Printed in the Conscious Creation Journal
February 1999, Issue 4
I Have a Theory:Focus and Curiosity
by Kristen Fox
“You Get What You Focus On”… Probably the simplest way to explain conscious creation. Probably the most literal way of looking at it as well. Probably time to take a closer look at what I’m actually creating and what aspect of what I think of as “focus” has been represented there.
One of the things I’ve recently discovered about “focusing on what you want” is that this phrase is described in many ways in our society. “Follow your joy.” “Follow your bliss.” “Do what you love.” “Follow your impulses.” While each of these has real and deep meaning to me, I felt like I was still looking for another word – a word that talked about how my rational, intellectual brain would KNOW what this “joy” and “bliss” and “love” was all about, as they are more of the realm of BEING than THINKING. I wanted a cue for my conscious mind. Then suddenly it struck me – CURIOSITY! What I experience in my mind as curiosity, or an intense desire to KNOW about something, a fscination if you will, was what I created!
When John and I first moved out into the hills of California we heard that there were wild boar out here. A whole year went by before we saw even one, and that was from the car at night as the boar, two of them, were running along the side of the road. At first, we were a little leery about directly experiencing them, from all of the rumors we’d heard.
This year, however, there seems to have been a population explosion. We started hearing strange snorting noises in the oak grove outside our fence at night. Then we saw them gracefully (really!) slip through the barbed wire fences by our front gate. Soon, we were seeing more and more of them, drawn to them by a sense of fascination, excitement, curiosity, and a sense of danger as well. You don’t want to corner a boar – they’ve got tusks and will attack if you piss them off. On the other hand, they’re PIGS and have those funny flat snouts and bristly hair and hooves. All around something that I didn’t really experience much of growing up in the suburbs of upstate New York!
We were “focusing” on the boar because we were curious about them. We wanted to know more. We wanted to see them in action. We wanted to get a close up look at them and how they moved and acted. Of course, neither John nor I had consciously admitted such a fascination, but nonetheless it was there.
Soon, one boar, a small to medium sized boar with splotchy and spotted skin under the bristly hair, found a small to medium sized boar hole in our wooden fence and discovered the wealth of acorns underneath the huge live oak in our yard. So each night that we take our dog Merlin out for his walk, we shine our bright flashlights around and sure enough, there’s Wilbur, pushing around the leaves and snorting happily. (We named him Wilbur after the pig in the children’s book, Charlotte’s Web.) We shoo him out of the yard (as much as a wild boar can be “shoo-ed”) to give Merlin some space and no doubt Wilbur’s right back in after we go inside. It’s sort of an unspoken rule with us now.
The point of all of this is curiosity. Look at children. They are as naturally curious as we are and yet somehow more allowing of their own tendency in this area. They are naturally drawn to what interests them. How many of us who were schooled in the conventional classroom settings can say that they were really interested in what was being taught all the time? I know that I learn best when I do just what I’m interested in right NOW instead of trying to force myself into a schedule. My friend Becky’s kids are some of the most curious kids in the world. They get into everything! And they’re also really good at creating what they want without necessarily going through all of the “normal” channels.
Recently Ken Herbert (on the Inspired Living Email List) wrote a bit about the wisdom of children. “It’s almost like young children only go on feelings and their feelings are not processed through a set of complex mental judgments (because they have none). It seems like they just have two responses to things. Either it feels good or yuckie. If it feels good they want more of it. If it feels yuckie, they want to get away as fast as possible. Simple. No guilt about their decisions and no ulterior motives. Hmmm. Maybe kids have more to teach us than we sometimes give them credit for.”
This piece of brilliance really brought me back up for air. Until (and if) children learn all of the mental manipulations and judgments and rules about what being an “adult” is supposed to be, they are led by their curiosities – they poke at things they’re not “supposed” to poke at. They ask questions about what interests them and from their own perspective. They are naturally driven by their curiosities, by their fascinations. This is their natural sense of FOCUS, this how they follow their joy.
Here’s another example of natural curiosity creating an experience. John and I were really curious when we moved in about all of the hype about the El Nino year and, as a result, how high the stream outside of our house would get. We didn’t realize that we’d create a flood and get airlifted out by a red cross helicopter and wipe out the road in seven spots and take a month to get back home and have to rent a four-wheel drive to ford a river and get through two feet of mud!!!! <deep breath> We didn’t get hurt, none of our stuff got destroyed, and we had an adventure of a lifetime. What a great way to satisfy our curiosity, and how else should we do it in physical reality except by actually experiencing it. I can also say now that I am no longer curious about flooding and have been able to release that fascination. <grin>
What most often prevents us from either admitting our curiosities or consciously following them are our learned judgments about what’s okay and what’s not okay to do or to be interested in, what’s good, what’s bad. And most of the time we’re too busy focused on trying to PREVENT things from happening that we don’t take the time to look at what really fascinates us about what we’re currently experiencing. For instance, for the last few years while I have actually been satisfying my curiosity about the human psyche and belief systems and society, I have been telling myself that I was only doing it so that I could create a specific situation in physical reality for myself. (This is the essence of the teaching that the journey IS the goal.) But I was following my curiosity about not only the human psyche, but what perhaps is the ultimate curiosity – discovering who I really was and who I really wanted to be. What kind of person was I curious about being next? I wonder if this is how actors choose their roles in movies. <grin> Another way to look at this is that curiosity is one representative experience of the creative push for growth that seems to be an innate part of our beings. Why do artists create – mostly to experience the process and to see what happens as they do it.
Even if you’re in an uncomfortable situation – what’s to be learned there? What part of YOU is in what’s around you at the moment? Why did you bring yourself to this point in time and space? What part do you want to experience for yourself directly? What part would you just as soon read about in a book?
Take this another step down the road. What are you curious about in your future? What part of the infamous “Y2K” virus and its potential effects makes you curious? What kind of millenium change are you curious about? What exciting potential brings you completely to your attention – what draws your focus? GET SPECIFIC! Follow your joy. Follow your passions. Follow your desires. Follow your curiosity. Follow your fascination. Let yourself be led by that feeling of “what would happen if…”
©1999, Kristen Fox. Printed in the February 1999 Issue of the online Conscious Creation Journal. (Feel free to duplicate this column for personal use – please include this copyright notice.) http://www.consciouscreation.com/