Playing With Words

Curiosity

By

Joseph Anthony, EFT Practitioner

Curiosity
killed the cat, so the saying goes.  It
also sparked every idea to improve something or to discover new ways to treat
illnesses or to make better mousetraps. In today’s world however, other than
cats feeling annoyed at fewer mice to eat, hardly anyone ever notices, or even
cares about curiosity.  Especially
teachers and corporate leaders.  They
need their students, employees, and consumers doing the same old-same old, day
in, day out.  The average Joe isn’t
supposed to be curious or to come up with new, innovative ideas.  That’s for the higher ups.  We’re not supposed to wonder about new foods
or brands.  Students aren’t meant to ask
any questions that don’t pertain to standardized tests.

Yet curiosity
is the very thing that will save the world. 
For this world to continue to grow, blossom, and evolve, more and more
people, especially children and their teachers and parents, need to become
increasingly curious.

Curious comes directly from the Latin and
means “careful, diligent, inquiring eagerly, and meddlesome (Online EtymologyDictionary).”  In mid-14^th
century France the word took on negative shadings and began to mean “anxious,
odd, or strange (ibid).”  And, speaking
of odd, curious, when used in booksellers’
catalogs, means, “erotic and pornographic (ibid).”

Let’s hold
on to the original Latin for the sake of this post (it’s usually a good bet to
stick with the Latin): “careful, diligent, inquiring eagerly, and meddlesome.”  We can easily see the benefits of children being
careful and diligent, but once they start asking lots of questions we call
them, “Why Birds,” and get impatient: “Because that’s the way it is,” we say, or
worse: “Because I said so.”  We stifle
their questions with another DVD. We tell them to go play or take
them to another soccer practice—anything but sit and really answer their
questions or vulnerably admit we do not know the answers. 

Leonardo
DaVinci’s painting teacher quit when he realized young Leonardo was a better
painter than he was.  That man was a
coward.  Courageous and wise teachers
should welcome their students becoming smarter, more creative, more innovative,
and more enlightened in every way than they are.   They’ve done their job once their students
outshine them. 

The spirit
of asking questions eagerly should run like blood through the veins of our
minds and hearts.  It should travel our
very nervous systems and tickle our fancies. 
I am not suggesting questioning everything.  I am suggesting asking important, revelatory
questions that will change the way things are done—questions that will revolutionize
your life.  This is not knocking traditions
and well established practices in a wide variety of subjects.  It is to say however, if there are areas in
your life where you just go with the flow in the sense of living blindly (not
Taoistically), unconsciously, without care, apathetically, without any thought
of why you’re doing what you’re doing then you need a jolt of curiosity.  Ask questions that make you feel
uncomfortable, sweaty in your palms, nervous in your assumptions—thrilled with
wide-eyed wonder.  Ask the questions that
raise eyebrows, ruffle feathers, inspire sneers.  Don’t ask to offend.  Ask to know. Ask because you want a better
life, a more evolved, conscious life. Be meddlesome. Meddlesome into questions
of your faith and life-long held beliefs and prayers.  Are they working?  Are they bearing fruit in your life and in
the lives of those around you?  Your
everyday practices of thinking.  Are they
healthy, productive, fun, inspired, compassionate, open, creative? If not.  Change them. 
Ask for help if you need to. 
Revolutionize your life, one thing at a time.  Invigorate and innovate your spiritual and
emotional life with the light of curiosity.

And if you
make a change and “fail,” so what? Go back to the old way, or try another new
way.  The more we give ourselves the
freedom to fail and take healthy risks the better our world will become, the
more enlightened and plain old fun and amazing it will turn out to be.  Practice this discipline of curious
questioning, develop your sense of wonder, then pass that spirit to the
children of the world.

You might
think children have curiosity and wonder naturally, and they do to an extent,
but today’s children, raised on hand-held devices, computers, TV-nature shows,
have all the facts about everything at their fingertips.  There is no need to ask questions–real
questions.  Yet deep down, the children
of today are becoming increasingly restless (it shows up in teenagers who walk
around with their pants around their thighs and ear-buds in their ears).  Some attribute this restlessness to
diet.  I attribute it to a deadening
education system and to their own observations of the adults around them doing
the same tired things every day, watching the same old shows, going to jobs
they hate, watching the same old terrifying news sound-bites, and so on.  They are agitated, worried, concerned—they want
to know growing up is worth it.  And so
their insides stir with questions while their outsides play video games and
watch movies.

