The Sacred Power of Curiosity

by | Dec 11, 2023 | Discernment

The Sacred Power of Curiosity

It’s completely understandable to feel overwhelmed when witnessing the atrocities currently unfolding in our world. It’s also easy to give in to external pressures, like those on social media, and conform to expectations that encourage us to mistreat each other. In this episode, Elizabeth dives into performative activism, platform policing, and embracing the sacred power of curiosity.

She also discusses how to respond to and approach these issues with humility and an open mind, much like that of a loving parent, so you can access genuine curiosity in line with your soul’s wisdom. Imagine how different the world would be if our capacity for reverence was larger than our capacity for despising things? What if we could approach those who hold different perspectives than us with an effort to understand instead of jumping to anger and judgment?


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In episode 448 of the Embodied Podcast we discuss:

(3:52) Social media’s role in activism during crises and our recommended voices to follow 

(6:42) Advice for attending to your personal energy and soul’s wisdom when navigating social and political issues

(9:01) The importance of curiosity to empathize with others’ perspectives

(12:31) Embracing the sacred power of curiosity by asking questions and doing self-reflections 

(18:23) Using curiosity, humility, and reverence as tools to bridge gaps in understanding

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Quotes from this Week’s Episode of the Embodied Podcast: 

  • Letting external voices or forces over influence you about how you use yours, is never the way. We can all always be refining, inquiring, going within, considering and reconsidering how we show up, how we share, and how we use our voices. 
  • Make sure you’re attending to your energy, looking in, and listening in for your soul’s wisdom. 
  • When we’re connected to the sacredness within us, around us, and in all of life, it becomes much easier to make choices that honor, respect, protect, and include people and much more challenging to make choices that oppress, abuse or violate them. 
  • When you catch yourself wanting to come for people, employ the sacred power of curiosity. Try asking some questions first. Try checking in with yourself. How am I feeling? What’s going on here? 
  • Can you imagine how different the world would be, if more people’s capacity for reverence was greater than their capacity for despising things?

How was this episode for you?

Was this episode helpful for you today? I’d love to know what quote or lesson touched your soul. Let me know in the comments below OR share the episode on Instagram, tag me your stories @elizabethdialto, or send me a DM!

About the Embodied Podcast with Elizabeth DiAlto

Since 2013 I’ve been developing a body of work that helps women embody self-love, healing, and wholeness. We do this by focusing on the four levels of consciousness – physical, mental, emotional, and spiritual.

In practical terms, this looks like exploring tools and practices to help you tune into the deep wisdom of the body and the knowing of the heart, which I believe are gateways to our souls. Then we cultivate a new relationship with our minds that allows the mind to serve this wisdom and knowledge and soul connection, rather than override it, which is what many of us were taught.

If you’ve been doing self-help or spiritual development work for a while, these are the types of foundational things that often people overlook in pursuit of fancier concepts that often aren’t practical or sustainable. Here, we will focus on building these strong foundations so you can honestly and thoroughly embody self-love. If you’re feeling it, subscribe to the show, and leave us a review wherever you listen from. You can also keep up with show updates and community discussions on Instagram here.

Transcript for Episode 448 “The Sacred Power of Curiosity“:

Elizabeth DiAlto  00:00

Separation from sacredness is at the root of most of the world’s trauma, pain and suffering. When we’re connected to the sacredness within us, around us and in all of life, it becomes much easier to make choices that honor, respect, protect, and include people and much more challenging to make choices that oppress abuse or violate them.

