Show Notes
This episode may seem repetitious to you…and we often don’t like repetition. That is probably because the word repeat has been associated with repeating work in school when we didn’t get it! It doesn’t carry a very pleasing meaning. However, if we look more closely at the work repeat, I think it will make sense why I am repeating and not just reviewing my last episodes.
Repeat comes from the prefix Re- meaning ‘go back’, and ‘peat’ from the Latin “petere” which means ‘to seek’. When we repeat something, the purpose is to go back and seek or look for something that we may have missed or not noticed the first time through. When I teach the Awareness Exercise, there is a lot of repetition because as we enter into different levels of awareness by using our senses, our energy centers, our intuition, our memory and imagination, we will discover new and different perspectives.
Review, another word that education may have muddied for us, needs some attention. WE were told to review your work for the exam or the mid-term. We weren’t always told why it was a good idea to sharpen the neural pathways of learning the material, we just did it because the teacher said or not!
Again, ‘re-‘ is about going back and view is about seeing.
Both are beneficial to learning and as we now know when we review, we are reinforcing our neural pathways and anchoring our learning.
Today, I will use the word repeat because I want you to go back and seek…another word for seek is search…I want you to search for new meanings and new insights to your understanding of awareness and beliefs and perspectives.
Difference between repeat and review: Review is to look back and repeat is to about going back to seek…
1520s, "inspect, examine," from
view (n.). From 1765 as "to regard in a certain way;" from 1935 as "to watch television." Related:
Viewed;
viewing.
early 15c., "formal inspection or survey" (of land); mid-15c., "visual perception," from Anglo-French
vewe "view," Old French
veue "light, brightness; look, appearance; eyesight, vision," noun use of fem. past participle of
veoir "to see," from Latin
videre "to see" (from PIE root
*weid- "to see"). Sense of "manner of regarding something" attested from early 15c. Meaning "sight or prospect of a landscape, etc." is recorded from c. 1600.
Think about meditation and the chanting of a mantra during your meditation. You are repeating the mantra in order to seek something deeper.
When we learn a new motor skill, we repeat in order to create a body memory so we can perform the task again. Once it is learned our body remembers.
Today through repetition we are going back and seeking new perspectives on what I have been talking about in the first episodes of a journey to inner wisdom
Here is a great poem by Marion Woodman that is a great description of going back and repeating!
‘Linearity does not come naturally
to me. It kills my imagination.
Nothing happens.
No bell rings
No moment of here and now.
No moment that says yes.
Without these, I am not alive.
I prefer the pleasure
of the journey through the spiral.
Relax.
Enjoy the spiral.
If you miss something
on the first round,
don’t worry.
You might pick it up
on the second – or third – or ninth.
It doesn’t matter.
Relax.
Timing is everything.
If this bell does ring,
it will resonate
through all the rungs of your spiral.
If it doesn’t ring,
it is the wrong spiral –
or the wrong time –
or there is no bell.’
The journey to inner wisdom is the journey to becoming ourselves…
First let’s look back at wisdom: Marion Goodman, was a Jungian analyst, feminist and poet. From her book, “Coming home to myself” she writes…
‘A life truly lived
Constantly burns away
Veils of illusion,
opening our eyes
To our uniqueness.
A life truly lived
Burns away
what is not longer relevant
Gradually reveals
Our essence
Until, at last,
We are strong enough
to stand in our naked truth’
Coming Home to Myself is really a great way to describe the journey to inner wisdom. We are journeying to our true essence and stripping away the limiting beliefs and conditioned beliefs that we have taken on from family, society, all the influences around us.
It is often during a transition that we begin searching for a deeper understanding of what is happening to us and around us. A transition is about going to the other side of where we are now. Without awareness of what is happening to us, we may miss opportunities or not even recognize what is happening.
In order to see how we can deepen our understanding and application of awareness and beliefs I will unfold the topic of curiosity. Remember, we have to be awakened to be aware! As we become meta aware, have a deeper awareness, we are able to begin to notice patterns in our life that will reveal our private belief system. This private belief system has been made up by us so we can get our needs met and survive in our world. We created it during our early childhood, and it is the unconscious operating system that guides our decisions and actions. We will also begin to notice certain beliefs that we have inherited, appropriated, or assimilated from our family, our society, our friends, our community. These conditioned beliefs also long for our attention and full awareness to determine if they are serving us on our journey.
I invite you to reflect on the following question:
How have you been paying attention to your inner world?
How have you been paying attention to your outer world?
What senses have been prominent in your awareness?
What energy – mind, heart, body - do you experience when you take time to be aware of your day or week?
What patterns have you noticed that surprised you?
Have there been other surprises when you have practiced being more aware of your inner and outer world?
Have you been curious or judgemental about what you have noticed?
As we begin to examine our life patterns and our private belief system, it is helpful to take a stance of Curiosity.
Let’s take a closer look at the word, curious.
Merriam-Webster Dictionary:
: having a desire to learn or know more about something or someone
: marked by desire to investigate and learn
mid-14c., "subtle, sophisticated;" late 14c., "eager to know, inquisitive, desirous of seeing" (often in a bad sense), also "wrought with or requiring care and art;" from Old French
curios "solicitous, anxious, inquisitive; odd, strange" (Modern French
curieux) and directly from Latin
curiosus "careful, diligent; inquiring eagerly, meddlesome," akin to
cura "care" (see
cure (n.)).
The objective sense of "exciting curiosity" is by 1715 in English. In booksellers' catalogues, the word was a euphemism for "erotic, pornographic" (1877); such material was called curiosa (1883), the Latin neuter plural of curiosus. Related: Curiously; curiousness. Curiouser and curiouser is from "Alice's Adventures in Wonderland" (1865).
