I have always questioned everything. I have never been someone who just blindly took what I was told as truth. When I was a small child I asked too many questions at sundayschool because “you just have to believe” never worked for me.  As a result I wasn’t a good fit for their program and I was asked to not come back until I could stop asking questions. 

I have had many times in my life where people took a deep level of offense to my questions. I would apologize, but I am not sorry. I am sorry that people don’t like it, however I will never be sorry that it is how my brain works. I want to understand things, why they happen, how they happen, when they happen, I want to understand the mechanism and the root of it. I want to understand.  It is how my brain works. 

I was new to working with these two individuals as mentors. They both came with a lot of experience in a field that I was learning about. I viewed it as an opportunity to ask some questions that I had felt unsafe to ask previously. You see, if you come with a lot of experience in an area that I want to grow in, and you sit in front of me, I will pull up a chair and pick your beautiful brain. I started asking a couple of questions and each of them was met with a level of fear and alarm. I simply wanted to understand what was happening in my body. I wasn’t worried about it. It wasn’t a problem. I didn’t have fear. Her reaction blew my mind. I couldn’t imagine living in a fear based place like that. Doesn't everyone want to know what is happening inside of themselves? Maybe not? Maybe people only ask questions when they are scared and her response was a reaction to that pattern. I don’t know, but I knew that watching her meet my questions with fear was the fastest way to shut down my questions. I stopped asking and didn’t ask any more. I explained that it wasn’t a problem and that I simply wanted to understand but I also never asked another question from her. 

I have a strong negative response to the introduction of fear into learning and expansion, I just can’t understand it. I believe learning and expansion only happens when someone feels safe, so when the teacher introduces fear I step away quickly because I am uninterested in absorbing that energy on any level.