Aha moments wake you up to how stagnant your views are, and therefore your life is, when you only ever see things from one point of view. To revitalize your life, all you need do is create a little gap and be willing to look again…
When we look at any picture we immediately settle on a main element, the ‘figure’ that we bring into the foreground. We are hardly aware of what we’ve decided to put into the background, or ‘ground’. Below is a famous Gestalt picture. Have a look at it — what do you see as figure and what do you see as ground?
Do you see a pretty young lady or an ugly old hag?
Whichever you see, let her go now, let her recede into the background and bring the alternative subject to the foreground. If you saw the pretty young lady now see the ugly old hag. Take a moment…and make that switch!
(If you need help, the eye of the old hag is the ear of the young woman who is looking away. The old hag’s mouth is the young woman’s necklace).
The Aha moment switch rides along a brief tide of turbulence followed by delicious deliverance. It begins with a split second of brain stall; the left-brain hemisphere “seizes up” momentarily and in that tiny gap of confusion, in that impasse of not knowing, the right brain grabs the opportunity to show you something new. The new subject smashes through into the foreground, taking the place of the old picture and voila – the Aha moment!
The way you saw the picture is the way you see everything. Every perception presents you with a choice of figure and ground but you lock into what you first perceive as figure, blinding yourself to the alternative perspective. In this way you not only deprive yourself of the little thrill of excitement, the intrinsic satisfaction that comes with fresh insight, but you keep yourself stuck in the past.
So well established are our habits of perception that we never make room for an Aha moment. We never pause to allow the tiniest gap between thoughts, the space for insight. Yet it is in this gap between stimulus and response that the magic happens and something new and life enhancing can be revealed.
Practices to Remove Your Blinkers
Let it sink in that there are multiple ways of seeing things. You are simply stuck in “your” way and that’s okay. No judgment, just allow a gentle awareness of how you keep interpreting things in the same way, without pausing to reflect on alternatives.
Be willing to experiment with looking again. Energy flows to wherever your attention goes. So set your intention to create a gap in your thinking throughout the day. Whatever or whoever appears in your perception is an opportunity to take a deep conscious breath (a pause) and look again from as many angles as you can possibly see. Let go of old thinking and just look, with fresh eyes as if you’ve never seen it/him/her before.
Practice this and you will reap many rewards. Not least, you will connect to your intuitive, creative right brain hemisphere. As a result, decisions will be easier, creative ideas will flow and you will begin to feel alive again. You will lift your vibration to an energy that attracts miracles into your life. You stand to gain all this from allowing gaps between thoughts. So stop allowing your mind to control you, use your free will to control it.Stand in your power.
And, for heaven’s sake, mind the gap!