Cura comes from ‘care’. So give a care to what you are uncovering.
Oft times I find that people will review their life patterns and be very judgmental about the paths taken or not taken. Judgement will shut down the possibility of further exploration of ones’ limiting beliefs. Once I make a judgement about myself, my situation, my choice or my action, my brain shuts down as the judgment has a finality to it, that does not leave space for further exploration.
Curiosity, on the other hand, helps us uncover the deeper meaning and movement in our lives. Curiosity allows us to step into a neutral zone where patterns and meanings unseen to this point are revealed. From an article entitled ‘The Importance of Curiosity’ in Entrepreneur Magazine, 2018, I quote, “We think it’s like breathing – essential to life.”
In the Harvard Business Review, research is sited on curiosity with the following conclusions:
An increase in curiosity leads to an increase in creativity.
Curiosity Fosters better communication.
It Helps reduce conflict.
It Helps us adapt to uncertainty.
Forces us to give more thought to decisions and come up with creative remedies rather than default to the simplest solutions to problems.
Curiosity is natural in kids. It is often snuffed out by the time we are adults unless it is nurtured by teachers and parents.
So how can we take a stance of curiosity and leave our judgement behind?
First, ask questions, be inquisitive about yourself, others and the world around you. The Right Question Institute found that children ask an average of 300 questions a day…how many have you asked today?
Have an open mind. I am sure you heard this before, your mind is like a parachute, it works better when it is open. Ask why something is the way it is and look for alternative explanations. Ask about things you take for granted or perform in a rote manner.
Don’t assume, get a diversity of information, meet new people, read something that is different from your normal reading.
Research done by the Merck group found that the more curiosity, the more ideas, the more chance for innovation.
We can move from what we know to what we think we could know…it is then about retooling our perspective and recreating our beliefs.
Here is a great quote. It is a Japanese proverb:
‘You can’t see the whole sky through a bamboo tube.’
Remind yourself to be curious. Put up a sticky note!
Make a list of things you want to try or know about – keep the list on your phone or on your desk where you can see it.
Being curious may mean stretching your boundaries.
Be playful. Many adults are embarrassed to play. Lucky that some of us have grandkids as we have permission to play. Give yourself permission to play without your grandkids!
Being curious leads us to big questions, Big questions lead us through transitions in a more graceful and aware way.
Elizabeth Gilbert in Big Magic states:
‘Fear is always triggered by creativity because creativity asks you to enter into the realm of uncertain outcomes.’
I like to think about curiosity like this…I wonder about something and I take the steps and wander into the realm of what if…why not…why…and I gain wisdom in the process about myself or the world around me or both!
I could be surprised and energized. I could be disappointed and sad. Whatever I feel, or whatever I am reminded of or whatever is evoked by this curiosity, I have broken away from my judgemental mind and opened the myself to possibilities.
I don’t think I can leave without looking a bit further into judgement.
Our personal belief system fuels our thoughts about the world and others. We observe and evaluate from our private logic most of the time. We make the world and others fit our perceptions of the world and of people. Whether we have an opinion or not will not change what is the situation we are judging and as the Japanese proverb states, we probably don’t have the full picture!
So, easy for me to say be curious and not judgemental…but how do we do this when our minds are constantly observing and evaluating…
By becoming aware of your thoughts, your perceptions and observing them, you begin to realize you are not your thoughts and you can change them from judgemental to curious…we use our meta cognition to step back and observe our thoughts and notice patterns…yes once again patterns!!!
Word of caution. Don’t beat yourself up for judging…it is a natural reaction! Step back, take a breath and be grateful that you are aware and that you can observe what is happening…then be curious.
So it seems that being curious will increase our creativity…I sometimes hear people say “I am not creative.” Everyone is creative…but how do we release our creativity.
Let’s look at the words first…
Creativity…
Create
: to make or produce (something)
: to cause (something new) to exist
: to produce (something new, such as a work of art) by using your talents and imagination
"to bring into being," early 15c., from Latin
creatus, past participle of
creare "to make, bring forth, produce, procreate, beget, cause," related to
Ceres and to
crescere "arise, be born, increase, grow," from PIE root
*ker- (2) "to grow." De Vaan writes that the original meaning of
creare "was 'to make grow', which can still be found in older texts ...." Related:
Created;
creating.
Here are some great quotes about creativity.
"You can't use up creativity. The more you use the more you have." -- Maya Angelou
"Creativity involves breaking out of expected patterns in order to look at things in a different way." -- Edward de Bono The Use of Lateral Thinking
De Bono, “Studies have shown that 90% of error in thinking is due to error in perception. If you can change your perception, you can change your emotion, and this can lead to new ideas. Logic will never change emotion or perception.”
Great, now how do I nurture my creativity…of course
first be curious,
Learn something new
Suspend judgement, our judgment stops us from trying new things, having new experiences, meeting new people.
Oh, I can never do that!
I’m not good at that.
That’s too dangerous
I’m too old
That’s childish…according to who
Each of us is born with two contradictory sets of instructions: a conservative tendency, made up of instincts for self-preservation, self-aggrandizement, and saving energy, and an expansive tendency made up of instincts for exploring, for enjoying novelty and risk - the curiosity that leads to creativity belongs to this set. But whereas the first tendency requires little encouragement or support from outside to motivate behaviour, the second can wilt if not cultivated.
What are your conditioned thoughts…pay attention to what you are saying and what is behind the words…are they your words or are they from somewhere ‘else?
So be curious…cultivate those expansive thoughts…see what you can get up to in the next few weeks and let’s see what adventures we can have on this journey to inner wisdom/
Quotes:
Creativity is bound up in our ability to find new ways around old problems.
"The creative adult is the child who survived." -- Ursula Leguin
"Everything you can imagine is real." -- Pablo Picasso