Friday, June 24, 2005

The sewing together of two concepts – Intuition and Paradox Thinking

The other day, I was reflecting on the books that have made a difference in my life (for a blog post) and ended up going down memory lane to recall one of the first ever self-help/intuition/thinking books that I’d read – 100% mind power. The realization and acceptance of the fact that this book had made a difference and the act of writing about it itself kindled in me, a strong desire to go back to it. And so I did.

Here’s something that I found to be profound. (Actually, the book is full of such profound thoughts) Though the author relates this real-life incident only for the purpose of highlighting the role of intuition in life, yours truly also saw it from another angle – that of paradox thinking.

100+ years ago, Elias Howe was working day and night for weeks together to create a sewing machine. He had one problem - How to thread the needle and still hold the upper (thick) end in the machine? (Think of a regular needle that we use for stitching. It has a hole in the thick end). After another such thoughtful day, he went to sleep and dreamt of cannibals. They were (amusingly enough) dancing around Elias. One of them declared that Elias would be eaten if he did not create a perfect sewing machine in 24 hours. Then, Elias noticed that one of the cannibals had a spear in his hand and the spear had a hole in the pointed (thin) end! Elias thus woke up in a cold sweat…with the answer to his problem!!!! The modern sewing machine was created...!

I don’t have to explain the role of intuition and can’t resist the temptation of reiterating the role of paradox thinking. The solution was ‘simple’. It was just about trying the opposite of what was. It was a result of paradox thinking – though, in this case, not by the conscious but by the subconscious mind; shall I say, it (the subconscious mind) stood with him through thick and thin?
;-)

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