Aha

I enjoy listening to the Norwegian band A-ha but this post is not about them. It’s about that moment in time when one says Aha (Captain Hastings in Pioret and Dr Watson in Holmes probably would have said it; these words however are not in the accounts as written by the two great authors). An Aha moment or an eureka moment is one where there is absolute clarity and a solution presents its self to the receiver. 

Is it a flash of light or something that can be sustained? Can one live a Aha existence every moment of every day ? Or can one train oneself to have at the very least one aha moment in the 24 hours we consider as a day. To be able to see with absolute clarity the entire story on a fraction of a moment. Lets consider the moment in detail to understand it.    

Most people that experience this Aha tend to describe it as a moment when they were not thinking of anything. Think about it - Archimedes was chilling out in a bath when all of a sudden he decided to jump out yelling Eureka.  He later explained it as a point in time when he was oblivious to the surroundings and was not thinking of anything. The two side kicks I mentioned earlier - There Aha moment happens when they are absolutely dumbfounded and have no idea what the solution might be. Closer home; many time and oft I find a solution present its self when I least expect it. The common experience is that I have to an extent blanked my mind of the problem, its potential solution and everything and anything related to the subject/idea. 

The electronics engineer in me would like to think about this phenomenon as something like a radio set. One needs to tune into the station else all one hears is noise; in this case however one needs to forget about the millions of stations and trust that the tuning would happen automatically. 

Our day to day life is spent in finding solutions. Some are quite easy to find; for the difficult ones more often than not we fight the question. Maybe it’s better to let go and trust that the answer will present itself. This is one of the corner stones of the Tao. Would not recommend going down this path if you are still figuring out cause and effect. 

C