Creativity comes from the “other than conscious” activity of the brain. The part that is neither linear nor word based.

I spend a large chunk of the day allowing it to do what it does…

It is allowing whatever is going on in the brain and in the body to go on… The best way is to make yourself busy.

Washing the dishes, vacuuming, doing the laundry, walking, or playing Freecell…

One of the useless things Tai teach is what he calls armchair meditation. He wants you to do serious linear thinking… which is proven to be a lot less accurate than your other than conscious brain doing the work unattended.

Why? Because the other than conscious mind is not corrupted. It doesn’t think one thing is good because the author was a Ph.D… and the other thing is bad, because it just… it just works. lol

So today I’ve done a lot of sitting and playing around. I guess a lot needed to get thought through without my conscious involvement.

Then, about 20 minutes ago, it popped up a tidbit I didn’t expect.

One of my students wrote “for some reason when you don’t answer a part of my post, i feel left out, ignored… there must have been an incident behind it.”

Now, that is obvious, there was always an incident… 🙁

Then I received the 50-year story of a classmate… Turns out we were also classmates in Architecture School… I never noticed her.

Her story of the 50 years caused envy, jealousy… grief, regret… quite a variety of feelings.

I spent the five years in architecture school fretting if I was talented, and then 17 years thereafter… with the same thing, except there were footprints in the sand.

She enjoyed being in the profession, I rarely did. Because I only enjoyed a little bit, maybe 5% of what it entailed, and the rest was slave labor.

And yet…

In my group of 26 people, about a quarter of the class, we talked a lot about talent. About who is talented, who isn’t.

It was a question that was killing us… or at least it was killing me.

That question belongs to the category of unanswerable questions. ((An unanswerable question is a question that no matter how many times you ask it, the question still remains. An unanswerable question is like a black hole: eats your life… a little bit at a time.))

Why unanswerable? Because there is no such thing… or if there is, it doesn’t matter.

You can be a winner with talent, and you can be a winner without talent.

One piece you do well… the next thing you may not. Talent won’t save your ass.

And that leads back to the student and his suffering: if you are waiting for the world to tell you if you are loved, if you matter, if you are important, you are going to suffer a lot.

Instead do what I am doing nowadays: I call it. The world may not agree… And it is the world’s problem.

Some people do, and those are the people who matter to me.

Everything I write is gold. Some more than others.

Whether people read it, share it, doesn’t make my stuff more valuable.

Whether you agree or not is not my problem.

Whether you are up for it of not… not my problem.

That doesn’t mean that from time to time I don’t feel compelled to talk directly to you… but that makes it more valuable to you… and I appreciate that.

The more I talk your language the more money I make.

But money is not everything. Money is just an indicator that you found something that pleases you.

Obviously, if you are a student of mine, I am paid to talk to you about what is important to you. And it is my pleasure to do so.

But on a free website… It’s my site. I don’t write to prove it to anyone that I know what I am talking about.

I am glad I am not an architect any more…

Am I Narcissistic? a psychopath?

Maybe. Maybe you have to be. Maybe it is “slave” or narcissistic?

I, honestly, don’t know. And don’t give a hoot either.

You see, it is either you know or you don’t.

If you don’t, you need to prove it. To yourself. To others.

Yell louder than others. Complain. Be visible…

It is one popular way to be a slave.

A slave to a notion, a slave to the unanswerable question… Am I smart? Am I loved? Do I matter? Am I enlightened? lol.

What do YOU say?

Are you hooked? Are you one of the half a billion people who is searching for proof on the internet that you are indeed smart…? No matter what anyone says?

Read the original article: The unanswerable question trap: it holds you by the balls