What is insight? Consider insight as the last cornerstone that follows tranquility, confidence and strength. When these 3 foundations are in place, insight follows naturally. That does not mean that they need to be developed to perfection. On the basis of new insights, your sense of tranquillity and confidence will continue to grow. Your strength will also develop further. You have, as it were, entered an upward spiral of growth. That spiral of growth in combination with the growth of insight is almost endless. The universe is immense and we as human beings only understand a very small part of it.
Insight is a very broad concept. The easiest description of insight is that you understand something, that you understand how it is put together. Understanding how something works also has many gradations. You can see and perceive that someone gets angry, only you don’t know why yet. One of the more important insights into your life is that you don’t know why someone is angry. On the basis of tranquillity and confidence, you do know that there may be a very good reason for that. That’s why there doesn’t have to be an immediate reaction on your part.
How does insight develop?
No longer be reactive and know why is one of the greatest insights you can have. Many books have been written about this and a very famous one is that of ‘The Four Agreements’ by Don Miguel Ruiz. One of those four insights is not to take it personally. Taking something personal is by definition an ideal recipe for a counter-reaction. If you say something back, then be impeccable, in what you say. In addition, a third insight is to base yourself on facts and not on assumptions. Finally, of course, there is this one: do your best. You will need this to always comply with the first three.
Knowing how something works is one thing, but actually achieving it, is something else. How many times do we say it hasn’t quite gotten through to you. You actually know something, but you don’t know exactly where to put it.
Most teenagers already think they know exactly how the world works. Often they are also very cosmopolitan. In 30 years’ time, ask those same teenagers how they look back on their teenage years. Often they’ll praise it as a beautiful, carefree time. They also realize that if they knew then what they knew now…. These teens haven’t actually changed, but they understand much better now, than they did when they were teenager. It’s called understanding. You look at the same facts in a different way.
Insight from intuition
Insight can also take shape through intuition. Sometimes you don’t quite know how something is put together yet, but intuitively you feel that it’s right. Intuition can also take on a form as creativity. Thoughts just come to the surface in you. How you can tackle or solve something. These, too, are insights that the universe offers you. But also insights based on experience that come to the surface spontaneously. If you have ever been lonely, it will be much easier to recognize loneliness in others. You will also react differently to someone’s loneliness. Certainly if there is a lot of understanding for the other person’s situation, you will have gained a new insight.
Insights also present themselves as the connection between apparently loose things. The whole universe is connected and everyone and everything influences each other. Think of the tides of the sea. These are caused by the moon. The moon orbits around the earth and creates ebb and flow. Just as important are the bees for pollination of many flowers, plants and trees. These in turn make pollen and nectar that bees feed on. Insects, especially bees, are at the base of the food pyramid. A very large proportion of crops depend on pollination by bees and insects. Bees do free work by pollinating many fruits and vegetables. Bees therefore have a crucial position in our own food chain. Without bees, our food supply becomes difficult.
Insight is also in little things
The fact that bees are very important for our daily food on the table. It gives some people great insights and others continue to see it as a fact. The insight that we as human beings are simply part of nature and that we are completely dependent on it. That we have to be careful about our nature because it is the basis of our well-being. That insight does not even have to be experienced consciously all the time. You can also start behaving differently unconsciously. Eating organic products more often. Eating less meat. Placing a bee hotel in the garden. All things you do without having to consciously think about bees every time. The insight of the bees has become a warm feeling for nature, inside your body. Insight based on facts and knowledge.
Really understanding insights from ‘tile wisdom‘ or quotes isn’t always easy for many. Just think of a quote from Thich Nhat Hanh: “There is no way to happiness, happiness is the way.
The meaning changes over time
You can spend days discussing what it really means. Now it has a certain meaning for you, and if you read this in a year’s time, probably another one. You have gained a new insight. Back to the quote: you can’t learn to be happy, it has been in you since you were born. It is up to you to let it come out. Just as you cannot learn to fall in love. It just happens to you. For some people it happens very often, and for others only once in a while.
Try to describe love
Try describing love. You can describe it with all kinds of small characteristics, but the power, the intensity of love cannot be described. Butterflies in your belly are often mentioned when you are in love. They are some weird tickles in your belly that often don’t even feel uncomfortable. But the only real way to know what love is, is to experience it yourself. Teenagers who fall in love for the first time in their lives intuitively know that this is the infatuation they’ve heard others talk about. From that moment on, they also know that falling in love is an enormously strong force that can hardly be stopped. That realization is a wonderful insight.
This is called insight from experience. Suppose you’ve never heard a musical instrument before in your life. Then you can read a whole book about how a piano sounds. But the booked can’t describe how you can be touched by a piano, until you have heard the instrument play. If you’ve ever heard the beautiful sound of a piano, you’re going to love other sounds too. Also the sound of a trumpet, violin or saxophone will be experienced as beautiful. Before you know it, you have developed a love for music that goes much further. Much further as the sound of those first piano notes you heard. So based on that first experience with the sound of a piano, you develop a new insight. Music is beautiful.
From insight to change
An insight causes a change in you. It is a form of becoming aware of something. It is the synergy between things that strengthens your knowledge and consciousness. You will look at them differently and you will see their connection with the environment. Your world has grown a little bigger again. Seeing that connection is not based on the facts you have observed. That coherence, that insight, comes from outside. It is a truth that vibrates completely with you. It is a truth that comes from a very powerful source.
This source is also called the Akashic Field. Ervin Laszlo has written a book about it. He describes the Akasha-field as a connecting cosmic field in the universe. Everything and everyone is connected to it. It forms the origin of our realities and it is also a kind of memory of the universe. All information is stored in it and can also be recalled. The insights that reach you, almost always come from here. By building up tranquility and confidence, you will be better and more able to connect with it. Not that you can consciously plug in to it. But unconsciously you reach those thoughts and insights, because the universe has already made that connection itself.
Give insights a helping hand
Insights can also help you on your path. There are numerous sets of insight cards available. Tarrot cards are, of course, well known. If you have a question, if you have a problem, many people use insight cards. The universe will help you to pick the right card that will help you with the next step. They will inspire you to give direction to your life at that particular moment.
One of the insights you’ll get from reading this article is, that it’s not that difficult to change the world at all. A lot of people still think they have to do big things. Start to change yourself. If everyone does this, the world will look very different tomorrow.
Start in your backyard
So you can just start in your own ‘backyard’. Take small steps that are within your own reach. You will see that you will inspire people, who will do the same. If everyone takes a step forward, we have taken a giant leap as humanity. These collective steps forward are what humanity needs now.
Finally, remember that the outflow determines the inflow. What you give to the universe also comes back from the universe. Tranquility, confidence, strength and insight have a lot to do with that. Should you ask yourself whether give and take are in balance? You don’t have to keep records to keep in balance. Just trust that the universe can do it by itself.