Rediscover Your Natural Curiosity

The primary concern for all life forms is survival. In the case of humans, the basis of everything we think is somehow about our survival. Everything we feel is related to our survival. Even everything we understand is about our survival. What we understand is what we can categorize. A category presents us with a version of reality we can live with. If we can live with it we can survive.

Thinking is our human blessing and our curse. We are blessed when our thinking is fresh and creative. We are cursed when thinking only feeds our habit of categorizing. It is not that thinking and categorizing are wrong. Thinking thoughts is not the problem. But the reliance on some thought that we can grasp, or keep, or keep away in the name of survival can keep our attention bound to categories.

At any point we are weaving multiple thoughts into stories. Our stories can be complicated. These stories often have multiple themes dealing with profound personal and even cosmic issues. We also have thoughts and stories that come from what we read in the newspaper, or from advertisements, or from our power to create fantasy. All our stories are part of the sometimes beautiful, sometimes horrific and always awesome mandala of life.

At some point in a person’s life of storytelling, the curiosity to discover the source of thoughts or stories can be more compelling than following the particular thoughts and stories. Feeding innate, free curiosity with inquiry nurtures direct discovery. In the spirit of discovery, we can pull the thread that begins the unraveling of all stories of identity. Pulling the thread reveals the capacity as a conscious human being to recognize that the beingness in human being is conscious and free.