114. Acting From Intuition

The rational mind does not trust what it cannot understand. It works in language, and it tries to comprehend ideas by relating them to other ideas using logic. If it cannot do this, then it abandons the idea as irrational and unjustified.

If the idea in question pertains to the future, then it is often more rational to leave the outcome blank than to make an unjustified prediction. This can be helpful because it limits speculation about what cannot be known. But it can also leave us paralyzed, unable to act in one way or the other due to a lack of definite knowledge.

113. A Genuine Gift

She pauses to read what she just wrote. She examines the text carefully, looking for both errors and possible improvements. She is always reading herself as she writes. She is trying to see if her language is working.

What does it mean for the language to work? She thinks it has to do with the text’s ability to communicate her meaning. It is a question of whether or not her reader will grasp what she is trying to say. Who is this reader? It is someone she imagines, an unknown person she is always thinking about.

112. The Trap Of Reason

I sometimes think I can solve a problem just by thinking more clearly about it. With enough careful thought, I will be able to figure out how to make everything work in a way that satisfies my desires and causes no one harm.

And so I think and I reason and I come up with strategies and solutions. But while these solutions work in theory, they are also entirely impractical and there is no real way for me to implement them. I need a solution that is feasible. But my analysis of the feasible options reveals that none of them will do what I want. There will be pain and suffering for me or someone else, and this is what I most want to avoid.

111. What Compassion Demands

There are moments when you must ignore the rules in order to do what is right. You must keep this in mind, lest you adopt the false belief that you are always constrained by the rules. If you believe this, you might do wrong by quietly following the rules instead of doing the right thing, which also happens to be forbidden.

Fortunately, such occasions are rare. You can usually live congruently with others, in the ways they understand and appreciate. You can do this while also creatively bending and changing the rules where it’s possible for you to do so, in order to live a life that is free, joyful, and meaningfully yours. In general, congruence is beneficial, because others will then accept you as one of them, and this is part of building solidarity and community.

110. The Pursuit Of Revelation

Art is born through the interaction of imagination and intuition. Materials are provided by the imagination and shaped by intuition. The shape emerges through aesthetic judgments that intuitively arise. These judgments cause the artwork to take one form instead of another and to have one content instead of another. It is through open and careful attention to all of the intuitions that arise throughout the creative process that the artist creates a powerful work.

109. Time Is Nothing

To see that time is nothing is both our fear and our glory.

It is our fear because we know that our own subjective existence is confined to a limited period of time. Once that period has come to an end, our individual experience will cease to exist. The limit of death is inescapable simply because we cannot live without our bodies that exist in time. If time is nothing then it would seem we are also nothing. Regardless of the length of our lives or the duration of our impact, we would be reduced to nothing relative to the endless universe. Our actions, our feelings, and our very existence itself would seem to have no meaning in a world so incredibly vast.

108. To Allow Myself To Surrender

It’s the middle of the day and I’m hunched over my desk. I’m trying to read through some notes I need to organize. I’m rushing because I foolishly wasted the morning on mindless media, and now I feel obligated to catch up. There are dozens of pages before me, and I’ve only read through two or three.

Then there’s a knock at the door. I almost ignore it at first, but then I realize I’d better see who it is. When I go to check, there’s no one. I look around the empty hallway, halfway expecting someone to appear, but there really is no one. Strange, but I don’t have time to think about it.

107. The Possibility Of Hope

When I’m overwhelmed by the bleakness of the world, my suffering feels inevitable. Everything around me feels final and limiting. Meaning and purpose feel distant or even absent. My present situation feels like the only one available to me and any kind of change feels impossible.

In such a state, there is no way for me to break out of the cycle of suffering. My actions will be mostly reactions to my misery, attempts to temporarily assuage the pain I feel. But by acting in this way, I only guarantee further suffering down the road. I need to see what I must do to bring my suffering to an end, but I cannot because my attention is completely distracted.

106. A Surprising World

You always see the world from your own point of view. You know the world is not your perception of it, and it might even be quite different from what you see. There are many parts of the world you haven’t seen, parts beyond the range of your present understanding. You know such things exist, because you’re sometimes surprised by the things you discover.

But sometimes it feels like it’s been ages since you saw anything genuinely new. You’re then tempted to conclude that you’ve seen it all, and the world has nothing left to offer you. But then you’re surprised once again and you realize the foolishness of your conclusion. Others see the world differently than you do, and sometimes they know things you don’t know. This is evidence enough to regularly remind you that you haven’t actually seen everything.