Curiosity is
the cure to the world’s restlessness.  In
fact, curious is related to the word,
cure (ibid).  If we would only ask questions—deep,
meaningful questions, inventory our lives (and ask trusted friends to help us
do this), cultivate our sense of wonder, then the gray layer of dust that
covers some aspects of our lives will clear. 
Even if we never find out the answers to our questions–the adventures of
searching and exploring, of rambling through the ancient forests of our souls,
traveling through the old towns of our unused talents with their wonderful old
diners serving up heaping plates of steaming wonder and joy, navigating through
the narrow straights of our limited beliefs towards the open, sun-dappled waters
of freedom, driving down the old back roads of our dreams—rediscovering the lost
tree house or the path leading to the creek where we used to sit for hours
writing poetry—these are the journeys into how we are meant to live.  Live the questions as Rilke would say.  And if the answers bloom before us or from
within us, then so be it.  And if they
don’t–enjoy the ride.  For through the
practice of curiosity you will be cured of complacency, the status quo, the
uninspired life.  You will become a
living lighthouse for the lost and the weary. 
You will, in effect, become truly alive.

 Thank you for you kind contributions to keeping the Wonder Child Blog going

Copyright Joseph Anthony of the Wonder Child Blog

When I am in integrity, I am in wholeness.  My outsides match my insides and vice-a-versa.  The Design for Living that works for me is practiced on a daily basis and it shows.  I am in fit spiritual condition.  And to keep spiritually fit, as the AA Big Book says, I can’t rest on my laurels.  I need to keep moving—to keep discovering things about myself, and to make necessary changes.  As Charles Hannel says, “all power is developed like everything else—through exercise.”

It is important to keep the objectives in mind as to why I am getting spiritually fit in the first place.  One is to become, “happy, joyous, and free.” The other is to “become of maximum service to God and my fellows. (AA Big Book).”  And these go hand-in-hand.

As I seek wholeness and a sense of completeness, I need to realize there is no finish line.  Being in the now moment of a circle of completeness is a non-linear experience—it simply is wholeness—no beginning, no end.  It’s not even a feeling.  It’s a consciousness of perfection.  And the perfection doesn’t end.  My ability to stay consciously attuned to that relationship however, does.  And while I can strive to keep my soul untainted and untouched by the cares of the world, I will still only be striving.  If people like Jesus and Siddhartha wept, so will lowly Joseph.  The point isn’t to avoid being touched by the world anyway–it’s to touch and be touched gently; I need to stroke the strings of the heart with purpose; and the heart needs to be in tune for beauty to stream forth, like fragrance from a flower.  Integrity is the music of right living.

*As usual, all etymology information comes from the Online Etymology Dictionary: http://www.etymonline.com/index.php.

Copyright Joseph Anthony of the Wonder Child Blog

Spontaneous has its origins in the Latin.  It means, essentially, of one’s own free will.  Of course, in today’s vocabulary, the word has come to mean free to do whatever, wherever, by whatever means necessary.  Be spontaneous—drop everything and go to Europe.  Be spontaneous and get a new relationship.  Be spontaneous and be free from constraints.  Give in to your natural impulses and feelings. 

However, if we take the word back to its beginnings—of one’s free will, it implies a certain measure of discipline, control, and planning (a word that is now used as an antonym to spontaneous).  I see this principle in life all over the place.

In teaching children to write, I start off with a playful love of language, and gradually introduce the rules of grammar and the mechanics of punctuation.  Once the student has the form, the structure, the discipline of language, then they can branch out and spontaneously write whatever they want. 

I see it in my sons.  All three of them can write songs on the piano, the violin, or the guitar.  But they all started out learning to read music and learning the fundamental scales, the finger positioning, the proper way to hold and play their instruments.  Now they jam.

I see it in the fact that I learned very formal prayers when I was a child, and now my prayer life has branched off into many different, spontaneous directions.  I can even spontaneously use the old formal prayers, if I so choose. 

The key is in the freedom.  And in my experience, freedom comes as a result of discipline.

Erratic on the other hand means having no definite direction, no focus, or set course.  In plant terminology it refers to a kind of lichen that is not fastened to anything.  It implies strange behaviors, a certain unsteadiness.

It has old roots in both French and Latin.  It originally meant wandering or deviating from a plan—like making a mistake, for example. 

I need to be sure not to confuse spontaneous and erratic.  I also have to be careful to remember the original definition of spontaneous. 

I can be spontaneously erratic and not get anywhere, except maybe a mental hospital or jail.  Living my life completely based on my feelings will get me these same results.

