Curiosity may be a form of wisdom.
The pizote makes me think so.
How it searches.
How it listens.
How it moves through the world with alertness and instinct.
Watching them here in the Yucatán, I began wondering whether animals do not only inhabit a landscape, but also carry forms of knowledge.
Maya ideas around wayob gesture toward something profound: that human life may be accompanied by unseen animal counterparts or co-essences, presences linked to instinct, power, and dimensions of self not easily explained.
That idea shifts everything.
An animal is no longer merely observed.
It may be read.
Listened to.
Learned from.
And through that lens, the pizote begins to feel less like wildlife alone and more like a kind of teacher.
Curiosity as a Spiritual Practice
The pizote is always foraging.
Searching under leaves.
Following scent.
Turning over what lies hidden.
There is something almost philosophical in that.
Its movement suggests that discovery is not dramatic.
It is attentive.
Patient.
Close to the ground.
I keep thinking how much wisdom may look like that.
Not mastery.
But search.
Not certainty.
But curiosity disciplined by attention.
Maybe that, too, is a spiritual practice.
What Wayob Suggests
What fascinates me about wayob is that it points toward a very different understanding of selfhood.
Not the isolated individual modern life often assumes.
But a self understood through relationship.
Through seen and unseen kinships.
Through animal presences that may embody instinct, protection, power, or forms of knowing reason alone does not reach.
Whether taken literally, spiritually, or symbolically, there is something profound in that vision.
It suggests identity may be more porous than we think.
That the human is not sealed off from the wild.
But in conversation with it.
I find that beautiful.
And deeply needed.
Especially in a world so often organized around separation.
A Creature as Mirror
Seen this way, the pizote begins to feel almost archetypal.
A small emissary of curiosity.
Of instinct.
Of alertness.
Of intelligence rooted in attentiveness.
And perhaps the animals that draw us do something more than fascinate us.
Perhaps they mirror qualities waiting to be remembered.
That may be part of what spiritual symbolism is.
Not projection.
Recognition.
The pizote seems to ask:
Can instinct be trusted?
Can searching be sacred?
Can attention itself be a way of knowing?
Those feel less like questions about an animal.
And more like questions about how to live.
A Different Kind of Wisdom
Maybe spirituality is not always transcendence.
Maybe sometimes it is learning how to read the living world more carefully.
To see intelligence where we have been taught not to.
To sense relationship where we assume separation.
To let even a small forest creature carry a philosophical question.
The pizote, for me, has become a quiet reminder that wisdom is not always lofty.
Sometimes it moves low to the ground.
Nose searching through leaves.
Finding what others pass over.
And perhaps inviting us to do the same.
I’d be curious to hear from you: Is there an animal that has carried symbolic meaning in your own life, or a creature you’ve felt mysteriously drawn to? I’d love to hear in the comments.
If reflections like this resonate with you, I share more of these threads with my mailing list subscribers, along with new paintings, studio notes, and glimpses into the ideas shaping the work as it unfolds. I’d love to invite you into that space.