WELCOME
First, I want to thank you for coming here today. Your presence adds to our collective intention, and creates a subtle bond that calls up the best in each of us.

My intention for this blog is that it be a forum for discovery; a place to bring awareness to what is important and beneficial, with suggestions on how to put what is discovered into action. The best way I know to enhance discovery is through practice, so I will encourage you to put the theme of each week into practice, and then to notice what you notice. Future posts will address your questions and observations, to help make the experience as interactive as possible. I hope you will report what you notice in the comments area — to deepen your own understanding, and so others can learn from it.

The ambiance generated by the process of discovery is very different from what many of us are used to hearing on talk radio, or seeing on 24 hour news channels. When two opposing views are aired, there is often little interest in one side learning from the other. As I see it, the difference between opinion and discovery can be found in the intent. The purpose of one is to remain closed, while the purpose of the other is to stay open. Discovery ends when you stop exploring, looking, and inquiring. Opinion begins when you stop looking for anything beyond what you have already decided is true.

In What Matters Most, we discussed inquiry as a way to get in touch with what is important to your well-being and fulfillment. If you think of inquiry as a quest, the process of discovery doesn’t end when you find the perfect job, or mate, or any other desired outcome. Nor do you stop when you come to an obstacle you can’t see beyond. The goal is to grow in your awareness, rather than to coalesce around an idea, especially if it becomes an ism for you.

One way to maintain a focus on discovery is to speak about what you are noticing, observing, and learning from your practice. And if someone else’s process is different from yours, stay open to what you can learn from them, without the need to change or fix what they say.

INQUIRY
This brings me to the heart of this week’s inquiry, and a question I posed in my last email to you:

“How do I gain access to what I don’t already know?”

This question is a great way to begin the discovery process. What you don’t know is obviously much larger than what you do know. What if, just outside the perimeter of your current thought, something exists, that if you knew it, could benefit you? How could you gain access to that world?

It reminds me of a time I was visiting a wise old friend. His dog, Andy, was a lovable mutt who became one of my best animal pals over the years. One day we were watching Andy run around the yard and my friend Wayne said to me, “You know, as far as I can tell, Andy has no idea what mathematics is. He goes through his day, perfectly well, with no knowledge of how things add up.” I agreed with him. Then he said, “I wonder what you and I have no idea about, that exists, just like mathematics exists, but we don’t know it.”

That’s what I’m talking about here. How do we gain access to what is beyond our current ability to conceive? I have seen this phenomena often with people who cannot consider any way out of the box they find themselves in. No amount of advice, or suggestions for what they could try, is able to penetrate the internal boundaries they’ve set for themselves. There is a world outside what they see, and others live in it without the same constraints, but they can’t see it. Why? What keeps us in the box of thinking that produces more of the same? And what opens a light into that box that let’s us know another world exists?

You know as well as I, that what lies beyond the hurt feelings, the mental anguish, the concerns for the future — as strong as they may seem as times — is infinite. After the pain is peace. And this peace remains for some time, until another disturbance shakes you out of the infinite and you land back in the world of concerns again. And this cycle continues over the course of our lives. 

This is at least how it has been for me. I have periods of time, sometimes days or weeks, when I feel out of synch with the world I inhabit. My mind is agitated, my body tight. The old term, “What a drag,” is a good way to describe how it feels at those times. It’s as if my actions have an extra effort to them, an inner struggle between what I want and what I have.

And then, when I’ve had enough, I switch on a different part of my awareness and suddenly the picture becomes clear again. The drag is gone. My mind is suddenly at peace, and the only thoughts that enter my mind are ones of what is possible. I look into the future with an expanded sense of what it could be, and how I can contribute to bringing it about. My quest and continued discovery, is to be aware of the infinite, more often, and for longer periods of time.

To take this quest yourself, look closely at how you tighten around certain subjects, or shut down your awareness to see only what you know. Here’s a practice you can try on.

PRACTICE
Practice keeping this question, “How do I gain access to what I don’t already know?” in front of you this week.

Pay attention to who you become and how you act when you are certain you’re right about something. In those moments, notice what you notice, and then look for what surrounds what you know. What keeps it in place, or allows it to continue? What exists outside what you know?

If you’re in a conversation, and your judgment of the other person shuts them out of your awareness, use it as a place to practice, by asking the question, “What don’t I know about this person, or situation?” Turn your opinions into discovery.

Use this practice lightly. There is no goal. No right or wrong way to proceed. Let it be there at the edge of your awareness, and see what arises.  

AWARENESS
If this practice brings you any insights, please feel free to write them in the comments section of this blog.

In peace,
Michael