Be Curious, Not Judgmental

My favorite TV scene of all time is Ted playing darts with Rupert on Ted Lasso.  His point of the necessity in being curious instead of judgmental is so well made and a monumental lesson we all need to take on board.  This year I have allowed myself to get all kinds of curious.  I have gone down rabbit holes and into fox dens and am better because of it.  I have learned and unlearned so much.

Next year I am going to continue that introspection and curiosity and add in my word for 2024 - discipline.  All of that is going to come together in the study and daily practice of a Course In Miracles, and I am inviting you on the journey.  Do you want more information or are you ready to say yes to your daily growth.  This is open to anyone regardless of your beliefs, skepticism, or where you are at in your journey.  The course will meet you where you are and carry you forward.

Connect with me on Instagram and TikTok.  If you would like to book a session, please head over to my website.

Wishing all of you so much joy and love this holiday season.  Be Curious.  Be Love.

Transcript

 Rise and shine, everybody. It's time to wake up with Susan. Spiritual awakening can be a beautiful, messy, and sometimes lonely journey, so let's do it together. I'm your host, Susan Sutherland. I'm an intuitive healer and spiritual mentor.

We are all called to rise up above our conditioning and limiting beliefs, and shine our light on ourselves and others. So let's get to it.  Hi, family. Thanks for joining me today. I cannot believe it, but this is the second to last episode in twenty twenty three.

So I was planning a wrap it up episode, and so much of that was gonna be spent on being curious and how being curious has really impacted my life,  particularly in this past year, that it ended up getting its own  episode. So that's what we're talking about today.  But before we do that, I do wanna talk to you about the book club that is coming up in twenty twenty four, it is a book club with only one book.  So it is not something you have to, um, commit to a book every month. It is something you have to commit to reflecting and journaling every day.

So,  um, this is kinda how this transpired  just because I just tell y'all all my business, strangers. Um,  but I was on a hike with Mark on his fiftieth birthday, and we were hiking,  um, and just having a really nice time and having really nice conversation, and he asked me what my five year plan was. And out of my mouth with no contemplation  was the word enlightenment.  And I don't know where that came from, like, obviously, I think that's our soul's  longing. Our soul's journey  is to do that over the course of many, many lifetimes.

I think that is what we are striving for, but how that just leaped out of my face,  it just did, but that is kind of when my little melancholic  Talespin started because  I am a I am a goal oriented person. I  like to accomplish things. I like to set goals and strive for things, and  enlightenment is almost The opposite of that. It's the opposite of doing. It is completely embodying beingness,  and I really didn't.

I I knew that that word came from spirit because it didn't come from my mind, but I didn't know what to do with that. And I am I am the person who needs to find the doing. What are the steps? Okay. That's what I'm supposed to do. 

And so it really that's kinda when the mess started with my mess in my heart going, alright. Well, then how do I achieve things? Because I've I've been told to stop putting myself in a box and to just allow, but I want to keep challenging myself and not playing small,  but how do you do that when you're supposed to be allowing and just being? Like,  I I took a mental tailspin trying to figure out what that looks like for me. So  like I say, if if you can get out of your own way and your own head and allow things to happen, they will.

So what came to me was that for next year,  I am going to do A Course in Miracles. Like I've said, I've I've dabbled. I've read some of the lessons, but have I done the daily practice? And it is something that I always talk about is moving from those lower level these guilt, shame, fear up into the higher frequencies of love, joy, peace, enlightenment. That is that journey, and that's exactly what A Course in Miracles is.

It is taking daily lessons to end blame, shame, and guilt and fear with love and forgiveness. So it is really doing introspection,  and the the  the visual I'll give you is if you've got a fishbowl  on the counter and it's really cloudy, there's no fish in it, just cloudy water, and you hold  a flashlight up to it,  some of the light will come through the other side. Right? I mean, the light will kinda get through there, but the cloudiness really  clamps up its ability to project itself through the otherwise glass bowl. But when you have crystal clear water, that light shines through perfectly.

And so what A Course in Miracles is is a daily practice that allows you to clean up your water so that more and more of the light comes through.  So when I committed to doing it and then I was like, okay. Fine. Yes. I I can. 

I had said that I was gonna do a book club and then, you know, found a book club, and I'm doing all of these books. And it's like, slow down, sister. You actually need to do less books and really focus on this. And so I'm going to, and then  You guys know that I keep saying I'm gonna share more and more on social media. I'm gonna share this and then low and behold, I don't do it, and I get caught up in  what it's supposed to look like or what I'm supposed to say, and I get really tied up in my head about doing that.

