Building Blocks

Of all the toys I had as a little boy, I think Lego for me was the best. My fresh imagination creates structures using Lego blocks of different shapes, sizes, and colors. Perhaps I wasn't just playing with them; I was creating possibilities. It was my early days of creative exploration. I could imagine all sorts of forms, structures and humanoid characters. I could create different kinds of aircraft and spaceships that can travel to my boundless fantasies. I was in my own virtual universe made together by my Lego blocks and my infinite imagination.

Such a toy is ingenious, says Norwegian author Jostein Gaarder in his novel on the history of philosophy, Sophie's World. Lego gives children not only the power to create from simple blocks, but also the power to destroy. Here, the essence of destruction is not about to eliminate or crush anything. It is, in fact, the very impetus of re-creation. The process of destruction is not so much of destroying, but of re-creating. Whenever kids pick the blocks and attached them according to the forms they wish, thereafter they may simply choose to disintegrate them and bring them back to the same basic blocks they once were. Then, they can create whatever new forms they wish from the same set of blocks. Nothing is being destroyed, after all. Not a single block is wasted. Every block can be used again as a part of another created form.

Is the Universe made the same way? Are we not, living and nonliving, made from the same ingenious building block, the same stuff that stars and galaxies are made? If so, then whatever is created in our material and physical reality will soon perish or disintegrate naturally, and the "blocks" that have made them will be used again to create new physical forms? The constant process of creation and re-creation lies in the ingenious hand of the Absolute, the Source of all basic building blocks that makes every form be formed and transformed, the one we often call God--the one otherwise known as Love.

How does Love create and re-create? Such words cannot describe it. For the process of knowing Love is beyond the specific processes of creation and re-creation. In the realm of Love, both of them are indistinguishable. And it's own building block is itself. Love creates and re-creates Love. As Love creates Love, it manifest in millions of ways. Love is the very essence which builds all the color, the forms and the possibilities of our reality.

"Love creates and re-creates Love...Love is the very essence which builds all the color, the forms and the possibilities of our reality."

Take sometime to observe the place where you are right now. Every thing is made of that essence, of that basic atom or quantum particles, so to speak, which, according to physicist, make anything real and tangible. You and the table and the computer and wall and the water are made of the same particle, forming in different ways and manifesting in different shapes, sizes, textures, and colors. With those differences, experience becomes diverse, and expressions becomes myriad, all according to their functions that support every turn of your very existence. Nonetheless, all of them, including you, are impermanent. In time, we will perish, but process remains the same, creating and re-creating innumerable forms, having their unique, kaleidoscopic nature. Love is understood in this process, by seeing that this is the endless dance of creation and re-creation, like the dance of Shiva.


While we often see stumbling blocks in our creative processes, we can begin to see and use them as building blocks of Love, from which all creative momentum accelerates us to the peak dynamics of creation and recreation. Like the Lego block, no block can be a waste, for each has its purpose to build and form the grand structure our imagination creates. We transform each block and make them again a part of new forms, of new transformations.

Love is creating and re-creating Love moment to moment. You and I are both creations and re-creations of Love. The beauty of this is that we are not just at the mercy of those processes. We are, ourselves, the processes of creation and re-creation. All we have to do is to participate consciously. So we can begin to create and recreate Love with full consciousness. So we can form and transform the world into Love. And the only building block we can use is Love.






photo (above) by Reeport