I can be spontaneously disciplined and have anything I want.  The road may twist and dip and turn and rise, but it is still a road.  It still leads somewhere.  Having a vision for my life, a purpose, a mission, helps me stay disciplined.  And the more I learn to be discipline, the more freedom I experience and can put to common, everyday practice. 

Copyright Joseph Anthony of the Wonder Child Blog

I used to take a warped sense of pride at proclaiming I was a worry wart.  I guess I figured it showed how much I cared about the person or circumstance I was worrying over.  It should be added right here, that I used to garner a fair amount of attention from being a worrier.  I would worry, fret, and otherwise get myself into a tizzy of despair, only to find myself seeking comfort in various people, behaviors, and circumstances. To take comfort is human.  It’s just that some people get to liking comfort so much they become addicted to it, and so create situations in their lives as to ensure the need for more comfort.  Life becomes one elaborate smoke screen of negative self-indulgence.  Behind the smoke the real issues lurk, like deer in the fog, or monsters in closets.

Being someone who likes playing with words, I decided to head over to the handy etymology website (http://www.etymonline.com/) and check out the origins of the word worry.  It turns out worry is related an Old English word, wyrgan, which means, to strangle.  What an appropriate use of the word! Worry strangles our Heart’s Desires.  In fact, digging deeper into the word, it is also related to an Old Norse word, virgill, which means rope.  Worry then, is a rope we use to strangle our own dreams.  It’s also a frayed, twisted rope we use to connect ourselves to negative comfort-seeking behaviors, hence destroying our dreams in the process.

And even more fascinating are the roots of the word, fretting.  Fretting is related to an Old English word, fretan, which was used in reference to monsters and Vikings, and it means to devour or eat away. When I’m fretting away at some concern, it’s eating away my energy to think and act creatively towards my Heart’s Desire.  If this condition gets bad enough, the worrying and fretting strangle my dreams and then devour them.  These are not pretty images are they?

The solution?  Substitution, repetition, and action.  Substitute the worry-thoughts and the fret-thoughts with positive, healthy affirmations.  Repeat these every time the worry thoughts try to crowd in with their handfuls of rope.  Repeat them when you’re not worrying or fretting.  Record your positive affirmations on a cassette or cd and listen to them while you’re walking or about to go to sleep.

Going through a creative visualization and transforming your worries into positive images can also be a form of substitution.  Once you’ve transformed them then repeat their positive counterparts.

Finally—action.  It’s hard to stay really worried if I am purposefully engaged in constructive actions related to the achievement of my heart’s Desire.  Move a muscle change a thought.  When you find yourself entranced, literally under the spell of worry–move, get up.  Dance, wash the windshield of your car, take out the trash, pull a weed, something—move your body and break the spell—let go of the rope of worry and move freely through the world.

Our Heart’s Desires are too important to be strangled and eaten.  Once this happens, not only are we depressed and start that endless, empty drifting through our days, but we become victims.  And that’s the next word we’ll study.  Look for it in a few days.

In the mean time, inventory your worries and your blessings.  Once you get your worries written down replace each one with a positive opposite.  Repeat those words every day.  Use your list of blessings as affirmations, and please, keep moving. 

Part 3 of Your Heart’s Desire
arrives Wednesday, May 11.

Copyright Joseph Anthony of the Wonder Child Blog

I love this phrase:  It literally means, squeeze yourself, press yourself out.  And this can be taken to mean a few different things that are actually all related.  One is press or squeeze your “self” out—the selfishness, the greed, the fear.  The other is press or squeeze your “self” out—your real self, the self God wants you to be; the self that is joyously and wonderfully perfectly imperfect.  I’ll get to one other way to look at this phrase in a moment, but first I want to talk a little more about these first two ways of viewing the phrase: express yourself.

Either one of these ways implies suffering.  Pressing out your self-centeredness hurts.   Squeezing out from under the heavy rocks of your doubts and fears isn’t easy either.  Likewise, letting your real, talented, lovely, and beautiful self out hurts too.  And there is risk involved.  Others might not approve.  Others might be jealous.  Others might be frightened when you step into your power and make significant, radical, and lasting changes.

Yet both of these types of expressions yield fruit.  If we think of squeezing the juice from lemons and then making lemonade, we can imagine there being something good on the other side of our suffering.  If we imagine pressing the oil from olives to make olive oil and then cook up a yummy meal, we can imagine there being joy on the other side of the pain.

So keep discovering who you really are.  Keep living your dreams.  Express yourself and rejoice.  And as long as your self expression is lawful, and for the true betterment of the world, there is nothing to fear. 

