Hello and welcome to this meditation on creativity and curiosity for a special group at the MIT Media Lab.
And if you're not part of that group and you're listening to this meditation anyway,
Then welcome.
If you're an expert meditator or a beginner meditator,
It doesn't matter.
You can go ahead and close your eyes.
And just find a really comfortable,
Relaxing position.
But allow yourself to have a posture that keeps you awake.
So you can sit in a chair.
You can sit on your bed.
You can sit cross-legged on a cushion.
We're going to explore curiosity today in ourselves.
And to do that,
We have to be in ourselves.
For a lot of us who are intellectual or we spend most of our day in our left brains,
Sometimes we almost forget about our bodies.
We fly off into the universe,
Into concepts,
Principles,
Ideas.
And here in this meditation,
We're going to really start by relaxing deeper and deeper into our physical space.
So as you do close your eyes,
You can get behind your eyes into the center of your head.
Just bring your attention and your awareness there.
And if you can breathe through your nostrils,
You can go ahead and do that nice and deeply.
As we regulate the breath into a slower,
Calmer pace,
Our bodies start to respond.
Our body realizes everything is safe.
There's nothing we have to do.
And our nervous system can,
In a sense,
Downshift.
So if you've been doing a lot today or thinking a lot,
Stressing out,
Tripping out,
Just come back and allow your breath to draw you into your body.
Draw your attention into your entire physical body.
Albert Einstein was once asked by his son,
Dad,
Why are you so famous?
And he replied by saying,
When a blind beetle crawls over the surface of a curved branch,
It doesn't notice that the track it has covered is indeed curved.
I was lucky enough to notice what the beetle didn't notice.
All he did was notice.
Sometimes when scientists make discoveries,
The discoveries that they make are almost so close,
So in front of our faces,
So simple that they're easily overlooked,
Easily missed.
And of course,
Sometimes they're very complicated and far away or deep and small or so big that we have to put all the puzzle pieces together before we can see them.
But sometimes they're really simple and right there.
And meditation is a place where we get really simple and we bring our attention right here.
Allow your shoulders to drop.
Any tense muscles in your body.
Allow them to start to relax.
And you can even notice kind of what face you're making right now.
Is your jaw tense?
Can you have a light smile happening?
Because there's nothing serious about curiosity.
In fact,
It's quite the opposite.
When we're in a curious space or as Einstein would say,
Full of awe,
We're usually in some sense happy,
Excited,
Inspired,
Enthusiastic,
A childlike state.
So today,
Let yourself be in meditation kindergarten.
Let yourself explore without all the filters of your intellectuality.
Let yourself come out of your left brain and into the field of your mind.
And whether you think that there is a real difference between the brain and the mind,
You can let that go.
And now that we've actually gotten here,
We're going to take a trip.
And this trip is going to take us out into space and into another dimension,
If you will.
One where curiosity reigns.
And to take this trip,
You really have to allow yourself to open up into your imagination,
Into that creative kindergarten space.
As we all know,
Einstein said that imagination is more important than knowledge.
But imagination also leads to knowledge.
It's a bridge to knowledge.
And to take this trip,
You're going to need your MIT spacesuit,
Of course,
Of course invented at the MIT Media Lab.
So in your mind's eye,
Just notice what kind of spacesuit you would wear.
It could be a very sleek Star Trek looking one.
Or if you want to go retro,
It could be a 1960s NASA spacesuit where you look like the Marshmallow Man.
And to tease out our curiosity and creativity,
We have to stretch to the edge,
To the boundaries of what we think is normal or usual or acceptable.
So maybe in this spacesuit,
You're wearing converse shoes.
Maybe your spacesuit changes colors with your moods.
Maybe it doesn't just regulate the atmosphere inside the spacesuit.
Maybe it regulates your emotions.
Maybe it keeps your stress levels low.
And once you find yourself wearing your suit and ready to go,
You just start to levitate off of your seat.
And you start to go straight up into the atmosphere,
Above the house or the building you're in.
You can look down and see your physical body still sitting there.
You can look down and see the structure you just left,
See the surrounding area.
And then as you look up,
You're moving pretty quickly out into the outer atmosphere of the planet.
Until you're all the way outside of Earth's atmosphere in space.
You see the International Space Station go by.
It just misses you.
And you continue out a few more miles into space.
And when you get out here,
All of a sudden you come to a stop.
