Today is Welcome Day, and the campus is abuzz with new and returning students and staff. The energy of community is wonderful!
Last week we talked about fresh starts, and the reminder that every breath can be a return to beginning again.
But what does beginning mean?
We enter interactions and situations carrying our history, beliefs and biases with us. Much of these serve us well, and become our wisdom, experience-based intuition and values.
This carry-on baggage can also be limiting. Like a sieve that removes all the herbs and vegetables from a stew, leaving only the broth, beliefs and biases can be filters that reduce the richness and possibility of experience. When broth is all that you can handle, that’s OK. But you’re leaving a lot behind.
Beginner’s mind is about letting go of expectations and approaching with fresh eyes and curiosity. We release ideas about what we think we know to make space for what we don’t.
There is common discomfort with not-knowing. In adult education, students may start out thinking they know a lot. Then for a while they are comfortable, not knowing what they don’t know.
It’s at the point where we feel the weight of knowing what we don’t know that we can feel incompetent, overwhelmed and hopeless. That’s when a lot of students are at risk of dropping out.
We need to remember both the predictability and the passing of this hard turn in the learning curve, and support each other through it.
Practicing ease with not-knowing helps. In my work as a therapist, I give homework designed for practicing this sort of cognitive flexibility. It can be as simple as taking a walk, where at every intersection you flip a coin: one time to see if you go straight or turn, and a second time if needed to see if you go left or right.
Ease in not-knowing means getting more comfortable with not being in control.
Beginner’s mind means letting go of attachment to ideas of how things are, in order to experience how things are. Curiosity translates to an openness to learning new information, ideas, ways of thinking, and new patterns, possibilities and solutions.
And life-long learning is what we’re all about.
