Lessons from Jonathan Seagull

A mentor told me I could learn a lot from this book called Jonathan Livingston Seagull, I'm still figuring out what am I exactly going to learn from it.

It's a simple story about a seagull, who thinks that the meaning of life is to fly high and fast without boundaries. However for seagulls in his community, they think life is about not being hungry, and wanting to fly fast is enough to get you kicked out of your Flock.

He's quite a special seagull, but I don't feel any special at all. So I don't know why I was assigned this book.

I think my best friend is special though. She has a great vision in life, just anything she puts her mind to, a lot of steps ahead of regular people. She's like a living, breathing Jonathan Seagull.

I think like a normie, I'm quite risk averse. I guess my mentor is trying to tell me to find a life purpose beyond my scarcity mindset of trying to make as much retirement money as possible?

For Seagulls, their resource is flying just enough to get fish to eat for the day. For humans, it's money that gets our stomach full, and because of my childhood traumas, I have a legit fear of going hungry, just like the seagulls (but not Jonathan)!

I've collected some interesting quotes and ideas I got from the book. And the interesting quotes begin from when he became an outcast from his Flock from having such ideas of going beyond fishing for hunger.

He was just flying on his own for a very long time, then later on there were 2 seagulls that visited him that were also like him. They said:

"One school is finished, and the time has come for another to begin."

I felt like we are sometimes too attached to our identity, which was formed by our past, that we limit ourselves to explore more into the future.

Who said that if you spent 20 years of your life dancing, that you cannot move into theatre? Who said that I was going to feel poor forever and I won't be able to become rich beyond my wildest dreams?

It all starts with a thought, that we can.

Later on he meets a mentor, a gull who was able to fly so fast that he was able to go beyond space and time.. talking gulls, and now quantum mechanics?!

Chiang the Elder Gull said -

"Heaven is not a place, and it is not a time. Heaven is being perfect."

"You will begin to touch heaven, Jonathan, in the moment that you touch perfect speed. And that isn't flying a thousand miles an hour, or a million, or flying at the speed of light. Because any number is a limit, and perfection doesn't have limits. Perfect speed, my son, is being there."

This made me think.

In the first part of the book, Jonathan talks a lot about going to 120 kph up to 220 kph! But Chiang's right, putting a number to it becomes a limit.

Just like putting a target number on your sales figures. But then again, there's another side to it - what we measure gets managed. So maybe a balance of both.

I remember the book by Grant Cardone called 10x. With anything we want to improve on, if we ask how can we double this, usually we would tweak something. But the method completely changes if you change your question to "how can I 10x this?"

How can I increase my income from $50k to $500k a year? The answer completely changes. What gets you from 50k to 500k requires you to be a different kind of person, so you're forced to think of a completely "new" way to get to this target. That kind of feels, limitless?

But maybe, numbers only applies to earthly things. My spiritual mentor works in the realm of Quantum Energy, where anything becomes possible, where manifestations start from thoughts.

Perhaps the takeaway from here is, just don't underestimate ourselves with some sort of limit, we can achieve literally anything as long as we can think it.

"To fly as fast as thought, to anywhere that is, you must begin by knowing that you have already arrived." The trick was to know that his true nature lived, as perfect as an unwritten number, everywhere at once across space and time.

An unwritten number, quantum, incomprehensible by a human brain. Have you seen the new movie Madame Web?

I'm shocked by its 11% critics score by Rotten Tomatoes. My personal rating is around 80% for this movie. It's actually a good movie, a lot better than what Marvel puts out nowadays..

I have a feeling they want to hide this idea of quantum energy. Madame Web is able to see all possibilities in one go, she's able to go beyond space and time and be at multiple places at the same time.

I think the movie is worth a watch, I was able to understand the true meaning of quantum better than any sci-fi movie I've seen.

Imagine having that power. Imagine, we can all be Madame Web ~ go beyond space and time, only limited my our minds.

"The gull who sees farthest who flights highest."

Yup, all we need is vision. The initial thought. The "how" will be taken cared of, the "how" is an earthly concept. We are firstly made up of energy, everything starts with our thoughts.

Whether you believe this or not, that's also your thought, and that will be the truth.

"I think therefore I am."

"... overcome space, and all we have left is Here. Overcome time, and all we have left is Now."

I've read in the book called The Untethered Soul once, that the past brings regret, and the future brings worry. If you stop living in the past and the future, only the Present remains, and no regrets or worries.

Space and time are somewhat always in the same field. Time is somewhat a kind of space.

I usually dread meeting new people, my introvert self worries about what to talk about, awkward silences, etc.

I also worry a lot about my retirement fund, I'm sure everyone worries about that, or even just being able to afford the day to day expenses. How can being present solve all of these?

As humans, we are constantly worrying or regretting. How can we focus on the present if the future present will have problems?

I still cannot fully understand it. I keep going back to the movie Madame Web as an example, to try to understand. It's still incomprehensible to me.

But perhaps once we've understand this, like really understand it, maybe that's when we can unlock unlimited love and happiness. Right now, love and happiness for me is a mindful choice, not yet a state.

".. a seagull is an unlimited idea of freedom, an image of the Great Gull, and your whole body from wingtip to wingtip, is nothing more than your thought itself."

...Unto my next book!