The Light of Curiosity
The moment when you are truly present, and you touch something so deeply, the truth of it shakes.
–Sister Dang Nghiem
Perhaps you can recall a time when someone's words, for whatever reason, fully dropped into the depth of your heart.
You were totally available for them, they found you at the right time. Your heart was ready to be shaken by the truth—it wanted to be shaken.
This happened to me once when a group facilitator said, in such a nonchalant way, “Imagine that you are someone you want to get to know.”
Such a simple set of words sent a kind of spiritual shockwave throughout my system. In that moment I became vividly cognizant of the norm of the conditioned mind. I saw in the clear light of awareness a physically narrow kind of consciousness with no room for curiosity. It felt like a tightening, a closing down of space, a not feeling of what there was to feel. A sense of being squeezed into the tunnel of a false self, the stifling of presence, and a goal-oriented, obsessive energy that ever pressures me into the not now.
It became clear to me how rare it is for the genuine light of curiosity to fully blossom during the most incredibly mundane and even boring, frustrating, or terrifying moments of life. To really be curious about my inner world—my judgments, reactions, motivations, and choices—and to learn to be like that much of the time felt like a radical ask.
And it became clear, once again, that this is the request of genuine spiritual practice: to wholeheartedly abandon the notion of transcendence and embrace our wildly imperfect, earthly hereness. As a dear teacher likes to ask: “What’s actually happening right now?” Perhaps another simple/not so simple inquiry that has the capacity to blast us into the truth and remind us that it is the truth that the wise heart is seeking.
As many teachings are, this was a humbling one. I realized how often I forget the teaching. How often I seek instead of wonder. How often I lose myself in an unreal future or a lost past. I realized how often I believe I want to get to know myself yet do not grant myself the love and curiosity essential to do so.
What if, during the many, many moments when I am brushing off life or devaluing the way things are and unconsciously believing the present moment should be exchanged for a different, slightly, or not so slightly adjusted one, I was truly wanting to get to know myself?
How much of the time am I being guided by a “This is not it” energy and mentality versus “What’s happening? How is it manifesting within me? How am I relating to it? With defense and resistance or with kindness and curiosity?”
It is that kindness and curiosity that support us to want to get to know ourselves. And it is the getting to know ourselves that is the seed for a kind of relief and freedom that our hearts yearn for and know is possible.
To make this teaching accessible, you might consider first applying it to someone else—another being whom you want to get to know, or a beautiful flower whose beauty stops you in your tracks. What if you were that thing? What if you were the thing that you wanted to get to know? What if getting to know yourself meant being stopped in your tracks by yourself and your experience? What if your experience—whatever it may be, without exception—were mystery’s way of trying to stir your heart towards awakening?
All teachings are meant to reveal our struggle with them! For example, when you hear, “Pay attention to the breath,” you’ll likely realize—quite quickly—how challenging it can be. It’s kind of funny how we can try it for five minutes and think we’re supposed to have mastered it. This is why the teaching exists—because we don’t know how to do it.
This teaching is no different. When you entertain the notion of What if you were someone you want to get to know? you may indeed notice a lack of curiosity in relation to your experience. You might notice a wanting, a defending, an attempt to control the uncontrollable. This is not a problem. It is something being revealed. Practice is creating the conditions for things to be revealed.
Imagining that you are someone you want to get to know means noticing all the thoughts and feelings and moments that you didn’t notice before, wanting to know about them, and seeing what happens next.
Play with this instruction: Imagine you are someone you want to get to know.
It is a declaration about the uncertainty of how things unfold and asks us to trust that, while we cannot control the way things unfold, our soft heart response does influence the next thing.
