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.
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.
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”.
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
Nature delivers the greatest Zen masters in learning how to live in the presence.
The fear of spiders is funny, especially for this one, because it actually looks like a cute, little doggie with 8 legs.
Talking about the legs, they’re covered with hundreds of little hairs, with which the Salticidae or Jumping Spider, can smell, taste and hear. They’re not the spider-web kind of spider, they jump to catch their prey. To determine the precise location, they have four (!) pairs of eyes, that create an almost 360-degree vision and 3-D images. The eyes reflect in the dark when hit by light, imagine…
Looking at this beautiful, sophisticated, high-tech creature reminded me, that eyes are just one of our senses and should never rely solely on them.
You can’t depend on your eyes
when your imagination is out of focus.
– Mark Twain
Nature delivers the greatest Zen masters in learning how to live in the presence.
Estimates are, there are over a billion of them.
Sheep are one of the earliest animals to be domesticated for agricultural purposes and the most famous one is the Ovis aries. They are as practical as they get for humans, as they produce wool, milk, manure and meat.
Originally sheep is derived from the Old English word scēap (which is the same as Frisian) and it is a single and plural name for the animal. I find that very funny, because in a way they’re never alone.
Sheep play an important role in myths and religion, as they’ve been with people so long!
Egyptians worshipped animals and at various periods held certain animals to be sacred and as representations of their gods and goddesses. Agnus Dei is a Latin term meaning Lamb of God, it refers to Jesus as the perfect sacrificial offering that compensates for the sins of humanity.
In my mind, baby-sheep are the cutest animals. I still remember spring, waiting with my granddad for the lambs to be born. Within seconds they stand up and the next day, they lighten up the green grass fields next to his farm, with their funny jumps.
Happiness is the cause of a great day,
not the outcome.
Nature delivers the greatest Zen masters in learning how to live in the now.
The mola is the heaviest of all the bony fish, with large specimens reaching 4.3 m vertically and 3 m horizontally and weighing nearly 2,300 kg. They are frequently seen basking in the sun near the surface and are often mistaken for sharks when their huge dorsal fins emerge above the water.
Mola can become so infested with skin parasites, they jump out of the water up to 3.0 metres in the air, in an attempt to shake the parasites (and they are lousy swimmers). They’ll also often invite small fish or even birds to feast on them.
.It’s wiser to share burdens, then to drown under their weight.
Nature delivers the greatest Zen masters in learning how to live in the now.
Earthworms have a major impact on the soil structure. When we walk the earth, billions of worms dig tunnels and break down plant material, making the soil airy and healthy.
The most amazing thing about earthworms is their power to regenerate their body.
Segments of their body can be detached and then simply re-formed again. Even from internal organs it is known that the nervous system can regenerate.
Imagine.
To grow in life is to detach,
the soul will regenerate.
Nature delivers the greatest Zen masters in learning how to live in the now.
A bee is living in a hive with hundreds of thousands of other bees, where every bee plays it’s own distinctive role. Outside the hive the bee is on its own, but its role even more significant.
For us.
Bees are important for the pollination of many plants and therefore have an indirect role of about thirty percent of all of the chain in the human food.
Next time you see a bee, be aware of the importance of it.
Be yourself, everyone else is taken.
Nature delivers the greatest Zen masters in learning how to live in the now.
The web of the spider is an ingenious object. One sticky thread after the other creating the base and then weaving the circles until it’s finished.
It takes a day to make.
After it’s finished the spider retreats in a corner out of sight and waits. All flies have seen him making the web, so avoid being near it. But the spider waits and waits until the flies forget and one gets trapped in the sticky threads.
Then it moves.
Patience may be one of the largest bases for success
The WEAST Perspective 