Cultivating Curiosity, and The Glass Family
Hey friend,
Thank you for continuing to show up to life every day, even if it makes no sense sometimes. We live in a cultural container where we are constantly encouraged to have answers, to "figure it out on your own," or to pursue certainty. It is likely that you have felt some level of internal friction that we regularly experience between these external messages, and the deep inner knowing that life is full of confusion, uncertainty, and doubt. It can be hard to understand what to do with that inner tension, especially when it seems like we are facing one ongoing crisis after another without any sense of resolution. Please consider this an invitation into deepen your capacity to practice curiosity.
When we do any kind of spiritual practice, we strengthen our capacity to embrace uncertainty, doubt, and confusion by cultivating a courageous curiosity to step forward into the challenging thoughts and feelings that arise in life. Engaging with our inner landscape is both a process, and a skill that only makes sense in the context of the outer landscape of our relationships and that larger world around us. Without the world around us, and the discomfort and turmoil of change, the friction that causes us to move more deeply into curiosity and exploration is not present. To develop an attitude of willingness and compassion is the foundation of practice, and helps us to be with all of life, relationships, and the world as they are.
As we face the uncertainty and confusion of the world it may help to imagine the conditions of life like a river changing, always churning, with the seasons. Whether the water is turbid or clear, it will not remain static, and neither will life. Our personal experience of life is like a stone at the base of that river; our edges become smooth by the constant current of the changing river above us. We move with the flow of the river, and sometimes we are still when the current is gentle. We slide and bang against each other, and we are all carried along. We gradually lose ourselves to the flow of life against us, and eventually our bodies become the river. Ultimately there is no destination to reach on this journey because the water will continue to take different forms as it moves through the cycle that keeps it part of this larger ecological and cosmological system.
Maybe that is useful to you, and maybe it is not. My point is that cultivating a sense of curiosity opens us up more deeply to humility, compassion, and to embrace the larger and more mysterious picture of life itself. When we can remember that we are a part of something so vast, complex, and creative, we can start to feel it working in our lives in ways that show us how to meet all challenges and uncertainty.
Here are 7 questions to cultivate curiosity:
Inspired by The Glass Family - The Means