October - November 2001

Curiosity

How much of our obsession over other people is projected desire to explore ourselves? Remember that self-curiosity is supposedly a bad, bad thing, a sign of being immture, egotistical or uninterested in others. After all, everyone else is more important than you, right?

But we are, in our natural state, really curious about ourselves. We started this way, and if you think and feel carefully back through your past, you can remember all the ways in which you were taught to turn your curiosity off. But curiosity still exists... so there's some intense tension created by the inner desire to explore and the prevailing rules we live by, which dictate that we maintain ignorance.

One way to handle this tension is to reverse the process and explore ourselves vicariously through the exploration of other people, all the while having an experience of self, of the intensity of self, of the needs of self, of the fears and desires and cravings of self. In this way we "get lost in others" and end up avoiding who we are.

Why not just honestly explore ourselves around those we say we love? Why not love and desire ourselves freely, and be known in this way, and love others from a space of selfloving and true inner acceptance, rather than self-avoidance?

Well, that is like saying, wouldn't it be nice to have no shame?

It would be very nice.