Gaining Glimpses of Wholeness

Many of you may have already seen or solved this puzzle in the past. If so, that’s fine. If you haven’t, see if you can complete the puzzle given the instructions above. Don’t get stressed and don’t place any labels such as ‘hard’ or ‘easy’ on this puzzle. Just try doing it.

I’ll admit that I actually had quite a difficult time doing this and it took me awhile to complete. I finally had an ‘aha’ moment and was able to complete it, but we’ll talk more about that in a minute. You’ll find the solution here (note: when you get to the page, click on the link ‘see solution.’)

What the Puzzle Shows Us

I, like most people, immediately looked at this puzzle in the construct of a box. When looking at nine dots laid out this way, our mind immediately tries to categorize and label what we’re seeing. For most, an image of a box, or square comes to mind. It’s from that perspective that I began this puzzle and started connecting the dots in the confines of the box. This inevitably led to confusion and frustration because I was not able to connect all dots without drawing more than four lines.

My ‘a ha’ moment came when I got frustrated and thought ‘c’mon, think outside the box here…what’s the solution?’ It was in that moment that my whole perspective and way of looking at the puzzle changed. I started to draw lines extending out of the imaginary boundary I had placed around the dots and was able to solve the puzzle a few minutes later. Ironically, I think the term ‘think outside the box’ might come from this puzzle. Let’s just say I have a whole new appreciation for that phrase, which I once thought was lame business jargon.

The puzzle itself is not confined to the boundary around the nine dots (i.e. the box). In order to solve the puzzle you have to change your perspective and see that the whole piece of paper/screen/surface is the field for solving the puzzle. If you confine yourself to the box itself you will likely get frustrated, down on yourself or think that it’s impossible to solve. I’ll admit that some of these feelings came over me as I worked through this.

Often in life, we fall into confined thinking patterns that can be detrimental to ourselves. As an example, maybe you have a desire to do something different than what you’re doing right now. Let’s be more specific and relate it to your job. Maybe you’re not happy with what you’re doing, but your current thinking patterns are not allowing you to move beyond the ‘problem’ of not liking your job. You may say things to yourself such as ‘I don’t know what I want to do,’ ‘I can’t leave this job,’ or ‘I will never be successful if I try to start my own business.’ When you do this you are essentially confining yourself to a set way of doing things. You will never be able to move beyond the problem or reach a satisfactory solution, much like the puzzle above, because you have confined yourself to habitual and limited ways of thinking.

If you have thought patterns such as above, maybe it’s time to start looking at things with a fresh perspective. You are more than the sum of your thoughts. There is a wholeness and connectedness that you can tap into when you start looking beyond your thoughts and trying new things. Continuing on the example above, maybe you want to start your own business but you don’t know how or don’t know where to start. Are you in a perpetual state of looking for the answers or hoping someone else will give you the answers? Do you just read blog posts, but don’t take any action?

Start moving beyond your fears and doubts and just try . It’s as simple and as powerful as that. See what happens and experiment. Like the nine dot puzzle above, you might have an ‘a ha’ moment and realize that you are not limited in what you can do. You’ll find that what you might have thought was too difficult or impossible is in fact not so difficult at all once you begin to see and connect to your wholeness.

A human being is part of a whole, called by us the Universe, a part limited in time and space. He experiences himself, his thoughts and feelings, as something separated from the rest a kind of optical delusion of his consciousness. This delusion is a kind of prison for us, restricting us to our personal desires and to affection for a few persons nearest us. Our task must be to free ourselves from this prison by widening our circles of compassion to embrace all living creatures and the whole of nature in its beauty. – Albert Einstein