Insight

“I used to say to my classes that the ways to get insight are: to study infants; to study animals; to study primitive people; to be psychoanalyzed; to have a religious conversion and get over it; to have a psychotic episode and get over it; or to have a love affair with an old Russian. And I stopped saying that when a little dancer in the front row put up her hand and said, 'Does he have to be old?”

                                                                         Margaret Mead

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There are many ways to come awake

Or to be “woke”

As they say today

But mostly it is a matter of looking

Listening

Observing

Interacting

It is a matter of noticing how you feel

How you respond to things

What thoughts go roaring through your head

When you experience something

See something

Hear something

Here is the thing

If, as I go through life, I keep my focus “out there”

On them,

Then I don’t have to look at myself

But if I am willing to return to me

And to that inner life

That voice, that feeling

Then I learn amazing things

Not always good things

Sometimes, in fact, ugly things

But still I learn

And insight is a good thing

But not the only thing

Then you have to respond to it

Really, I mean it!