The angels suggested that I write on curiosity.  This is a message for all of us.  If we are not curious, how are we to access the Higher realms?  We reach these realms through our imagination, our openness and the energy and joy of our curiosity.  Our inner child can lead the way.  Children never stop asking questions.  They only stop if they are silenced by adults who feel that they have all the answers and that THEIR answers are the correct ones.  Their truths are the only truths.  These silencers do not tend to see curiosity as a gift, but rather, as a threat.  Where do these fears about curiosity originate?  Some people feel that they stem from a fear of death – that the fear of death leads us to constrict our natural curiosity.  The old adage that “curiosity killed the cat” does seem deeply embedded in our psyches.  According to some of my research, cats, apes and rodents are considered creatures exhibiting curiosity.  However, did curiosity REALLY kill the cat?  Or is it actually that we human beings feel safer clinging to our old beliefs, things and other people that we have consistently delineated as true for ourselves and true for others?

Geneen Roth (Prevention magazine, Jan 2004) believes that some of us use food or other substances as a way to stifle our natural feelings – such as curiosity.  In Geneen’s life, her cat Blanche is her role model and helper on her way to the realization that “somewhere along the line, as the stereotypic idea of what we should be and how we should look gets drilled into us, we should stop being curious and decide we know all the answers.  We know what’s wrong with ourselves, and we know how to fix it.  All we have to do is summon a little willpower and slap ourselves into place.”  Geneen sees Blanche’s curiosity as a positive quality to be emulated rather than slapped down: “he never assumes he knows what’s behind the philodendron in the hall just because he’s stalked it a thousand times.  He never assumes the grocery bag is just a bag – what if it suddenly grows wings and zips through the air like a dragon?”  Geneen celebrates her cat’s endless curiosity as her inspiration in her own journey of learning that she had been using food to squelch her own feelings and she began a journey that led to the publishing of six books about emotional eating, including her book entitled WHEN FOOD IS LOVE.

We can all easily relate to Geneen’s story.  Who among us hasn’t used food or beverages at one time or another to ‘stuff down’ painful and/or unexpressed memories and feelings?  ‘Comfort foods’ is a term we hear every day.  One of the feelings that ‘comfort foods’ helps to keep veiled is curiosity.  Eleanor Roosevelt once said:  “I think at a child’s birth, if a mother could ask a fairy godmother to endow it with the most useful gift, that gift would be curiosity.”  Luckily, we are ALL endowed with curiosity – this amazing gift is within; however, we may need to re-discover it anew.  We may need to re-connect with our inner child and unleash our curiosity.  We may wish to go down the rabbit hole with Alice and become “curiouser and curiouser”.  This journey within is symbolized in ALICE IN WONDERLAND:

“Cheshire Puss,… Would you tell me, please, which way I ought to go from here?

That depends a good deal on where you want to get to, said the Cat.

I don’t much care where, said Alice.

Then it doesn’t matter which way you go, said the Cat.”    (Lewis Carroll)

The Cheshire cat has always been one of my favourite characters.  The journey within is well worth the work.  Because, if we don’t know where we are going –  as the Cheshire cat tells us – any road will take us there!

The Dalai Lama says about our journey that ” we live in a time of computers and automation, so you may feel that inner development is also an automatic thing for which you push a button and everything changes.  It is not so.  Inner development is not easy and will take time.” (Insights from the Dalai Lama calendar).  For most of us this does appear to be true.  However, I believe that we can shorten the time it takes, at least somewhat, when we exercise our curiosity and follow the clues.  Even so – for most of us – our multiple ‘awakenings’ may take many lifetimes of exploration and experience as our soul’s curiosity is infinite.

Alice’s defining characteristic is curiosity.  Some critics say it is an unthinking curiosity.  But, what if we took Alice’s childhood curiosity and combined it with the wisdom of adulthood?  Embrace yours now.  When was the last time that you truly explored something new?  A new idea or experience.  Your curiosity will lead you to your soul’s chosen direction.  What fascinates you?  Use your curiosity to bring in some ‘new’ energy and also to move you in the direction planned by your Higher Self before you came into the physical.  Talk to your inner child and your angels and keep following your curiosity.  And, while you are joyfully doing this – not knowing where it will take you – never forget that there is never an instant when you are genuinely ‘lost’.  You are always lovingly held in the Mind of Source.

With Light,     Monica      p.s.  I don’t know how many times I used the word curiosity – but – I hope enough times to absorb its energy!