“In moments of great creativity, in moments of great beauty, there is utter tranquility; in these moments there is absence of self with all its conflicts; it is this negation, the highest form of thinking, that is essential for creative being.”
— J. Krishnamurti
At age 18, Narendranath Datta approached Ramakrishna Paramhansa and said, “Can you prove there is God? Can you make me experience it?”
Ramakrishna placed his foot on Narendranath’s chest, who went into a state of samadhi (the highest concentration) for four straight hours. Who emerged on the other side was Swami Vivekananda, the monk who had no more questions but knew the entire truth of the cosmos.
A moment of great beauty had dissolved his physical self and its conflicts, and created a being of the highest order.
You and I may not reach Swamiji’s level of enlightenment in this lifetime, but we can level up as humans. We can pursue creativity in our own lives in any form that pushes us to become better. That will subsume our ego, and with it, our conflicts, bad habits, and limitations.
It’s nigh impossible to walk away from bad habits (like non-stop scrolling) just like that. The void that gets created in the process is dangerous; it could lead us to other bad habits. But we can walk towards creativity and beauty, and all that’s bad will automatically fall away.