Personal transformation is knowing what you no longer want to channel through yourself. Knowing what you no longer want from your creativity can make you the closest witness to your transformation.
Creating something to appease myself when I played the first tune on my keyboard as a child.
Creating something to nourish myself when I wrote my first Haiku.
Creating something to test myself when I turned my obscure thoughts into a book.
Creating something to use myself when I drafted my first children’s story.
Creating something to share myself when I penned ten more stories.
And perhaps now, creating something to dissolve myself.-
If you ever want to experience freedom in your lifetime, and to experience it quietly, believably, finitely, effortlessly, and not like a question that rises like a hydra, or an obscure peak on which you stomp your blistered foot, then plead the stars for strength or a mysterious alignment, to let you trust a person truly, entirely, and wordlessly, like an unripened fruit clinging to an ancient tree.
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You can turn your back on diverging roads and reach the cusp of a new pair. You can set foot on one and see the other disappear with her believers. You can turn your back again, reach another cusp, and set foot on yet another stretch.
But when you are ordained to be on an endless meandering road, swaying you to every exploited and untouched piece of land and across the length and breadth of the earth, there is no divergence to turn your back on, no cusp to reach, and no road to leave behind.-
It takes a great madness to seek Wild in the Society and a great purpose to seek Society in the Wild.
It takes a great longing to seek Wild away from the Society and a great patience to seek Society away from the Wild.
It takes a great discipline to become Society and a great randomness to become Wild.-
To think that existence is human-centric is to think that every human experience of the past and present, of the living and the dead can add up to give an account of existence. This perhaps is the reason for humanity’s discontentment, delusion, and greed, as we become restless with our own experience, doubtful of its truthfulness, and diverge to imitate, capture, and conform to experiences that aren’t ours.
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A fisherman who leaves the river, sees other fishermen flow past him into terrains he can't see.Â
A monkey who sits on a tree, sees a stream of water making her way between stretches of trees.Â
A traveller who elevates to incredible heights, sees a few meanders of the river and how she blends with the valley.
A seabird who flies over the river at a delicate distance, sees all twists and turns, hears the melody of water, and comes across the overwhelming spread of an ocean.Â
They all have a story to tell, but only the bird can tell the story of spiritual awakening. The point and pointlessness of her entire flight.-
To live creatively is to experience things getting out of hand, leaving us too insignificant to have a sense of ownership over our own creativity. Like love, creativity in its prime humbles a disciple, but unlike love, it is the most benevolent master.
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Perfection of skill lies in plucking a part of nature, like muddying our hands to resurrect a dead shrub.Â
Perfection of being lies in unwittingly carrying a part of nature, like bringing our soiled footprints and drenched clothes to what we call home.Â-
Free Thinking
There is a sense of peace, rest, and relief in how a shepherd treads. There is a sense of peace, rest, and relief in how he tends the flock of sheep. The sheep collide, muddle one another's steps and sight, but the shepherd nudges and takes them along.
"Free-thinking" is that shepherd, tending the flock of norms, beliefs, moralities, myths, and possibilities. She nudges one of them and witnesses the life in the nudged one. She is not a devourer. She is not an onlooker. She is not a sadist. She is just a good old shepherd.-
Either put your intellect, emotion, and imagination in equal measures into a timeless creation, or intellectualize, emote, and imagine profoundly without any prejudice for any of the three. Either create a work of art or become one.
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