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We had a most curious time together today at our Soul Salon Tea Party, sharing about what curiosity is and how it operates in each of our lives! I hope you will take time to read the after email.. which is chock full of interesting perceptions about the nature and value of curiosity.
Enjoy this Solstice season! I hope you consider joining us for our Sanctuary community Winter Solstice celebration on Monday Dec. 21st at 5:00pm! It is a powerful nexxus in time/space to consciously participate in!
The way English defines curiosity is:
· a strong desire to know or learn something: “filled with curiosity, she peered through the window”synonyms inquisitiveness, interest, spirit of inquiry.
Curiosity is a quality related to inquisitive thinking such as exploration, investigation, and learning, evident by observation in humans and other animals. Curiosity is heavily associated with all aspects of human development, in which derives the process of learning and desire to acquire knowledge and skill.
“Curiosity retains the grace of innocence. Curiosity knows that there is more, that there are secret worlds hidden within the simplest of things. Curiosity is not convinced by the world of external facts. It is not persuaded by situations that pretend to be finished or closed. The innocence of the imagination is willing to see new possibilities in what appears to be fixed and framed. Curiosity makes a “moreness” to everything that can never be exhausted. Curiosity retains a passion for freedom. There are no rules for curiosity or the imagination that it spawns. The imagination awakened by curiosity desists from domestication, returning us to our native wildness. The old maps never satisfy our curiosity. It wants to press ahead beyond the accepted frontiers and bring back reports of regions no mapmaker has yet visited. Curiosity has no patience with repetition. The old clichés of explanation and meaning are unmasked and their trite transparency no longer offers us shelter. We become interested in what might be, rather than what has always been. With curiosity, adventure and innovation lure us towards new horizons. What we never thought possible becomes an urgent, exciting pathway. Curiosity leads us to new revelations. It never blasts us with information or numbs us with description. It coaxes us into new situations that bring more questions and possibilities. Curiosity and imagination work through suggestion, not description. Description frequently closes off what it names. Suggestion respects the mystery and richness of a thing. Curiosity and imagination create a pathway of reverence for visitations of beauty. To awaken curiosity is to always retrieve, reclaim and re-enter experience in fresh new ways.” Synthesized from Beauty by John Donohue
What piqued or moved you from this brilliant offering?
How does curiosity retain a passion for freedom for example?
Then let us hear from Albert Einstein:
“The important thing is not to stop questioning. Curiosity has its own reason for existence. One cannot help but be in awe when we contemplate the mysteries of eternity, of life, of the marvelous structure of reality. It is enough if one tries merely to comprehend a little of this mystery each day. Never Lose a Holy Curiosity!'”
What IS the actual reason for curiosity? What purpose does it serve in the creation? What actually IS curiosity?
So tell me what is the last thing/experience/thought that made you feel genuine curiosity? What piques your curiosity?
“The most beautiful thing we can experience is the mysterious. It is the source of all true art and science. He to whom the emotion is a stranger, who can no longer pause to wonder and stand wrapped in awe, is as good as dead —his eyes are closed. Albert Einstein
This statement about the mysterious encapsulates why curiosity is so important. If you are not experiencing awe and wonder, you have just not been curious enough to see the transcendent beauty that exists all around us.
“We do not believe in ourselves until someone reveals that deep inside us something is valuable, worth listening to, worthy of our trust, sacred to our touch. Once we believe in ourselves we can risk curiosity, wonder, spontaneous delight or any experience that reveals the human spirit.”
― E.E. Cummings
I find this quote fascinatingly born out in the fact that scientists tell us that babies and animals who experience great trauma, lose their natural curiosity. So we are free to be curious when we can RISK curiosity, when our environment is safe enough to allow for it. That is a bottom line. When we find or make the world trustworthy, our curiosity is piqued to fully discover and delight in our experience as humans. Animals are naturally very curious beings. Here are two adorable videos about curious crows! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3dWw9GLcOeA AND
http://io9.com/all-these-gifts-were-given-to-an-8-year-old-girl-by-cro-1688434164
How does curiosity serve animals?
Let’s look at how curiosity affects how we communicate:
“Listen with curiosity. Speak with honesty. Act with integrity. The greatest problem with communication is we don’t listen to understand. We listen to make a reply. When we listen with curiosity, we don’t listen with the intent to reply. We listen for what’s behind the words.” Roy T. Bennett, The Light in the Heart
This is such a seminally important understanding about HOW we listen in communicating. If you want more intimacy in your life, listen with curiosity rather than to make a reply. This kind of listening is demonstrating emotional intelligence.
How skilled are you at this kind of curious listening? What can you share around your experience of it?
“Around here, we don’t look backwards for very long. We keep moving forward, opening up new doors and doing new things, because we’re curious…and curiosity keeps leading us down new paths.” Walt Disney
And how does curiosity play into our creativity? How has your curiosity played into a creation or creative project that you have been inspired to complete? What is the relationship between creativity and curiosity?
