What is ‘safe experimentation’?

In sessions, when I talk about ‘safe experimentation’, I am not thinking about something that only scientists do. Safe experimentation does require both of us to use thought skillfully and to work out how to investigate your experiences in a different way.

My practical approach to safe experimentation is to encourage brief moments of immersing yourself in a new experience and to look out for small steps I have labelled, ‘small victories’.

Safe experimentation is:

• listening deeply to our own thoughts, feelings and sensations, and as deeply as we possibly can.
• bringing a quality of openness into our lives.
• encouraging differences into our daily practices to make some, even any, change.

… and doing it without choosing sides; being for or against. The opposite of investigation is assuming—assuming that we already know how things are; this cuts off the ‘oxygen supply’ to our minds, if not to our hearts as well. A hard-heartedness emerges when we assume that we know anything at all. The form of investigation I want to promote is ‘soft’; it is open even if sometimes imprecise.

Safe experimentaiton is a certain quality of probing; not a striving kind of probing. It’s simply an interest in life, in all aspects of life, really wanting to know very clearly and directly for ourselves, not based on anybody else’s ideas or opinions. Think of safe experimenting as having the quality of affectionate curiosity. It comes out of caring about ourselves and others. It is not a cold, superficial analysis; it is affectionate, it is warm and it can be intimate.

Safe experimentation is an investigation about the very nature of life. This quality of investigation is, of course, strong in most children who are good as not assuming a particular perspective or attitude and often they are more able to let go of images and perspectives. Each one of us has the ability to observe. Investigation is open;a simple interest in how things are. Much of investigation has to do with staying with the experience until we see a change.

It is helpful to stay with a pain until we see it change.

It is helpful to be able to stay with pleasure until we see it change.

It is helpful to to stay with neutrality until we see it change.

An important part of safe experimentaton in practice is looking into those areas which may be difficult to investigate.

With safe experimentation, I am not trying to make anything happen, but rather our energies are directed towards seeing more fully and directly what is already happening. This requires a balanced effort and a quality of acceptance that creates a climate in which we can concentrate on the present moment more fully.

Safe experimentation also includes examining, through observation, the attitudes and preconceptions held towards others. These attitudes prevent us from engaging in relationships in an open and direct way. When we think we know someone, we no longer are in relationship with a living changing being. Rather we are now in relationship with an idea of that person.

Safe experimentation can bring new energy and joy to relationships once we pay attention to others in our lives.

There is no better way to stifle safe experimentation and, indeed, our own liberation, than clinging to the familiar, even though it is unpleasant or pursuing pleasure through fantasy and unskillful action.

Much of my thinking is informed by the school of Mindfulness which fosters a deeper level of safe experimentation through meditation. Meditation involves a silent, concentrated inner listening into our moment-to-moment experiences, without judging it. This may sound alien to our everyday way of doing things and this may deter you from trying ‘meditation’. Personally, I’d encourage you to try it; you may be surprised how helpful meditation can be. However, it is not essential to the general task of ‘safely experimenting’.