Episode 310
Curious About Oneself
Marsha Linehan, creator of dialectical behavioral therapy, assembled many different mental exercises to help guide people to greater emotional clarity. These are techniques that people can use even if they can’t stand meditation.
One exercise involves simply looking at an object, for example an egg. We observe the egg for five minutes, noticing the light and shade, the textures, wondering about its internal form, how a yolk might grow into a chick or any other aspect of the object we can imagine.
When we use this technique, we might find it interesting how objective or dispassionate we can be. Or to put it another way, we can be very curious about the egg, exploring its form, without judging it at all.
Perhaps we can see ourselves with that same light, the light of curiosity.
Hosts & Guests
Kurt Robinson
Transcript
This is how your life is already wonderful.
I’d like to talk to you about being curious about ourselves.
There are some awesome exercises on this site called Dialectical Behavioral Therapy.com and these come from the wonderful woman Marsha asdasda if you search on YouTube you can see some interviews with her. This is the woman who was the assembler, creator founder of this website.
She compiled all of these wonderful exercises and a lot of people keep adding to these. A lot of these are designed or selected as its better said are for people who find it difficult to meditate.
Which if I am honest that just about everyone.
One exercise in particular which I like to use with clients or even just people I meet who tell me they find it really difficult to sit down for 15 minutes and I say lets try this.
The exercise is the observation exercise so we choose an object, for example I am looking at this 20 peso note in front of me or someone might choose something they have lying around and we watch it. Set the timer for 5 minutes and we watch that object.
Obviously not expecting a lot to change within that object in those minutes. We can look at the texture, the light, the shape the form, the colors. Notice different things about it. Its so weird but the tongue knows what things are going to feel like, if you imagine trying to lick something the tongue knows exactly what its gonna feel like. You can try that out with that egg.
And then we might even imagine, what is it like inside the egg? How does such a thing come to be? How does the yolk and the germ produce a living thing? Produce a chick? It’s kind of fascinating to wonder about it’s nature.
Now when we complete this exercise something interesting to note, having observed this object for five minutes not once did we really judge it. That’s not normally what happens. If you do judge an egg don’t worry that’s not bad but normally it won’t happen.
Normally you won’t think to yourself “this egg is not big enough” or “it’s too small, this egg is problematic or offensive in some form.”
Normally we would not say that, we just observe and let it be exactly what it is. I said so many times that auto exigence is one of the greatest barriers to happiness. When we look at ourselves how do we treat ourselves do we say “I am not tall enough, big enough or muscly enough? I need to be more, I need to work harder?”
Or do we just notice what we are being curious about what is within us, about our form. Wondering, noticing, simply being curious about ourselves. What happens when we do that?
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