To Be Open to Experience --- Part One

To Be Extensionally Open to Experience: This idea of being Extensionally Open is the opposite to psychological defensiveness, of rigidity and rigid boundaries (with and in ... concepts, beliefs, perceptions and hypotheses), black and white thinking. Extensional Openness has room in it for growth and understanding because you are making it so.

When you are truly open you can listen and actually hear what is being said or in what is happening around you. You don’t have to be forming a defence strategy in your head while others are attempting to communicate with you in some fashion. Because you can listen, you are open to the total experience you are sharing at that moment in time.

This does not have to be with people BTW ... It happened once to me that there I was on a hot afternoon staring down a coiled rattlesnake ... It was years ago and I was in the RCMP ... and we were running radar on the TransCanada Hwy just west of Portage la Praire. I was in the ditch with the radar machine and the guys were down the road flagging speeders ... I was calling they were catching. I have no idea where he ... the snake ... came from or how he got to be next to me ... but there he was looking at me ... me at him ... I was trying to figure out what to do so I would not get bit ... then I just relaxed. I got into sitting with the snake and spent about an hour with him while he sunned himself and I suppose warmed himself up then off he went forging for his next meal. Just him and me spending part of an afternoon together ... it was interesting because at first it was very visceral for me then it sort of settled down through my body and I became accustomed to being with the snake ... I gave him a name, “Fred,” and we shared a bloc of time. I swore he could read my mind and I his, but when he warmed himself, off he went.

Or another example, you can tolerate ambiguity where and when it actually exists. Sometimes there is just no clarity for a situation in that moment and that is the way of things.

When you are truly open to an experience there is an ability to receive information from conflict ... especially from that body of information that seems to conflict with you or your own belief structure.

Nothing is personal in the sharing. Your identity is not caught up in the outcome of the conflict.

You display tolerance for someone else’s point of view. There is no effort to bring the sharing to a halt either openly or covertly because of the perceived stress or the grind from either any of the other parties to the conversation or situation or because of the information being shared. You are not taking it personally. There are literally hundreds of ways to close off the sharing of complex thoughts and concepts that seem to want to overpower you, but if you just stay steady in the moment and let it be what it is ... just a sharing and not an identity crisis ... you may find that some of these closure methods that you use to bring peace to the table actually feed the problem that is trying to be resolved...

But if you are Extensionally Open

Then you are free to be fully involved 

With the experience you are having

As your having it.
BTW
SKY DIVING CAN BE FUN