Dr. Lu used this quote to close his talk about Traditional Chinese Medicine at the Integrative Healthcare Symposium earlier this month. It reminded me of how often we try to understand a new concept based upon our past learning. Of course, this is entirely logical. Our experience gives us a language and lens by which to process novel ideas. Though just because this pattern is logical, doesn’t mean it always serves. What’s perhaps more powerful, and yet more difficult to do as we get older, is to just take a learning as is without trying to compare it to what we already know.
This is how children learn. They’re little sponges. No prejudices, no judgements, no nagging voice in the back of their minds that is chattering away. They take a new lesson as just that – new and to be appreciated in its own right.
What if we could do that as new situations and experiences come into our lives? What if we could set aside that chattering, monkey mind, and just take in the new information for all the glory it has in its own right? If we could do that then I am confident that there isn’t a single challenge in all the challenges our world now faces that we wouldn’t be able to solve.
Christa Avampato 