Leave The Door Open...

...for that which is new.

Genpo Roshi tells of how his dog knows that in order to be able to pick up a new treat, she has to drop the bone that is already in her mouth. Why is it, then, that humans don't seem to understand this simple logic - that in order to be open to new realms of possibility, we have to let go of what we think we already know.

Andrew Cohen has some thoughts on that:

Without being aware of it, many of us tend to base our sense of what's possible now, in the present moment, upon what has or has not happened in the past. But if we want to be spiritually liberated, indeed if we want to be an expression of evolution-in-action, we have to dare to look beyond everything we already know. We have to leave the door open for the unimaginable. We have to stop weighing and measuring what's possible now by what has already happened. We have to let go of all the conscious and unconscious cynicism that has become habitual in our way of thinking.

That miraculous creative potential is the very essence of the evolutionary process when it's flourishing. Fourteen billion years ago with the Big Bang, the entire Universe emerged from nothing. Every step in the evolutionary process begins with an event that is defined by the emergence of something that has not existed before. In evolution there always exists the unmanifest potential of that which is new. That's what's so extraordinary about it. So in order to align yourself with that dynamic and creative process, you must let go of the inherent limitation of the past. You must strive to cultivate a relationship to your own experience in the present moment that makes the unimaginable emergence of that which is new possible right now.

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The creation of something new is not accomplished by the intellect but by the play instinct acting from inner necessity. The creative mind plays with the object it loves.
- Carl Jung
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