Curiosity: The Gateway to Awakening

Curiosity: The Gateway to Awakening
 
This is the third article in the "Gateway to Awakening" series that has been forming as I keep writing more on the topic. The first two are available at http://www.LiveYourAliveLife.com in the blog section.
 
I want to define awakening a bit differently here than I did previously, and actually, I keep defining it slightly differently each time I write about it.  New perspectives on awakening keep emerging as I reflect on it.
 
At the heart of every human being is a core of spirit or energy that is one and continuous with all of everything else in the Universe. This spirit or energy of life keeps it and us all alive and spinning and pulsing in every moment.
 
Sometimes it feels like a lake of pure love to me. Other times, a roller coaster ride of pure energy. It's never not there. It feels calm, peaceful, like "all is well", and it's underneath and alongside us in each and every moment of our lives. Likely afterwards too.
 
In this feeling, that is life itself, comes answers, knowledge, knowing. A quiet realization. A stunning solution. An elegant resolution. What we often miss is that the knowledge we seek is in this feeling.
 
Yes, that calm feeling when you walk in nature, at the lake or around the campfire. The feeling of life isn't actually in the outside thing (nature, lake or campfire); it's in you. When we rest, bathe, swim in this feeling, we get effortless insights, realizations, knowings, and awarenesses.
 
The feeling contains the frequency of all life. All insights. All knowledge.
 
Awakening is becoming aware of this core of peace and allowing its insights to guide us day to day. Moment to moment.
 
Curiosity is defined, in the Oxford Dictionary, as a strong desire to know or learn something. It seems to be often characterized by asking questions.
 
I find, though, for me, curiosity is more of a feeling and an opening than a wanting to figure something out.
 
The state of curiosity is a state of openness, wonder, not knowing. We need to set aside any preconceived ideas about something to be curious about it. If you think you know all about something, nothing new arises. You are not curious.
 
Try this little experiment for yourself:
 
1) Pick an object that you are familiar with in your environment.
 
2) Take a minute to notice what you think or know about it.
 
3) Take note of the feeling you are in.
 
4) Now, get curious about the object. As if you've never seen such a thing before. What questions or wonderings arise?
 
5) Pay attention to the feeling you are in while you are curious.
 
Take a minute to do this just now before reading on.
 
Ok, here are my experimental results:
 
1) My computer screen in front of me.
 
2) I know this screen. It's square and black, and when "on", it shows the computer tabs and sometimes the screensaver. It is boring. Nothing interesting to see here.
 
3) I feel very neutral with some general tension in my body. A bit of heaviness in my head or mind.
 
4) As I contemplate the screen with curiousness, I wonder who made it? How did they make it? Is it some sort of liquid crystal technology? What crystals? That sounds interesting. Maybe there are little diamonds in there.
 
5) I am feeling a lightness. An inquisitiveness. My body is relaxed. I don't have that heaviness about my head anymore. There's an opening or expansion feeling. There is a feeling of ease.
 
Bonus round:
 
If I go back to the first way of seeing, where I already know everything, I feel a closing in and shutting down feeling. A narrowing of focus. My body tightens up again.
 
Switch back to curiosity, I feel an expansion feeling. An opening of focus comes back. My body relaxes.
 
How does this relate to awakening?
 
When we are curious, we are literally opening up to that energy of life.
 
Curiosity requires us to set aside what we think we know in order to look at something fresh. In looking fresh, we drop our habitual thinking. The only thing ever in the way of being present to life is our habitual ways of thinking and being.
 
Get curious and we drop these habits. You instantly feel lighter, fresher, perhaps disoriented if it's a new outlook for you. We are instantly plunged into the present moment and can see the world around us as it actually is. Rather than what we think it to be.
 
This is awakening. Into the present moment. Into curiosity. Whether it's with a situation, another person, or a computer screen, curiosity gives us the opportunity to see clearly.
 
If you are with another person when you are seeing more clearly, this is a gift to them to be clearly seen without your habits of thought about them.  
 
My invitation to you this week is to get curious about curiosity. What can you get curious about and how is your experience of it and your experience of life in general different?
 
Have fun with curiosity and happy experimenting.

With Love, 

Sara Joy