Openness to Learning

In my work with people, I appreciate openness to learning:  the courage to open, to include what one is feeling, wanting, needing, mourning, longing for, and so on.  Openness to learning requires cultivating a friendly relationship with self and with how things are right now. 

When we bring awareness deeply to our healing, growth, and evolution, we find the principle in action:  Life wants to live.  Whatever we’re doing, we’re doing for a reason, conscious or unconscious.  We find that all our inner activities, conscious and unconscious, are movements toward enhancing, protecting and preserving life.  Even the inner movements we might label as destructive or deadening, such as defensiveness, criticism, or avoidance, are at some level our best (conscious or unconscious attempt) to live or at least to be ok.  When we can meet our inner movements and tendencies and patterns with a level of curiosity to discover, "what function is this serving?" we will discover an interesting answer.  Perhaps avoidance is a "play dead" tendency we developed much earlier in our lives when we weren't capable of addressing a difficult situation.  Perhaps criticism or defensiveness created enough emotional distance to protect our hearts from hurting, etc.  By befriending what is happening, we can discover the function it (we) are fulfilling, and in doing so, we can open to new ways to meet our needs. What once was helpful may no longer be so, and in fact may be causing us (and others) to suffer now. Through courageous openness to learning, we mature and outgrow old ways of coping, through connecting with them.  Within connection that is curious and open, new insights emerge. 

Openness to learning is a life-changing and courageous quality!