“A journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step.” -Lao Tzu
Do you know Aesop from Aesop’s Fables?
I guess, you probably remember a lot from your childhood storytelling.
He has been with us alive for a very long time.
Really a very long time from the past, ancient time, at least, think of more than 2400 years ago.
I don’t know how much you know about Aesop, he was a slave, who lived in ancient Greece from 620-564 B.C.
He was eventually freed from slavery because of his amazing storytelling abilities.
His more than 600 fables are equally amazing, inspiring, creative, and magnificent even today.
My question is, was he a genius?
I would say say – yes.
He became a genius in storytelling no matter what the circumstance was, as being a slave.
Even though he was a slave, he used to constantly imagine stories all the time.
He used to imagine stories very consciously with open eyes.
He used imagination and consciousness for his creativity.
Storytelling, intuition, and imagination
Humans learnt to lie an hour after they learned to talk, this is another example of how genius our mind is.
I always take my life events as an example, why does each event produce either positive or negative effects on me?
For example, for me rock music is irritating, it excites my temper and pressure but for my daughter it is delightful and vibrant.
Why?
I don’t know. I guess our minds work differently.
I remember one of my neighbors, his divorce became traumatic for him because it was unwanted for him and he was trying to avoid it by all means.
But last week my cousin’s friend got divorce and it was a desired and happy moment for her.
This is another example of how our mind takes the same event as a happy or stressful moment for each of us differently.
Because our mind is a genius in itself.
The only thing we have to do is how to react to the moments accepted by our brain.
The difference between ordinary and genius minds is that the latter learns how to react with each life event very early in its formative process by its intuitive and imaginative practices.
I.C. Robledo, author of the “The Secret Principles of Genius” defines genius as a journey to greatness with relentless pursuit of improvement and self-discovery. In my view, improvement and self-discovery happens through intuition and imaginative practices.
Aesop used the same imaginative process in his storytelling.
Our mind is very complex and the way it works is not only curious, it’s very instructive too.
When we have a small amount of information to work with and if we work with great care and focus, we can break it down into microscopic details.
Our mind has the energy to do so.
Once we do gradual incremental learning in any work, our unconscious understanding of the information regarding the work becomes more advanced.
We generally learn how to trust our imagination and intuitive curiosity to handle the technical component of the work.
At any moment, our conscious mind can zoom in on very fine details of data and information.
This awareness of how our brain works has been applied by many great human minds in history.
The world of communication and the world of processing communication is very different but still our mind does it very consciously and cleverly.
Genius is nothing but the love of doing something from inside without any immediate benefit, but there could be tangible as well as intangible benefits in the long run.
Edison, Gandhi, Gates, Einstein, and Musk
Like Aesop, what do you think about Thomas Edison?
Was he a genius?
I would say, yes.
Thomas Edison tested more than 1600 substances before he found tungsten as the most effective element to be used for his iconic discovery of the incandescent light bulb.
What do you think about Mahatma Gandhi?
Was he a genius?
I would say, yes.
He single-handedly overcame the British Empire, the great force in the world then.
Gandhi was quite aware about the intrinsic dignity of a human, the right to freedom, sovereignty, and self determination.
Gandhi always believed that human rights aren’t granted by any earthly power, they are ingrained in the nature of humans because they are inherent in their creation.
But still, it took him a very long time to instill his thoughts to the general public.
What do you think about Bill Gates?
Is he a genius?
I would definitely say, yes.
Remember, he only ate and did coding all night without sleep in the early days of Microsoft.
Bill Gates, a technologist, business leader, and philanthropist, says in his recently published memoir “Source Code,” “ I felt like a misfit as a kid, a rebellious teen, almost getting kicked out of college but many people believed in me, pushed me to grow, and helped me turn my quirks into strengths.”
What do you think about Albert Einstein? Albert Einstein’s biography by Walter Isaacson is a must read book.
Was he a genius?
Of course, all of us think so.
Remember, Einstein’s name is associated with so many peer-reviewed publications which appeared to be wrong.
Let’s take the current iconic figure Elon Musk, the biography of Elon Musk by Walter Isaacson is also an inspiring read.
Is he a genius?
I would definitely say, yes.
By the way, he has slept many nights on the floor of the assembly lines of a car manufacturing company.
We all have only one destination, which is to go from one point to another point.
We all have to have a reason to originate our journey.
Everybody has dreams, pains, and sufferings to promote humanity, that’s what Thomas Edison and Mahatma Gandhi did consistently in their lifetime.
