Although curiosity killed the cat it would appear that it is an essential quality for human development and learning.
It is also a primary aspect of mindfulness. Curiosity allows us to begin to turn toward the entirety of experience, moving us from avoidance to approach, including that which we don’t like. I would argue curiosity and kindness are the antidotes to judgment and other harsh evaluations we may direct toward ourselves or others and it is a quality that can be developed.
Curiosity can be used as a way to inquire into our experience—the joyful and painful alike. Curiosity may allow us to begin to level the playing field of our lives so we don’t have to excessively privilege one experience over another. It just takes some of the dys out of dysregulation, smoothing out our internal psychological rollercoaster as we are faced with moments that can take us to ecstatic heights and ones that may take us into an abyss. In the words of Martine Batchelor, a teacher and former Buddhist nun, we can begin to ask, “What is this?” We are not looking for a specific answer but rather using the question as a method of experiential investigation.
Cultivate Curiosity in Your Mindfulness Practice
Mindfulness begins with awareness and the recognition or acknowledgment that something is here. It must include intention and the willingness to be with what is showing. Curiosity or interest can thus lead us to mindful investigation and exploration, coming to fully know experience as it is. Staying with whatever is happening, whether it is wanted or unwanted, can help us to accept what is, and enhance our capacity for compassion. Acceptance doesn’t require that we have to like what is going on but rather to be willing to have it. This doesn’t mean becoming a doormat to life but it does mean not having a temper tantrum when things don’t go according to plan. We can then move into skillfully responding, asking ourselves, “Does this need to be taken up, addressed or dealt with? Can I let it be or let it go? Or perhaps it’s time to practice intentional avoidance.” Avoidance, when deliberate, can be skillful or a moment of self-care.
Wisdom is the discernment to know when to pick the banana and when to leave it alone. Sometimes we just need to step away or take ourselves out of a difficult situation, such as escaping an abusive relationship. Sometimes acting on our curiosity can be deadly. In the words of Dr. M. Lee Freedman, a psychiatrist and colleague, “It is not the curiosity itself that is the problem but what we do next.” There is a reason we have childproofed wall sockets.
Mindfulness involves the bottom up investigation of experience versus the top down process of thinking about it.
Mindfulness involves the bottom up investigation of experience versus the top down process of thinking about it. When we practice formally or informally we are enhancing our ability to engage in experiential self-referencing or being aware of our moment-to-moment body-mind experience as opposed to our usual narrative self-referencing (aka story telling, judgments, opinions, etc). We are increasing our emotional regulation using willingness to be with difficult states and enhancing our attention regulation by bringing curiosity online. Curiosity by necessity involves attention.
What Captures Your Curiosity and Attention?
A study I often refer to, titled “Predicting the onset of Alzheimer’s disease with a behavioral task,” describes the relationships between attention and curiosity this way:
“Attention is important to the understanding of curiosity because it directly correlates with one’s abilities to selectively focus and concentrate on particular stimuli in the surrounding (and I would add internal) environment.”
Sounds a lot like mindfulness, don’t you think?
When we are inquiring or being curious about our lives, within the context of mindfulness, it is helpful to investigate by asking:
- To what am I attending? Thoughts (or beliefs)? Emotions? The senses or sensations?
- Where is my attention? Is it immersed in thinking and/or emotions? Is it in the body?
- When did my attention land wherever it is? Did the experience change or is it changing or persisting?
- How am I attending? Am I gripped by a looping thought or situation that I don’t like? Am I curious? Am I attending with intention or am I drifting, lost in a daydream or fantasy?
We don’t ask “why” when inquiring into our practice because mindfulness is something to be embodied, to be experienced rather than thought about and analyzed. I’m not suggesting that we do away with thinking, analysis, or intellectual pursuit. We are problem-solving creatures and this is an important part of being a sentient being. We would not have survived long without our intellects. But within the practice itself, learning and insights come out of being with each moment as it comes and goes.
Pay Attention to How You Pay Attention
Authors and mindfulness teachers John Teasdale and Michael Chaskalson (Kulananda, 2011) in a lovely article write,
“Mindfulness allows the poetry of the moment by moment experience to re-write itself, to gracefully change its theme from one of suffering to one of ease and peace.”
So, there would actually appear to be a goal to all of this breathing. For me however, the goal is awareness. I’m happy if I get a few moments of peace now and again, but I don’t expect them.