Zooming In and Out of The Puzzle

At this point I can flow in and out of my Puzzle vision easily. I like that I can reduce my life down to as little as 2 things at times or zoom into significant complexity and further into presence and I’m connected to both the in and the out (usually). Maybe you can have just 1 thing if you’re purpose-driven. For me, a 2-piece puzzle is as simple as it gets:

If I zoom in just one step, I get 5 pieces - family, friends, work, play, self-care. These are just my words to represent the things I care about and they likely mean different things to me than to you and of course your list is likely different words. I hold these things close to my heart and right in front of me when about to enter presence to chop wood and carry water. Hopefully everything I do is painting and placing pieces in these buckets.

Each word then breaks down into many words as I zoom in the complexity of the puzzle grows. Like that meme that went around for a while where it would be a painting and when the camera zoomed into the tiny eye of a person in the painting it transformed into a full painting of it’s own. That’s what can happen if we’re clear on our vision.

But sometimes, no matter how hard I try, I find myself working on, and placing, pieces that seem unrelated to the above. Clogged A/C drain line, traffic, anxious thoughts - these things feel as if they’re not in service to anything I want and feel frustrating. Wanting particular things is natural, I think, and I don’t fight that. I don’t believe desire to be the source of suffering, overactive desire can be. Comparing my current situation to what I want is creating the frustration and that’s where the vision, and presence, breaks down.

Everything can be in service to our Puzzle vision and/or helping other people’s Puzzle visions. If we’re present for all things there’s always a connection. That’s how presence works - our mind is making the connections all the time. Our mind never stops making connections to what we’ve chosen as our path (whether that was a conscious choice or our base programming) because it’s always helping us on that path.

So being able to simplify our puzzle down to just a few pieces helps us always be able to quickly make the conscious/subconscious choices to be in service to our vision and find the connections. In presence I zoom all the way into the surface point between my mind and the world around me. In presence the Puzzle disappears or becomes the universe of stars if I were to glance up.

I zoom in and out probably 50 or more times a day. Knowing where to zoom is held in my Puzzle vision and my intuition. Discipline to zoom into the right places is my forever challenge. Knowing a short list of things I want to always choose and be present for helps me lean those directions when faced with the dilemma - “I’m so tired, should I just go home and drop in front of the TV for a while or should I suck it up and go check in on family first?”