Humanity always forces us in a new place, new opening, and a new destination although the whole process of transference is very tiring and exhaustive.
How many times did Thomas Edison and Mahatma Gandhi hit rock bottom before they learned a lesson?
A lot of times.
After reading some biography books, what I learnt is that genius is a sheer quantity of human suffering and commitment, it’s very difficult to absorb and understand, but it moves slowly within our mind, very slowly.
Genius is consciousness, motivation, and progression
I’m a scientist, I know the pain of testing a few substances if something is not working.
The patience for testing 1600 substances by Thomas Edison in the lab is not ordinary, it’s genius.
Basically, the genius mind enjoys doing it, and is really interested in knowing more about something which anybody does intrinsically everyday.
This happens because consistent great minds make their choices from their values, those values are their intrinsic motivators.
It’s one thing to conceive of the light bulb or give people the right of freedom but it’s something else to make it happen.
Genius is motivation and motivation is the consistency to make a thing happen.
Motivation in humans is derived from meaning and purpose as in Edison and Gandhi.
People whom we say are creative merely design, discover, write, paint, or sculpt.
But, they make it first within their own mind because they have already seen those images in their minds.
Aesop’s storytelling ability is the reflection of it.
Thomas Edison, Mahatma Gandhi, and Albert Einstein didn’t dance on the floor from logic, thinking or any intellect, they danced because they felt like doing dance.
Feeling is the first part of a genius.
Scientifically, genius means the source of creative leaps of awareness to all our consciousness and imagination.
It is the practice of becoming more aware of our consciousness each moment, each hour, each day with shift of progression.
Do you love working without fear?
Do you remain quiet without frustration?
Probably less likely.
But why?
Have you ever tried to know?
These answers come from genius minds, and only by practice of making ourselves in full awareness of what we are doing.
David R. Hawkins, MD, PhD, the author of “Power vs. Force” says, “love has a higher frequency of consciousness and fear has a lower frequency of consciousness.”
Very few selected people experience only love in their lives because they are aware that love could be masked by fear, which is noise.
Of course, these are genius minds.
For ordinary people the frequency of fear is so high that it overlaps the frequency of love, this is basically the low level of consciousness within us.
When we remain not conscious at all times, we might feel good but in a completely negative mood.
Our consciousness is exactly the same as a chess move that we play correctly but at the wrong move in a particular game.
Einstein, Heisenberg, Bell, Bohr, Newton and many other great inventors were not actually born geniuses.
They knew and demonstrated that everything in the universe is subtly dependent upon every other thing around.
This is basically the indication of the full awareness of full consciousness.
I can imagine the story of the falling apple, earth, gravity from Newton; he was not the first to see an apple falling from a tree.
This is the result of complete awareness of his consciousness.
All of these great minds reacted to the relationship of one thing over others in a different way than many ordinary people.
David R. Hawkins, MD, PhD, the author of “Power vs. Force” says “our mind is a computer terminal connected to a giant database.”
This database is our consciousness and our own cognizance is just a mere individual expression.
In reality, this database is the source of genius for which everyone has access.
The only question is how we utilize and understand the database for our purposes.
What counts for most people to be genius is not how much they know about databases, but rather how realistically they define what they don’t know about databases.
This ‘what they don’t know’ is awareness.
Conclusion
The learning lesson I got is that we don’t have to be genius in order to achieve good results in our lives. Genius is, we must recognize our own limitations and follow a course in life which is certain to work reasonably well.
We have to keep our thoughts and practices simple like Thomas Edison and Mahatma Gandhi.
We have to stop dreaming about anything without putting our feet first on the ground.
If anyone promises me to teach to be a genius, I’d respond to my inner self with a very quick ‘no’.
I’m sure, it’s not going to happen anytime soon.
First, we’ve to keep feet on the ground, learn to walk, start running, keep running long distances, practice drinking, eating, and breathing while running. That’s what I did in my marathon practice.
We have to make sure that we are fully aware of our consciousness of why we do the task, what we do, and how we do it, and just follow the process of genius.
By the way, I’m not a genius because I have not consistently followed and practiced what I just said in the previous lines but I’m learning to practice.
Elizabeth Gilbert, the author of “Big Magic” says “The universe buries strange jewels deep within us all, and then stands back to see if we can find them.”
I enjoyed watching and listening her TedTalk “Your elusive creative genius.”
Yam Timsina, PhD, writes primarily on health basics, scientific progress, social upliftment, and value creation.
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