And a doorway or portal,
Wormhole,
Opens up in front of you.
And on top there's a sign,
Kind of like a vacancy or no vacancy sign at a motel.
It just kind of flashes and it says,
Curiosity dimension.
And then you decide you're ready to go for the ride and explore.
And so it pulls you in.
And now you find yourself just moving through a wormhole.
And it's kind of pleasant.
See the stars moving past you or just nebulous colors because everything is moving so quickly.
Until you reach an entirely different part of space.
And in fact,
It's not just a different part of space.
In a weird way,
It's a different dimension.
And this dimension might have some different laws than the one we're from.
The speed of light might be different.
The force of gravity might be different.
Or as Einstein would say,
It's a bend,
A curvature in space-time.
Maybe space bends more here.
Whatever you think is impossible,
Maybe here it's possible.
Maybe it rains curiosity the way water rains on Earth.
And there's a planet here.
And you slowly just move closer to the planet and you land on it.
The name of this planet is Curiosity 1.
And just like there are places in the universe where stars are born,
Perhaps there are places in the universe where even laws of nature are born.
Like the speed of light.
Maybe gravity has a mother and light has a father.
I think we've heard the one about light having a father.
Maybe this dimension is where the Greeks got the idea of their gods.
Where Apollo gave birth to light.
Where the god Eros gave us love.
Maybe in some sense they weren't that far off.
Maybe this is where Curiosity was born.
And often we personify things so we can understand them.
And so as you land on this planet there's a very calm lake just a few feet away.
You walk up to it and you take a look in.
But because this is a different kind of place,
A different kind of dimension,
This lake doesn't just reflect physically what you see.
But it starts to reflect deeper truths about Curiosity.
And you can ask this lake a question and it might start to show you an image or a set of images.
Maybe the question you ask is what's the question?
What am I looking for?
What moves my curiosity?
Maybe you simply ask,
Show me something really strange or different.
Or you ask it to show you when you were the most curious as a child.
What moved you?
Maybe this lake has the ability to show you the deeper mysteries.
So without any intellectualizing,
Without any thinking or trying,
In a deep stillness,
This dimension starts to show you something related to your curiosity.
Almost as a gift.
The ontology that ink restores tuna carrying.
And one of the secrets here is just to notice what you notice.
A vague sensation.
A notion.
A strange idea.
Or a really clear image.
Maybe in this dimension straight lines are curved and curved lines are straight.
Maybe light speeds up and slows down based on its mood.
Perhaps instead of 3D printers there are 5D or 10D printers.
Perhaps you can print an emotion or an entire scene from the past.
And allow yourself to be humbled.
You may be a very,
Very smart person in many ways,
But you've never been to this place before.
Be friendly and it will be friendly back.
And so after you've ascertained all the information you're going to,
You might notice a sense of deep curiosity and awe building in your body.
Just that wow.
Nothing but a strange notion of amazement and an appreciation for the depths of the mysteries that exist.
A sense of enthusiasm for those deeper questions that maybe drove you to be a scientist in the first place.
All of us,
Somewhere deep in ourselves,
We all have a scientist that wants to know,
Explore,
Expand,
And grow.
And when you're ready,
All of the sudden you start to notice a pull on you.
And you gently take off from this planet and you start moving in reverse through that wormhole,
That interdimensional portal.
Until you find yourself back right outside the Earth's atmosphere,
You look down and there's home.
And as cool as it is to go to other dimensions and explore other places,
It's also really great to be home.
And then the gravity of the Earth begins to pull you down,
Down into the atmosphere,
All the way down to the structure that your physical body is sitting in.
And then you just land right back where you started.
And right before you open your eyes,
You kind of just look over and notice that there's a drop of curiosity on your shoulder.
It rained curiosity on that planet and one of the drops is still there.
And you just kind of give it a light smile.
Take a deep breath into your body.
And know that out of all the things,
The amazing things that you do know,
There are almost an infinite number of things that you don't.
And that feeds you,
That drives your curiosity and your wonder and your imagination.
You can slowly open your eyes and notice that even though you're in the same place as when you closed them,
It looks a little different.
Because you're different.
You can move your body,
You can stretch.
You can write something down if you want to or write everything down.
Thank you so much for taking the time to sit,
Taking that journey with me and exploring your curiosity.
I hope to see you again soon in meditation.
Enjoy yourself and take care.
