None of us is a genius.
But occasionally genius comes knocking.
Genius is what allows us to know without being taught.
Genius produces ideas that are not an imitation or a first cousin to other ideas.
Genius seems to come out of thin air.
When does it happen?
When we are thoughtless.
When we take a “creative pause”
when the thinker interrupts conscious preoccupation with an unsolved problem, and ends when the solution to the problem unexpectedly appears in consciousness. (“The Creative Pause”, 1967)
Where does it happen?
Genius happens in the shower.
It happens when we are lying in the grass and see an apple fall from the tree.
It happens when we exercise.
It rarely happens while we are sitting at a desk concentrating on the problems of the day.
How does it happen?
We let our minds go and they return having grabbed something “out there” and put it together with something “In here.”
To let genius find you, let go your mind.
When you hear the ‘knock knock” of two previously unrelated ideas bumping into each other, don’t ask “Who’s there?” Simply open the door and let genius in.