Elizabeth DiAlto  00:22

What’s up everybody, welcome to episode number 448 of The Embodied Podcast, I’m your host, Elizabeth DiAlto. Today, we’re gonna get into a few things. But first, if you haven’t yet checked out a Wild Soul Sunday Service. It’s a free gathering that we do almost every Sunday now, at 11am. Eastern for women, I give a sermon we pray we move and it’s intended to help you set your energy going into a new week, and release anything from the previous week that you don’t need to carry forward with you. You can find out more about our wild Soul Sunday services by going to untame yourself.com. Forward slash links and just look for the link that says wild Soul Sunday service. So first things first, since our healing conversations and my few unplanned weeks off from the show, while I finished preparing for my recent TEDx talk, a lot more has unfolded in the Middle East. And it is horrific. And as well, people are bringing our attention to genocides happening in other places in the world. And people are just generally being a lot more conscientious, a lot more involved a lot more vocal, a lot more active about these atrocities about these injustices and about oppression, which is important, we need to talk about these things, we need to process them together. We need to do things about them, do things that are accessible to us do things that are available to us do things that we have a capacity for doing. And some cases, even push ourselves beyond what we might think is accessible, possible and within our capacity. But what we don’t need to do and what we never need to do is force ourselves to comply with the pressures from people who don’t know us who don’t ask questions, who aren’t being curious, and who aren’t trying to work together. People who are more attached to being right than actual liberation. Because we all know, I can’t even imagine how many times I’ve said this quote, on this podcast over the last six or seven years, the Audrey Lorde, quote, The Masters tools will never dismantle the Masters House. And we see this every time, there’s a big thing going on in the world. And people are coming out to stand up for it, many of whom are so genuine in their actions and their intentions, and their fervent dedication and devotion to being on the right side of history or being part of the change. But then there’s also always people out here who are just wielding the Masters tools, right? shaming people, trying to put people on the spot, calling people out or in or criticizing people, making assumptions, making no effort to be curious, to connect to work together. And just being so ready to dismiss people or toss people away without even really doing diligence. To understand perhaps where someone’s coming from, why they’re doing what they’re doing or not doing what someone else hopes or wishes they might be casting these false equivalencies and these false dichotomies, and this gets us nowhere.

Elizabeth DiAlto  03:52

It’s very counterproductive. It’s not liberatory. And it’s certainly not a sacred way of being. There are no words to describe how intense devastating and dysregulated it is to watch genocide happening before our very eyes. There’s also a lot of conflict and confusion around people’s stances. The propaganda machine that is modern media is doing its job. Some people are falling for it, others are not. Social media, as always, is a mix of beautiful, meaningful and useful action, content and creativity and distracting to really ineffective and in some cases, plain old shitty behavior and communication. Some of you know this, you’ve heard me talk about it. I was really off social media for a lot of this year, like all the way off, not posting not checking, not interacting, engaging in any way. And I loved it and it was glorious. And then more recently, I got nudged back on by what I call my divine support squad. During this time of massive change and not to engage in the way a lot of other people are, but to offer prayer medicine. and reminders about sacredness and delay. And one of the things I’m always sharing is who I follow who I look to who I turn to, in times like these, that I consider to be fierce and wise liberatory voices to follow about what’s unfolding in the world, because that is not my lane. And we need to have space for things to not be people’s lanes, and to respect what is right and to be able to hold both things that some people care deeply about what’s going on in the world, and their lane, their path, their highest contribution is not going to look the way that perhaps you think it should, or the other people are doing, and things like that, which I already kind of alluded to. So there’s incredible accounts on Instagram that I highly recommend that I’ve posted and shared in my stories a couple of times. By the time this episode goes up, it’s probably in my feed as well. But also tell you hear as well. One of them is Jewish Voice for Peace. The story of a Rabb, which is spelled th e s t o r i e d, a y Rab Sam, who I had the pleasure of meeting at the Miami book fair a couple of weeks ago, some of you already know according to wheeze, my girl wheeze Duran, Freda T Joseph, who I’m a huge fan of. Also, if you’re on substack, I’m still not really that great at substack. But I repost a lot of his stuff. And then also my dear friend, Nisha Moogly, who some of you probably know Nisha, or have heard her on the podcast before. These are the people that I look up to. And does that mean you should look to them? Not necessarily. But again, if you are looking for wise liberatory voices to follow. That’s what I recommend.

