I saw Nuri sitting in meditation so motionless that not even one hair moved. I asked,
"From whom did you learn such deep meditation?"
"I learned it from a cat waiting by a mouse hole.
The cat was much stiller than I.
As we lose our vagueness about our self, our values, our life situation, we become available to the moment. It is there, in the particular, that we contact the creative self. Until we experience the freedom of solitude, we cannot connect authentically. We may be enmeshed, but we are not encountered. Art lies in the moment of encounter: we meet ourselves and we meet our self-expression. We become original because we become something specific: an origin from which work flows.