Activity

Spinning Wheel

Can’t reinvent the wheel. But you can put your own spin on it.

We cannot reinvent the wheel but we can be creative and innovative.

Einstein wasn’t the first person to state one of the basic facts of life when he said, “We cannot solve our problems with the same level of thinking that created them.”

We experience new ideas all the time, yet the process is a mystery. We have no idea where we go to get our next thought, and most of the time it comes of its own accord. But when Shakespeare, Newton, or Mozart went inside, they accessed a level of creative thinking that was extraordinary. This level is silent, rich with possibilities, dynamically involved with life’s challenges, intuitive, and insightful. By contrast, most of us go inward and find much less of these qualities – never none, because the mysterious agency that produces thoughts, feelings, and sensations is at work in everyone.

The level of the solution isn’t hard to reach. Everything depends on what you find when you get there. Words meet their match while discussing. Even to say that we go “inward” is a misnomer, because consciousness pervades the bodymind. It isn’t inside your head or inside a cell. Mind has no dimensions the way a dining room or an auditorium does. Because words fall short, only the experience of becoming more creative, insightful, and intuitive really counts.

Can we trigger the experience voluntarily? To some extent yes. Removing stress gives creative thinking a chance to emerge clearly. Being relaxed and open is necessary. Training in a particular field provides a grounding of knowledge and skill. But you can attend to all of these preparations and not make much progress when it comes to problem-solving, because you haven’t changed your state of consciousness. That is accomplished not by thinking about it but by actually going beyond your current state of consciousness.