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How do GREAT people have GREAT ideas?
In 1665, because of the Bubonic plague, Newton was forced to go back to the countryside where he had his famous epiphany. But how did it happen?
In the illusion you see, it’s the same water that’s falling and going back up. Our minds work the same. This is why we tend to always repeat the same thoughts. Sometimes, we worry about something and can’t think of anything else. It’s because this is how the mind works. So, we must choose the happy thoughts we want our minds to repeat.
As for Newton, the thought he repeated in his mind was a question like. “Why is the Moon attracted to the Earth? Why doesn't it fly away?”
We know that epiphanies come from the mind. So what should we know about the mind to explain epiphanies? What's important is to realize that our minds work as loops. This is why we worry all the time. We often repeat the same thoughts over and over again and they make us anxious. Descartes famously said: "I think, therefore I am". But according to Eckhart Tolle, Descartes was wrong. Instead, we should say: "I think therefore I am worried!"
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Let's imagine what was happening in Newton's mind by repeating that question over and over again: “Why is the Moon attracted to the Earth? Why is the Moon attracted to the Earth? Why is the Apple attracted to the Earth? Why is the... the Apple?” the question inside his mind evolved when he saw the apple fall. The picture of the apple merged into the picture of the Moon and he had his epiphany about the Universal Force of Gravitation.
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The process is that we first have a desire. It can be to answer a question like Newton. That question may stay in the back of our mind without us being aware of it as the process may be unconscious. But something, however, will remind us of that question: an apple falling for example.
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If our epiphany is about a scientific discovery, we can call it a “Eureka moment”. The intellectual realization can be related to anything. The roots of epiphanies are our desires. Newton had the deep desire to understand the truth about celestial objects in movement. What are your desires?
Epiphanies are natural. You don't need to force the process. The key issue is to allow for that extra trigger - an apple falling - to come into our lives. But it can also be something we already know, something that's hiding somewhere in your mind, just waiting to be retrieved. The question is: "What to do to let it re-surface?" One possibility is to do something or to go somewhere where we wouldn't think we'd find the answer. Hopefully by chance, the answer will come. But as we are pushed by our desires, we may easily imagine that, sooner or later, it will come. But we need to set the stage for the epiphany to happen.
After epiphanies occur, our perception of reality changes. We then can entre a new phase in life. For more information, you can check out the book "The Science of Epiphanies".