Things I have internalized from prior experience that were helpful to understand the book – The Creator’s Paradox
How do ideas originate? As a creator, can you think of the last time an original idea flashed in the inner eye of your mind? It must have felt like a spontaneous spark out of nowhere. Are you always able to explain how you arrived at it? Have you ever felt that moment to be so abstract that words fail to define it?
Often, in moments like these, most creators admit that the universe is making things happen through them rather than to them.
Things I believe to be true from before that were affirmed in the book – The Self-Deceit of Who I Am?
Like we disregard the sensations within a dream as unreal, the sages of the Upanishads discarded everything that was in a constant process of change as unreal. Their principle was neti, neti atman: “this is not the self, that is not the self”.
When you dig into your own personality deeper, you find layers of perceptions, thoughts, emotions, drives, and memories. The sages found that none of these are permanent and ignored these attributes in their pursuit of true nature of the universe.
Single biggest takeaway from the book that I intellectually understand but need to experience – The Power of “No Choice”
The greatest impact you will deliver in your life will come from a pursuit where you just know you do not have any other choice.
It will not come from evaluating options, or narrowing goals, or creating a vision. The moment you set a goal, it becomes a worthless chase. Then you are a doer, a slave seeking discipline to go to another imagined place for freedom. Eventually, you will lose to the natural state of your mind.
There is no “how” about finding that purpose. In fact, the moment you make something a purpose, you have already lost. The purpose will then become a destination you desire and the process will take form of the crutches you cling to.
However, once you innately discover what you “do not have a choice” about through investigation, desperation, understanding, and are sincerely devoted to that “what is”, you have started to seek the Truth. In that state, there is no want, there is no need, just a speckless clarity of the present moment.
It just is or it isn’t.
Rohit Malekar 