A compelling question creates movement in this universe of ours. That…I know for sure. From the many notes and journals I’ve kept over the years something of a gift emerged. Writing was a way of reconciling some of my own questions, and, as always, creating many new ones which, naturally, became the catalyst for new thoughts and again, more questions. It’s a crazy, cool loop to be caught up in…the whole curiosity thing. The aha was realizing, years ago, the power of curiosity and the perturbation of energy created by wonder. Ask a question and things start moving.
My goal became make every effort to live in the question, to go beyond just noticing differences and distinctions to actually going in search of them. I believe that is a real key to expanding understanding. Pursuing the differences in people, in cultures, in opinions or ideas is a big piece to becoming more of who you are…pushing the envelope of growing your own understanding and challenging your own assumptions. The hierarchy of events that move us to a more enlightened way of perceiving our world, other people, cultures and events is this…or partly this:
First we notice the “it” thing that is ‘different”in however many ways we determine that.
Then we think…‘That’s different”. But just noticing is not enough.
Maybe we accept those differences. Still that’s not enough.
Hopefully we get to a place of valuing the differences for what they bring us. That’s a bit better.
But the big shift is when we go looking for that which is different because we have realized that is where the real learning is.
We don’t learn much from someone who is just like us…who thinks or sees just like us.
Curiosity about she who is not me, about they who are not us. That is the linchpin to discovering, on some level, what it means to be ourselves as human. Our teachers are the ‘they’ who become mirrors of our own being, the ‘they’ to whom we are connected at some particle level…some energetic level…as different or as weird as we may perceive them to be…not like us.
What matters is the seeking, the noticing and asking. If by learning to perceive from a place of inquiry…what if, why not, what now…and if that inquiry results in a new perspective and rearranges your reality a bit, you have changed your world…and tangentially “the” world. You have created something pretty cool. Truthfully, we have only to make the smallest move or hold a new thought and we play a part in rearranging the particles of the Universe. I love that part.
Next post: The principles of seeing the world new again.