And this brings us to the last way I want to talk about expressing yourself.  Deep down, within all of us, is a Larger Self—a Divine Self—the Wonder Child.   Try expressing That, and see how your life and the lives of those around you change for the better.   Allow This to be pressed out from under the heavy rocks of inhibition and doubt.  Let This shine forth from the under the veil of dark fears and resentments.  Share This Self by being yourself, and all will be right with the world.

Copyright Joseph Anthony of the Wonder Child Blog

The word individual, is interesting.  Or should I say, the fact that society has tinkered with its definition over the years is interesting.  Individual, actually means indivisible,—something that can’t be divided, or inseparable—something that can’t be separated.   In our modern English language we use the word to mean a particular someone—a distinct entity—the rugged individualist.  In fact, the Merriam-Webster Dictionary declares that the original meaning of individual is obsolete.  Is that true however?  Can a dictionary editor wipe definitions of words out of existence with a wave of a pen? 

We need, perhaps more than ever, to be individuals in the truest, original sense of the word.  Not only do we need to keep ourselves from being splintered into many different fragments—husband, father, mother, worker, student, brother, sister, Republican, Catholic, soccer coach, etc, but we need to join in with a group of like-minded people, a Mastermind Group, as Napoleon Hill calls it.  We need more community and less isolation; more sharing and less hoarding; more paying it forward and less, where’s mine?

And that is what we are doing right now, sharing this page together.  We are a like-minded group building an ever-widening community.  We are one indivisible entity traveling the journey within together.   We are Wonder Children seeking to shine their Light in the world.  We are inseparable.  And as we shine together, we see more clearly our heart’s desire. 

Copyright Joseph Anthony of the Wonder Child Blog

The Creator is lavishly abundant—wildly abundant.  A salmon lays around 3,000 eggs.  A typical frog lays around 20,000.  A fully grown oak tree produces over 2,000 acorns.  A swan can have over 20,000 feathers.  And while no one knows for sure, some scientists estimate that the average human body has over 100 trillion cells.  There are about 300,000 different kinds of plants.  There are over 7,000 different varieties of apples alone!  Some experts believe there are somewhere between 1 and 10 million different kinds of insects in the world.  The Atlantic Ocean has approximately 17 quadrillion gallons of water.  That’s 17 followed by 15 zero’s.  The Pacific Ocean has around 35 quadrillion.  That’s a lot.  Astronomers think there are over 200 billion stars in the Milky Way.  And there are 100’s of billions of galaxies. 

Of course we know only a small percentage of those salmon eggs will survive.  Same with the frog eggs.  That’s the scientific reason there is so much of everything in nature—survival.  And that’s true.  It is also true that the Creator is lavishly abundant.  When the paints come out not only the canvas, but the whole room gets filled with color.

Imagine whirling in a shower of cherry blossoms.  Imagine a field of white, wild flowers—dazzling your eyes in the sun.  Imagine a school of blue and yellow neon fish, thousands of them darting, dipping, and rising as one.  Imagine a flock of barn swallows doing the same over a cornfield along the turnpike.  Imagine each slender palm on each thick stalk of corn that opens its lemon-gold packages to the sky, has around 700 kernels.

The Creator made an abundant universe and an abundant Earth.  If this is so for the world of nature, and we are surely a part of the Whole, then why would we ever fear lack?  Why would we ever fear anything?  The Creator lavishes us with a thousand, thousand snowflakes, each different, and crystalinely brilliant.  How much more so then with us?

Yes, eventually our bodies will melt away too, dust to dust, but our spirits are eternal.  The Creator didn’t just create us to live a handful of decades.  We are designed to live forever.  Lavishly abundant indeed. 

Not only that, but just as the tadpole becomes a golden-eyed leaper, and the gluttonous caterpillar becomes a nectar sipping, bejeweled wisp of a flyer, and just as the river becomes the sea, we too pass through our own stages of metamorphosis to become winged, golden-eyed things, soaring through mansions and gardens and ponds of glory.  So why fear anything?

There are riches aplenty.  There are resources aplenty.  Dream your dreams lavishly.  Imagine your possibilities with the flair of a giant flock of penguins torpedoing into the breath-seizing water.  Visualize your plans with the audacity of the horizon—sun-filled, moon-filled, and lightening-filled—stretching as far as the eye can see.  Lavish your dreams with fearless creativity—then go, make them real, they are flowing towards you already.

Copyright Joseph Anthony of the Wonder Child Blog