to have them in the house, because they eat the moths and mosquitos.
It’s amazing to see how cicak’s can walk any surface vertical or upside-down with their ‘magical’ adhesive power, and theirfeet are self-cleaning and will usually remove any clogging dirt within a few steps. Very practical.
The really cool thing about Gecko’s is that they leave their tail behind when they’re in danger. It’s called autotomy (self-amputation) and it’s a way to distract the predator, thereby allowing to escape.
Losing ego,
saves the soul.
ego = 1/knowledge
EINSTEIN
The power of laughter
My sister shared this story and it’s so funny and true:
Pu-Tai (which means ‘cloth bag’) was a man of few words, in fact he hardly ever spoke. On the few occasions that he did speak he would reply to questions about why he did what he did. He then explained that handing out sweets was symbolic for the notion that the more you give, the more you receive.
His bag represented the problems all people encounter in life.
Instead of clinging to them you should distance yourself from a problem by putting it down (just like he would put the bag down) and laugh at it, because whether you laugh or cry the problem is not going to change. The magic lies in the laughter and more precisely the power of laughter. Pu-Tai believed that the power of laughing made problems smaller and more easily to handle.
And the man had a very good grasp on things even a thousand years ago, because apparently when you laugh the body produces certain feel good hormones and enzymes. And when you feel good, you might look at your problems differently.
Pu-Tai lived a life of laughter and even when he died he pulled the biggest prank of all. When he felt his end coming near, the monk asked his close companions to immediately burn his body after his death. They were surprised because cremation was not a custom in Zen buddhism. But his wishes were granted and as soon as they set fire to his body, fireworks started to fly everywhere.
Apparently he had hid a lot of crackers and rockets in his clothes in order to create laughter even when the matter was grave.
Did you laugh today?
<I don’t what the source is, but appreciate the text, so I want to share it. Thank you>
The WEAST Perspective 