Well, if you are participating in anything that is a daily practice And plan on helping other people through it, and I'm not committing  to uploading videos daily. But it is going to be a regular occurrence that I am committing to, and so I have to be organized. I have to be disciplined. I have to show up regularly, and I have to get out of my own way because it's gonna have to just just be. And I know that, um,  this practice now is meant for me.

You know when you're sawing  Uh, board. You're sewing a board. Those first couple cuts kinda jump around and go everywhere.  But when you do something repeatedly, when you start forming that groove, the more you go back and forth and back and forth, the Sturdier the saw gets because the groove has grown, and you've given the saw almost a resting place. In this backward and forward motion, you have created this  you're in the groove.

When they say you're in the groove, that's what they're talking about, is by showing up and having this disciplined daily practice is gonna create your groove and definitely my groove. That's why I'm being required to not only do this work, but invite you to do it with me so that I am showing up and creating these videos and sharing content on a regular basis and get out of my damn hit. So, um, I also got the material, and I want to  share with you, um, the introduction page in the text because it's really beautiful and amazing.  This is A Course in Miracles. It is a required course.

Only the time you take it is voluntary. Free will does not mean that you can establish the curriculum. It means only that you can elect what you want to take at a given time. The course does not aim at teaching the meaning of love, for that is beyond what can be taught. It does aim, however, at removing the blocks to the awareness of love's presence, which is your natural inheritance. 

The opposite of love is fear, but what is all encompassing can have no opposite.  This course can therefore be summed up very simply in this way. Nothing real can be threatened. Nothing unreal exists.  Here in lies the peace of God.

So from that, what I gather in my understanding is that your soul's journey over many many many lifetimes is to move out of the the programming of fear and guilt and shame up through those vibrations, up into love and joy and peace and eventually enlightenment. So what it's saying is you don't have to do the course now, not in twenty twenty four. You don't have to do the course in this lifetime, but understand that this is the course that you will be taking is how to move  with love and with forgiveness  above that programming to transcend  all of that lower the humanness to transcend that  and really embody  love. So that's the course we're all taking. If you want to do it with me now, there is a link in the show notes.

We're gonna do it together. I think anything that you can do in community  when it is a loving community, um, that you can share openly, we will be able to gain other people's perspectives. Sometimes when two people read the same thing, it's interpreted differently, and I think there's so much that can be gained from one another in addition to accountability  and saying, hey. You deserve this time. You deserve to show up for you.

Um, so if you are interested in taking your course now  With me, with us, then definitely sign up. I'm I'm getting really excited about this because I know it is gonna truly be transformative.  And now, you guys, we're gonna get on with the show, as they say, which is about curiosity.  And my very favorite scene in a show all time ever is Ted Lasso playing darts with Rupert.  And if you haven't watched Ted Lasso, get on it.

Get on it. I don't recommend a whole bunch of TV, but get on that because it is a gem, y'all. Um, number two favorite Ever is also from Ted Lasso and is when Roy is telling Rebecca not to settle when she is dating. So Ted Lasso's got scenes one and two, and Friends has probably scenes three three fifty,  and they just make me laugh. But, um, back to this favorite scene of mine. 

Rupert is going to challenge Ted,  Not challenge him, bet him. Place a big bet on darts. And so he says, Ted,  Do you like darts? And Ted's like, they're okay.  That's not a very good question.

Right? That's not a a question to get a whole bunch of information out. And so his question, which is not open ended, which does not Lead to more discussion. He's not curious. He's judgmental. 

And he ends up getting whipped in darts because Ted used to play every Friday night with his dad. And because his dad passed, he doesn't enjoy darts as much now, but that wasn't the question. He didn't say, hey, did hey. Hey, did. Hey, Ted.

Have you played a lot of darts? Hey, Ted. What's your best score at darts? Hey, Ted. How much time have you spent playing darts?

Like, he he didn't ask the questions to get more information.  And what Ted explains to him is that one day driving in a car with his son, he sees Walt Whitman's quote on the side of a wall, and it says, be curious, not judgmental.  And he realized growing up that all the boys who struggled  they didn't struggle. They made him struggle. They were Bullying to him, they weren't curious about Ted.

They were judgmental.  It's a beautiful scene, and  curiosity has led me down this road.  And it led me to the point of finally getting comfortable saying things that were outside of how I was raised,  and that's a work in progress. But I'm really excited to share with you How important curiosity has been for me over the past year of getting to the place of getting to a place where,  I mean, it took a long time of journeying within before I was sharing it with other people.  But now that I did, when I finally came out and said, like, hey.