Elizabeth DiAlto  06:42

What’s also happening right now is a lot of people are answering calls to offer their religious, truest, deepest medicine, and service to a better world. And we all need all the medicine, obviously, we hate to see the horrors it takes to bring such things about. And it would be a depraved insult to ignore the call if you receive one. And as well to get in the way of somebody else who is answering their call. And a lot of people are actually doing that on social media right now. So I’m always going to remind folks that letting external voices or forces over influence you about how you use yours, is never the way. But we can all always be refining, inquiring, going within, considering and reconsidering how we show up how we share how we use our voices, based on so many factors, many of which are going to be personal and private to us. And there just always is going to be so much potency and privacy. But again, the social media machine wants to force people to speak up, here’s the voice post, this is what it should look like, wants to dictate what people should be doing. When often, it’s just not appropriate. That’s not going to be the most effective, it’s not going to be the most helpful. And everyone has to go on their own journeys with stuff like this. So I always remind people to make sure you’re attending to your energy, and looking in and listening in for your soul’s wisdom, just as much you’re paying attention to what’s going on outside of you, or perhaps what’s being asked of you. And as well, just because something is being asked of you, doesn’t mean you have to do it. Because again, there’s just so much nuance to this. There are so many reasons why it’s appropriate for some people to be sharing in certain ways. And so many reasons for some people not to be. And I’ve seen a lot of people out here demanding things from people who are not qualified to do those things. And to me, that’s always just such a huge red flag. And this has become so common since the 2020s. Right? How people who are so upset, angry, afraid, disappointed in grieving, all things that make so much sense to feel. But in a lot of cases, these same people don’t have the tools, or the competency to process their feelings about systems and circumstances without needing to offload it on individuals, on others. And in some cases, random people on the internet. We’re seeing a lot of platform policing, one of my least favorite things. I’ve also been on the receiving end of some of that. Just last week, someone was giving me shit on an Instagram post, then scroll through my feed, realize where I stand on things. It basically said, Oh, now I see what your position is no apology for their behavior, right? Like they should have done that. First is what I’m saying to you. And I’m gonna talk a little bit more about that when we dive into curiosity in a moment. But it’s always interesting to me, I always try to imagine, you know, putting myself in the shoes of someone who would go to someone else’s page, who I don’t know, give them shit for what I think they’re not doing, realizing that they have and not even being like, Oh, my bad. It’s just so silly. And then someone else sent this email response to me.

