How to Develop More Curiosity Towards Your Emotions

For me, curiosity is such a wonderful tool for growth, spiritual practice, and just figuring out how to live life better. Today, I want to discuss curiosity in relation to our emotional life, but before I delve into that, I'd like to acknowledge that we're a diverse group here, and our relationships with curiosity may vary. Perhaps I'm just a late bloomer in this aspect. Curiosity wasn't a strong practice for me until about 10 years ago. While I believe we're all curious in some way, I'll describe the kind of curiosity I'd like us to explore today and deepen its meaning for us.

Initially, I related to curiosity as a form of a question—a way to inquire. It wasn't a conscious practice for me initially. My first connection with curiosity was more situational. When something piqued my interest or I wanted to pursue it, or if it seemed a bit unusual, a natural curiosity would arise. This was an instinctive interest in wanting to know more, whether about a subject, a person, or an experience. As a musician for many years, I was naturally curious about different kinds of music and various ways to connect with my instrument.

Eventually, I was introduced to Dharma and meditation, which helped in cultivating other kinds of curiosity and exploration. Here, there's an opportunity to take that initial curiosity, inherent in our human nature, and make it a robust part of our spiritual and meditative path. Some may find this concept less groundbreaking, but for me, it took time to recognize how vital and important active curiosity is in uncovering a new relationship to my emotions.

We have what I'd call 'Natural Curiosity,' which arises for things we like or find interesting. It's that immediate attraction, akin to attachment. Then there's 'active curiosity,' where we deliberately take an interest in things we may not naturally like or find interesting on the surface. It involves a deeper exploration or relationship to those things, a courageous process of leaping into the unknown and working with uncertainty.

From my perspective, it requires developing somatic and interoceptive awareness, a term from Western psychology, which refers to awareness of our felt experience. We're all at different levels with this; personally, I was a late bloomer in developing interoceptive awareness. So, I advocate for practicing an active curiosity in our feeling world and emotions, even the stressful or uncomfortable ones. This demands courage, and it's not an immediate fit for everyone. It's quite counterintuitive compared to how we typically approach our emotions and life experiences. 

Most of us have a natural inclination to turn away from or avoid discomfort, seeking and promoting what's comfortable. Sometimes, we approach meditation with the assumption that it will make us more comfortable, but this mindset can cause trouble. It can lead to distancing ourselves from our emotional world, and for many, including myself, it diminishes curiosity. We're less curious about our emotions, seeking a quick fix instead.

There's no fault in us for this; in fact, it stems from our inner goodness seeking happiness, well-being, and freedom from suffering. However, this doesn't mean we can't be confused about the means to achieve this. In my experience, curiosity is a tool, a way of living that promotes an active engagement with the uncomfortable. It has helped me break free from the binary of either becoming overwhelmed by uncomfortable emotions or rejecting and suppressing them.

I want to add a caveat here: sometimes, we need to remedy our emotions, just as we need medicine. It's okay to remedy, but if we only focus on that and are unwilling to be actively curious and open to our emotions, we won't grow; we'll remain stagnant. So, what I'm advocating and sharing is a process of entering into active curiosity.

Bringing this into our daily lives, in our relationships with partners, kids, parents, siblings, neighbors, and co-workers—where most challenges arise—requires effort. Despite limited control over the external world, we can apply active curiosity to the soil of our daily life. This is especially challenging in disagreements or when facing strong emotional reactions, but we have to start somewhere. We must ask questions.

Another perspective on this comes from my friend Elizabeth Mattis Namgyel, who talks about 'open questions' in her book 'The Power of an Open Question.' Living from open questions is another way to describe curiosity. Developing your own ways to live with open questions can be conceptual or cognitive, where you ask specific questions. For me, it's often open-ended, like wondering why someone is reacting a certain way. The point is to open up more curiosity and engage in open questions. 

Exploring the level of emotions goes beyond asking conceptual questions about them. Often, we find ourselves pondering, 'Why is this happening to me? What went wrong in my childhood that led to this experience?' These questions are valid, and I don't intend to diminish them. However, our minds tend to gravitate towards figuring things out. Many of us, being educated and intelligent individuals, can analyze and understand the outer circumstances, habitual patterns, and potential traumas that contribute to our emotions, but often lack deeper processes for exploring our emotions in a felt way. 

Here's an open question to consider as a form of active curiosity: Did understanding the reasons necessarily alter or heal your relationship with the emotion? While gaining insight into why something arises may offer a sense of safety for some, there's another area where we might not feel safe—feeling the emotion itself. Allowing the energy to be intense and strong and cultivating a new relationship with it requires a different kind of curiosity, one that is open and accepting, free from constant analysis or critique.

Some may argue that understanding the why does change their relationship with the emotion, providing a sense of security. However, there's an unexplored territory—feeling the emotion without analyzing or critiquing it. It involves opening up a new relationship to the energy, fostering curiosity without the interference of the thinking mind.

In the modern West, many of us are chronic overthinkers, a habit ingrained in our education and societal norms. While embracing open questions and active curiosity with our thinking minds is positive, it's equally important to extend this curiosity to our bodies, emotions, and the energetic qualities within. Breaking away from the habitual pattern of relying on thinking and analysis for understanding, we can develop a new relationship with the language of the feeling world.

This requires learning how to approach our emotions and bodies without the constant need for thinking and analysis. How do we open up to the language of the feeling world, cultivating a relationship that doesn't rely on thinking to understand, but rather focuses on creating new connections?

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If you found this writing helpful, here’s a practice you can try.