I think things are different than we've been taught. Things are things are not quite as they seem. Once I did that, I really opened up that exploration for me, And I'm excited to share more of that with you all and encourage you to be curious, encourage you to question, I think, our lack of questioning. Lack of questioning  our parents, sometimes lack of questioning our education system, our government,  lack of questioning churches and our institutions, when we just all in line. We give up our power.

We need to question things. We need to  Be vigilant  in  how we take on information and say, how does this feel for me? Just because we've always done it Doesn't mean it's right. Just because you're saying it from a point of authority does not mean you're correct. Our government,  I mean, goodness gracious.

They are snowing us left and right, and people  aren't curious enough to find out what the facts are. And it's interesting. I had a great realization  in Reading Mahatma Gandhi's auto autobiography  recently, it's not one I'm gonna recommend.  Not that it doesn't have a lot of greatness in there, but it has a lot of specific details about the cases he worked  for,  Lower class citizens  in getting their rights, which is profound,  Beautiful work, but there is a lot of detail, and I almost think reading a biography about him  Would be amazing too. Anyway,  so  when he's talking about working with people of Differing faiths, which was incredible how he did that with Muslims he called Musalmans and Hindus in India to work on them gaining rights  together, uplifting their whole culture, they needed to work together.

But what he said about Christians is that he found them arrogant.  And when I read that, I realized  a lot of how I was feeling, that is my problem  with Christianity  is that if you look at the devout  religions  in the world,  Christianities  Christianities. Christians on the whole have to do less  and have The ultimate authority saying we're right because we believe this even though we don't practice  The practice. We we don't fast. We don't have  five times a day prayers.

Like, we're doing nothing, but we are claiming the ultimate authority. Anyway, when he said it was arrogant, it made me realize  What my struggle was, and it's a very similar struggle with Americans. And for both of these groups, Americans and Christians, I'm gonna tell you there are some seriously devout Christians. There are some serious practicing Christians who  Embody the teachings of the gospel. If that's you, that's not who I'm talking about.

I'm talking about the  The YOLO crew who are out here living their five senses with no regard to any kind of work, but saying Jesus did the work, therefore, I don't need to. That's very different than the religious practices in other cultures, but you're saying, I believe in Jesus, therefore, I have heaven and you don't because you don't even though they are very devout. I'm getting on a tangent, but you see what I'm saying. Similar to Americans who are we have the greatest nation, super patriotic.  America is first and best and only and have never stepped a foot off the soil.

So I'm not saying America's not a great country, I am saying be curious.  Explore. Go to other places.  And in my curiosity,  I have  read books from  some  gurus, some swamis, some Indian self realized,  um, masters  whose interpretations of the gospel and of Jesus's teachings were  The most profound that I have,  uh, I guess, because they're worded in language that I can understand. We have abandoned, you know, language from two thousand years ago and put it in language that I can understand.

And when you do that teaching about the myth of garden and Eden in a way that I can understand that is, um,  translated from somebody who has achieved self realization, it was more impactful for me than ten years of Sunday school.  So what I'm saying is be curious when you limit yourself to where the information can come from or what is expected for you to do or believe,  you limit your understanding  even of what you say you understand. So what I'm saying is even if you believe  Jesus to be God incarnate, which I do, learning about Jesus through Indian teachers, I'm telling you, has been massively profound for me. So I'm gonna in next week's episode, I'm gonna do a, uh, wrap up episode with my three favorite books that were transformative.  Um, so you'll have to tune in for that one because some of them were just oh, they're they're really good.

But that's for next week. What I'm saying is be curious. Just be open and be curious. And a lot of the books that I read this year actually have conflicting information,  um, and there's some there's a lot of things that I  don't know.  I mean,  there's a lot let's assume I don't know any of it.

There's a lot of things I don't even still yet know where my opinion rests. I will say that. That I have heard good arguments for this or good arguments for that, and I'm still kinda up in the air about what I believe, but what I'll tell you, anything that I believe,  I will say this is what I believe it right now because I see it as fluid, and the more I know and the more I grow, the more my understanding gaining shifts, and so while this is what I believe today,  I am open and allowing I am gonna allow curiosity  to  bring me in a different direction to understand  Different things, and so curiosity definitely took me to India, and a lot of the teachings now,  I have learned so much  differently about  Hinduism, but I've only learned it from self realized masters. And so I do think there's as much dogma And this in Hindu that I feel like is in our Christian religion,  um, the CAST system, for starters, which I I do believe a lot of people have worked against that. I don't know enough to speak about that here, and, like I say, the only people I've I've learned from are self realized who understand that Hindu is one way, not the only way, and so there's a difference maybe than how it's taught,  But I'm not sure.