Elizabeth DiAlto  09:44

I had sent out an email saying that I was just coming out of my TEDx vortex and someone sent this email. So glad that something so important for humanity as TEDx took over your life. By the way, did you know a genocide is happening right now? 1000 children were shredded to pieces No words on this forum you how absolutely disgusting unsubscribing. So there’s a couple things here that I find interesting about an email like that, first of all, help people feel the need to announce when they’re unsubscribing. But also how people can be just so mal or ill or under informed and feel like it’s the right thing to do to send a message like that. So I responded to this person to say, I know it’s intense out there right now, people are feeling all kinds of things reacting in all kinds of ways, and have very strong opinions about how others should be feeling reacting and behaving. I don’t hold any of that against people witnessing multiple genocides across the globe at the moment, navigating late stage capitalism, as well as the things people might have going on in their own personal lives. It’s a lot. What’s brutal, though, is when people don’t take the time to be curious, before making assumptions about people’s stances on things, just because it hasn’t come through the way you would like it to. Or perhaps you’ve missed something, which in this case, you have missed numerous mentions I’ve made on Instagram, my podcasts and emails you apparently didn’t open, as well as during a few Sunday services since October 8. And community calls inside the school of sacred embodiment. And one of the emails you didn’t open I shared why I will always stand for the liberation of any oppressed people, because my own indigenous Taino ancestors experienced genocide. And my Puerto Rican relatives currently experienced the impact of Neo colonization, under American imperialism every single day. I also share with this person that the theme of the TEDx event was the right to dream. The entire speaker panel was black, brown, and indigenous people. And almost all of our talks were about things that can benefit all oppressed people. It was a beautiful event, it was a beautiful gathering. It was such healing and important medicine, to be in person to be in a room to be together with people who share values. And my talk was about the medicine of sacredness, the whole thing centered on the idea that separation from sacredness is at the root of most of the world’s trauma, pain and suffering. When we’re connected to the sacredness within us, around us. And in all of life, it becomes much easier to make choices that honor, respect, protect, and include people and much more challenging to make choices that oppress abuse or violate them. So I also said to this person, you’re welcome to unsubscribe, I just hope you learned something here about digging in and being curious, before you go, making unwarranted assumptions and sending nasty emails to people who actually care about the very same things you do. In the future. When there are so many apathetic people out there, those of us who care should not be policing and bringing this kind of shitty energy to each other. And this is actually a good jumping off point, deeper into today’s topic, the sacred power of curiosity. And as I mentioned, in my email to that person, my whole TEDx talk was about sacredness, the medicine of sacredness and how sacredness is medicine that we all need. And in my talk, I shared some sacred threads, ways that we could be weaving more sacredness into our lives every single day. And one of them was curiosity. And one of the things that I said about curiosity in the talk, and I stand firmly behind always, and I’ve been teaching about this in the school for years, is that curiosity allows us to learn. Curiosity begets quality connection, it’s also so important for understanding because we all have things to learn, and learning is uncomfortable. And it’s uncomfortable, because it brings up our shame, it forces us to look at things that maybe we’ve never looked before, or really would prefer not to look at. And it gives us background information. It helps us be educated about things before we do things like going off making assumptions, assessments and judgments about people, and in some cases, really ostracizing folks who are on our team. And it’s just so important to have, maybe not all of the information, sometimes it’s hard to get all of the information or all the information isn’t available, but to have enough information before you go again, making assumptions, assessments, judgments, or being shitty to people, right. And I’m personally I’m not a person who told police’s, so I don’t care if people are going to be like, aggressive with me. But I mean, if you’re gonna do it, at least be right. If you’re gonna do it, at least be warranted. You know, I told someone on Instagram flat out, I was like, Listen, you need to double check who the fuck you’re talking to. If you’re gonna make a comment like this on a page, I don’t mind that because it’s not unspiritual one of my favorite things to always remember and reference is that even Jesus flipped some tables here and there in the temples. And so just because someone’s spiritual, just because someone is loving, or does healing work or whatever, doesn’t mean that you could just roll up on anyone, treat them like a piece of shit, not apologize. And then they’re supposed to be nice to you. I don’t think so. It’s also something I talked about in my TEDx about how we need to ask ourselves better questions. And this goes with curio acity? Because what if either of those people, the person who made that comment on my Instagram, or the person who sent me this email had first gone? I wonder why she’s not saying things in the way that I think she should be. Maybe let me ask that, right? Or like, Hey, Elizabeth, I don’t see you posting things that I see other people posting that I think are important and appropriate, you know, or there’s a variety of questions that people could ask before, again, firing off making assumptions, sending these messages. And I know, I’m not the only one who’s on the receiving end of stuff like this. And to be quite honest, this is this has only happened to me like these two times. It’s not that it’s a big deal. But to me personally, that it even happens at all, is a symptom of things that are only getting in the way. People don’t need to mention the horrors of the world, in every breath, in every email, or on every post to prove that they care, or to be caring involved, active people. And if you need that from people, that’s your solo gap. People don’t need to shut down their own lives to show that they care. In fact, that’s actually disrespectful to all of life to do that.

Elizabeth DiAlto  16:17

So I want to offer a suggestion in line with the sacred power of curiosity, try looking at your fellow humans through the lens of a loving parent. If everyone was your child, how would you engage with them? How would you teach them? What questions would you ask them? Would you constantly make assumptions about their motivations? Or would you want to learn what’s behind their actions and behaviors, so you can know who they are. And I thought about that myself as I responded to these people, because sometimes a parent needs to put a child in their place. Sometimes a parent needs to let a child know that the way they’re behaving or the way they’re communicating isn’t okay, it isn’t appropriate, it isn’t effective, or that there’s just better ways to do it, that there’s better ways to go about getting where they’re trying to go. And it’s also important for people to learn how to identify who are your people, and to not be pushing away those, that could be your allies, that could be your accomplices, your collaborators and your companions. Because it’s ridiculous. And we really do see it way too much. This is one of the reasons why I moved out of California, I really got tired of some of these behaviors that are quite common among liberal people, right, because so much of this is performative. So much of this is, it isn’t even as much about collective healing and liberation, as it is about being right. We’re being seen as doing the most or the best, this policing of each other. That’s a master school, y’all. That is something that oppressors continue to hold the power and control that they have. And the influence, when those of us who are out here actually sharing values and beliefs and visions for a better world are at each other’s throats. Right? It’s ridiculous. We don’t need to be behaving this way. So the secret power of curiosity is when you catch yourself wanting to come for people, try asking some questions first, before you do. Try checking in with yourself. How am I feeling? What’s going on here?

