Curious About What Is

(An edited transcript of the mp3 on the Listen to Satsang page)

I invite you to be curious about whatever is happening right now. I invite you to rest from doing anything. But rest with your eyes open and give your full awareness to what is already here. The invitation is to rest with curiosity.

But, of course, both resting and curiosity can be used to avoid experience instead—you can avoid things by resting. You can even rest your way right out of awareness by going to sleep. You can also get so curious about how things should be and what could happen—about your ideas, beliefs, and fantasies—that your curiosity takes you right out of your present moment experience. How clever of us to have discovered how to leave the present moment!

It’s possible, instead, to simply be curious about the way things already are. The art of resting and curiosity is learning to apply them to the present moment. To the mind, focusing on what’s already here can seem like a waste of time. But you can give your devotion, your focus, your curiosity, and your allowing acceptance to what’s already present right now. The place where curiosity and resting come alive is in the experience you are having right now. There’s no seeking required, no searching, no movement, or journey to something else that’s necessary first. Seeking is a good way to delay being curious, delay resting, when you can just rest and be curious right now, just rest with and be curious about the sensations that are present right in this moment.

There isn’t anything wrong with being curious about something other than your present moment experience, but also find out what happens if you spend your awareness on your experience just the way it is, on what’s happening right now.