I'm I'm still exploring. I'm still learning. And where I used to think, well, that's a problem. They see all these multiple gods, but if you understand God to be in anything,  then it is not worshiping the item you can sit and  pray and connect with the god in anything, and maybe that's a statue or maybe that's a picture or maybe that's, um, you know, a cross.  You're not worshiping the item.

It is invoking in you Devotion to the God in everything. But, anyway, curiosity has really led me to shifting understanding  About different,  uh, different practices, different religions, but that curious  curiosity has led me to challenge and just open up a understanding  differently about what I was taught before. It's not like one marks out the other. It's like It's two people standing, and one person sees a six, and one person sees a nine, and they're both right. But  how cool to shift and understand somebody else's perspective. 

Um, Adam Grant is an author,  and he posted on Instagram recently, to keep an open mind, think like a scientist. Treat your opinions as hypothesis and decisions as experiments. Oh my gosh. Isn't that brilliant? Like, instead of just thinking we're right, be curious to hear other people's perspective and then say, um, what do I feel about that?

Instead of saying my way is the right way,  um, really open up to hearing ways, and maybe you you pick and choose from this and you pick and choose from that, um, but  curiosity will get you there.  He also says embrace confident humility. Argue like you're right and listen like you're wrong, and build a challenge network. Seek out people who sharpen your reasoning.  Yes to that. 

Um, so in the past year, curiosity has led me to a light language activation.  It has led me to  a galactic reading. It has led me to a womb regression,  past life regression and in between life regressions and reading books about all of those, I really  Started learning so much about the soul's journey, about, um,  hypnosis and what can be learned in that Deep hypnotic state, and there are some really brilliant authors who Michael Newton and Dolores Cannon, particularly,  who I just learned so much from their teaching. Now not everything that they say  matches up with what the other says. Like, they have some differing views  or experiences with their subjects.

And so it was really curious, and it's really interesting. And so I don't take what either of them say and think it to be fact. It just opens up this curiosity in me to explore further. Like, what does it what does it  feel like to be on the other side. What is the experience like?

Um, and so I am going to be less chicken next year,  about talking about these experiences  with you guys, having somebody come on who can let you know what light language is,  um, and  and really exploring different things, and I invite you to take what you like and leave the rest. Um, but I think it's really cool, and it's really important to expose yourself to different things and see what lights you up. See  I mean, the people who have come to me for Akashic readings are ones who, when I started hearing you talk about Akashic readings, I just knew I needed to have that. When your soul calls for you to do something, it that's meant for you. There's there's a message in that reading that's supposed to get there for you.

Um, when I heard about womb regression, that's what it felt like for me because I don't know if I've brought this up on this podcast, but let me tell you my story.  Sorry if it's a repeat. Can't remember. But my sister is seven and a half years older than me, And my brother is twelve months older than me. And after my brother was born,  I mean, they had their girl, they had their boy all set, my mom had her tubes tied,  and then she found out she was pregnant with me.

And so she had her tube I had surgery to prevent me, and then twelve months later, here I am. She's  got these Irish twins,  Um, coming. And so I did the womb regression as a means of healing that part of me. You can you can go through and journal  situations that come up for you where you understand, okay, this was said, and I took that on board. You know, this hurt me. 

If I'm twenty years  twenty years out, if you're still remembering something you're carrying it in your energetic body, and you really need to do forgiveness work or, um, meditation to clear that out. If you've got painful memories from twenty years ago, they're still sitting with you. But what you can't remember, how do you process that? And so I understand  that  now, after all of my work to learn how to not carry people's energy now, to work with their energy and not feel it. My understanding of why high school age took me down  the toilet, like, Into the toilet and I couldn't deal with it was  carrying all these emotions.

And so when I think back to being in the womb and being an infant with a mother who  Has a one year old and this surprise pregnancy, I know for sure that I was carrying some of that with me, some of that overwhelm, some of that  exhaustion or sadness or,  heaviness,  I was carrying that with me. And so I did a wound regression to really understand that and and start a healing process on a time period that I can't just  go back to, um, so that's why I did that. But there's a lot of really cool healing techniques or, um,  or different methods. I think I've talked about EFT. That's tapping on your meridian points and really speaking through affirmations to release stress.