Elizabeth DiAlto  18:25

What am I trying not to feel? What do I really need to process here, perhaps. And curiosity isn’t just about how we engage with people around the specific context that I’m talking about, that I’ve focused a good amount of this episode on today, we get to be curious about all kinds of things, we get to be curious about things that we just never knew. I saw a post recently that said something about how so many people were cultured to not talk about politics and religion, which has led to a wild misunderstanding of how politics and religion actually work, which is causing a lot of separation, misunderstanding, fighting, distraction, all kinds of stuff like that. Now, these days and this age, and it’s really true. So a lot of us, myself included, we have some big learning curves, and how do we approach those learning curves, with humility and with curiosity. Humility is an aspect of curiosity. That’s another one of the things that makes it sacred. Reverence is an aspect of curiosity. I also spoke about reverence in my TEDx talk, and how when we revere something, we hold it in the highest regard. That’s what reverence is. And the opposite of reverence is to despise something and in a culture that despises so many people for their differences, reverence, curiosity, humility. These things invite us to see people’s differences as sacred nuance and as such as differences and like identity. Its differences in how people move in the world. The choices that they make, despising things comes from misunderstanding. reverence comes from, and increases our capacity for greater understanding. So here’s the question that I’ll end the episode on here. Can you imagine how different the world would be, if more people’s capacity for reverence was greater than their capacity for despising things, if you’re listening to this episode in real time, it is Monday, December 11. And we’re kicking off our sacred shift experience on Wednesday, December 13. One of the things that I’m super excited about with the sacred shift experience is that it’s going to provide people with some tools, it’s going to give us an opportunity to process things together, that are really challenging for people right now, as we face all the things that we’re facing, as a global community, and for some cases, specific communities, or even individually, right, so what we’re looking at exploring, processing and embodying together, in the sacred shift experience isn’t just nice to have self help personal development and spirituality work. It’s crucial for not letting the horrors of the world crush us. And this is basically spread over a whole month from December 13, to January 13, to support you in having a liberating and replenishing transition from 2023 into 2024. That is filled with joy and purpose. It’s a practical, and it’s a powerful experience. And again, I know some people might be really uncomfortable with folks talking about things like joy or delight with some of the atrocities that are happening in the world. But again, we need all of it, we need all of the experiences. There’s a poem that a friend of mine shared with me, it’s called a brief for the defense by a man named Jack Gilbert. I’m not going to read you the whole thing. But these couple of lines were my favorite. He says we must risk delight, we could do without pleasure, but not delight, not enjoyment. We must have the stubbornness to accept our gladness in the ruthless furnace of this world. To make injustice, the only measure of our attention is to praise the devil. So that’s why I’m inviting you to check out sacred shift, you can go to untamed yourself.com, forward slash sacred dash shift. Hope to see you there. And we’ll be back next week with one more healing conversation. And from there on out, I have some solo episodes in 2024, you can look forward to some new interviews to a couple of CO hosts. I’m going to do some series on the show with some co hosts for a couple episodes at a time that I’m excited about. And so you know us if you’re a longtime listener, we’re always expanding, evolving and experimenting with how to make sure that the show is always a loving and inclusive resource for collective healing, joy and liberation and always bringing, you know, our unique flavor of fierce and mystical love and a little bit of humor here and there whenever we could squeeze it in. So as always, thank you for listening. We’ll see you later.