Insight of the Week: Being Open

“Just be open to it”.

We hear this phrase many times when we are presented with trying something new or looking at something from a different perspective.  Most of us are “set in our ways”.  We carry certain belief systems that we adopted from childhood teachings, picked up from friends, from personal experiences and the influence of society at large.  And slowly somewhere we decided to solidify and ingrain which ones we believed and resonated with…clinging to and turning them into the pillars of our very existence.  What would happen if we suspended our current belief system for a just a moment to allow the experience, knowledge, or notion of something new to enter?  You could always return to your old model at any time.  So, what happens when your mind and heart is given a little open space? What new way of being or thinking would enter?   What new experience as a result?

We are socially conditioned creatures that develop habits, walls of protection, structures of belief and behavioral patterns that we cling to out of fear of letting go. For we believe if we let go of what “we know” we would lose what “we are” meaning our identity or sense of self or even our lives as we have constructed them thus far.  In part, this is true but not in the way you would imagine.  When you are open to something new, should it resonate with you and you adopt it, you also are simultaneously letting go of something that no longer serves you.  It’s important to recognize and become aware of what no longer works in your life.  Holding onto to it blocks you from receiving and expanding – in short from growing emotionally, mentally and spiritually. Being open means allowing the energy and flow of the new belief system, experience, knowledge, to come in without pre-judgement. It allows for temporary suspension of habitual reactions, walls of defense, judgments, and criticisms long enough for a new seed to be planted.  This is how change takes place.  Change is merely another way of saying growth.  We are all in a constant state of flux as energetic beings.  The question is which way do you want to move your energy?  In the old way that may no longer serve who you are?  In the treading water of the status quo? Or into the unknown and newness of what may be possible from the field of infinite potentiality.  A possibility that may change everything.  There is only one way to find out…it starts by being open to it. Life requires courage.  You could always go back…but you may find you do not want to.