But what I'm telling you is I want you to be curious. I want you to question what you've been told.  Um, I read books this year questioning the crucifixion.  I read books that said that  now I do believe that Jesus was able to  End his life quickly  on the cross,  escape out. Like, all of the Indian masters that I have read about know of their impending death and do not suffer through it.

Once it is time, Then they are able to move out of the body.  Anyway, um, all of these different things, but uh, but one of the ones had said, you know, they can essentially, you can be meditate into the point of being breathless and out of body to where When he was  taken to the tomb, he could have, like, gotten back in his body, popped up, and then gone and lived his life with Mary Magdalene in the east.  And then what? You know, like, all these different books. And so I'm just inviting you to be curious because there's so much information out there.

If that's not something that  You're curious about, leave it. If a soul's journey after life is not something you're curious about, leave it. I'm just telling you to open up to the possibility  that things aren't always as you've been taught and to allow exploration.  Um,  when you come in everything from a place of curiosity and the understanding  that what you know right now is what you know right now and maybe there's more to explore, there is more to learn,  um, and that we don't have all the answers. When you know you don't have all the answers, you can be less judgmental on other people, and that would serve us all really, really well.

When we stop thinking that  What we know is true  and, emphatically, the only possible way we can stop judging other people. Maybe they have something to contribute that would expand you. Maybe you have something to contribute that would expand them, but we all need to take the lesson from Ted, who took the lesson from Walt Whitman, and be curious and not judgmental.  Be open to the fact that what I'm telling you, I believe  today, what I know right now, Maybe something different in July. Like, I know some things that I believe now  I didn't believe in January,  and some things I did believe in January, I don't believe now.

I'm open to that being a revolving door of understanding where a little bit comes in and a little bit comes out.  Um, even reading untethered,  um, the creation of souls and old souls and young souls, and were we all created at the same time, when when you start exploring different people's understanding, there's a lot of conflict out there, and there's a lot of conflicting views from people I really Admire and respect, and I think they are making great contributions to this field,  but they don't line up. So somebody's off in in some way. But guess what? We're we're not gonna know till we know.

Um, and so there are certain things that I feel like are Unchanging for me that we  are souls and that our body is a temporary vessel. That within that body, Within that soul is divinity and we are called to remember that. And, uh, reincarnation is something that I  I don't think I'll ever change my opinion on that. Uh, it is it was removed from the the Bible and from Christian text, I think in five hundred AD, um, and I believe the intention that I read was that,  um, when people think that you have all the time in the world, that you have multiple reincarnations,  that you're not motivated, that you're not motivated on the journey of self realization.  However, what you got instead was the YOLO movement.

Right? You only live once and we are so identified with our senses that, um, people feel like they have to experience everything because you only live once, and  that actually moved them away from a spiritual journey instead of moving them too, like, I've got to get this right right now. Um, so anyway, that that may have worked against  What it was intended, but I don't think  with all I understand about soul's journeys,  I don't know how I would go and no longer believe in reincarnation. And so I feel like those are my unchanging truths,  And everything else is pretty fluid. I'm still learning.

I'm still  gaining understanding,  and, um, I am still really freaking curious,  and that's what I hope for you. And if I could wrap  A Christmas present up for you this Christmas, it would be curiosity. That's what I hope you bring into the new year is  the openness  to  be curious, to challenge what you know, but also floor things that you didn't even know you didn't know. Be open to learning about,  Gosh. The universe far and wide, yourself  deep and thoroughly,  be open to exploring  it all.

Just it all. Let's challenge the narrative. Let's challenge what is out there and programmed in us, if we can bring anything into an election year, it is being curious and not judgmental.  Instead of saying how  why would you ever vote for that person? Be curious.

Like, you know, what are your true beliefs? What are your core values?  Where did you gain this understanding? Instead of judging somebody, let's be curious. So this is the last episode before Christmas.

I hope, hope, hope that you are with those that you love this Christmas. And if not, please feel my arms around you. Feel me giving you so much love  so that you know that you're not alone. We are one, and I am celebrating with you. Whatever you celebrate, I'm here with you.

I love you all. Have the best holiday, and I'll see you next week.  Friends, are you ready to call in miracles? If so, join me for the twenty twenty four book club. I don't want you to think this is a overwhelming experience.

When any big challenge is broken up into a daily small practice. It is doable. It is achievable, and it's something we can do together. The links in the show notes, I hope you join me. 

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