Reply #123: One way to trap a monkey [View All]

I do not know all the options or any of the finite answers. I am not looking for the answers any more. When I find an answer I know there are many more just under the surface. Many more, and always much more than I can hold. You may not agree. I do like finding out more ways to do and view the same things from different perspectives. I search, but more for the questions and those different perceptions that show different facets of the same situation. So I do think that I am a student as you say but not with the focused hope that I can acquire enough knowledge to succeed or to even be a contender but with the opposing hope that I can let go of all that I carry (nuts) so I can see and not be bound by what I do not need. I know where they are, some of those nuts of value that is, and I can go and touch one now and then when I need to but I do not have to possess them and carry them with me or feel like I need to show them to others unless there is a reason other than the one of being considered knowledgeable by others. There are many reasons to show the nuts but never to those who fixate and are stopped short in their journey of discovery by being given gold mines before they know the value of gold.

“Knowledge puffs up,” it is said and it is true. I have been a victim of puffery both my own and others and I do not like it nor will I practice it knowingly and I like to prick it with a pin even if I have to stick myself.
At this stage I let others hold and know the answers. They are, all of them, correct and even though all answers may contradict each other from time to time they are still correct at the proper time and circumstance because the truth contains all the possible answers and solutions. I do not follow the tides and the winds anymore. Once upon a time I did, but now I just go.

I am thinking about how monkeys once were caught. The hunters would take a jar with a wide neck and put a sizable nut inside of it. Then they would tie the jar to a big tree with a long rope and wait. The monkey would come along and put its hand in the jar and grab hold of the nut. When he did that the hunter/s would make an appearance and the monkey would bolt only to come up short and have its hand stuck in the jar. The hunters would come closer and closer and the monkey would screech and howl and jump and scream but he would not let that nut go. His fist held him prisoner. All he had to do was open his hand and he could run and escape the hunter.

I am sure that he had his reasons for holding on to the nut. The only problem is those reasons cost him dearly. He lost his freedom to either a pot or a cage. Sometimes we have a nut that we know is good and we will not let it go and because of that - year after year and season after season the year comes and goes and we have our nut and never let it go and never know what changes outside of our vision come and go and how things evolve and we never see the things we may hear about with our own eyes that do work and we do not make room for that growth. We do have our nut and it is good.

There is a big world out there once we let go of the nut. A different world a world other than the world of the nut. The nut will still be there if we let it go and when we come back to the familiar and the safe we can pick it up and perhaps for the first time let it go and.... pick it up when we need it and smile at all that we have learned.