The Healing Gift of Questions

In the last blog we began to explore the healing gift of living in questions. There are two ways to tap into this power. The first way is using what I call “check-in” questions which bring us into direct relationship with our immediate experience. The second is what I call “open-ended” questions, which tap into the intelligence at the heart of life, and we will explore those in the next newsletter.

Check-in questions bring us back into a passionate and compassionate connection with whatever is happening right here, right now. We are so used to living in the constantly becoming mind that we have forgotten the phenomenal power of being with what is, right here, right now. Take a moment now to stop reading and close your eyes. Listen to the sounds of life as they appear and disappear all around you and within you. To keep more focused, you can count the many different sounds. Whenever your mind drifts off, bring it back to the sounds. Do this for just a minute and then come back to reading.

If you were able to pause and listen, you may have seen how wonderful it is to simply be here. Also, listening in this way shows how easy it is to just drift back into your mind, getting lost in the stories in your head rather than being here. The important thing to realize is that your mind is a necessary tool for moving through life but for most of us it puts a veil between us and life. This brings forth great heartache, for everything you long for and everything you truly are is found right here, right now.

As you learn how to use questions to connect with your immediate experience, you train your mind to be curious rather than reactive and spacious rather than judgmental, so that you can bring your attention out of the stories in your mind and experience life fully in each moment.

Following is a list of the four check in questions which I share in my book The Gift of Our Compulsions, along with their core intentions:

First Question, “In this moment, what am I experiencing?” helps you cultivate curiosity, so that you can explore what is going on right now in your life, both inside of you and out. It is this curiosity that allows you to let go of your stories about what you are experiencing so that you can actually experience it, inviting you more deeply into being present for your life..

Second Question, “For this moment, can I let this be here?”  moves you beyond reaction into response. It reminds you that if you resist what you are experiencing, you actually empower it.  The quickest and most powerful way to dissolve your struggles, is to first let them be here. Accepting your experience as it is makes space for looking and listening. And in this listening, your struggling mind loses its power over you.

Third Question, “For this moment, can I touch this with compassion?” cultivates the warmth of our hearts. If you truly want to transform your experience, touch it with the spaciousness and kindness of your heart. For there is nothing inside of you or in the world that doesn’t deserve compassion. As Jack Kornfield’s teacher Nisargadatta says, “The mind creates the abyss; the heart crosses it.”

Fourth Question “Right now, what do I truly need?” invites you into a deeper level of listening to your experience. This awakens the wellspring of deep knowing that is inside each of us. This is not a listening with our heads, but an internal listening to the wisdom within, which knows in any situation what needs to happen to bring balance back into our lives.

You can use these questions sequentially or you can focus on just one or two. And if these questions don’t call to you, asked life, “What are my questions?”

Learning how to live through questions is a little bit like learning how to ride a bike. We first need to start with a tricycle to see if we like it. Then we try a two-wheeler with training wheels. When the training wheels come off, we wobble a bit at first, but then we discover the absolute joy of moving through life on a bike. The same is true for living in questions. When they finally become a core way that you maneuver through life, you will feel the empowerment and joy that come from the willingness to meet your experience with curiosity and compassion rather than being lost in it or running away.

I explore these questions in depth in my book, The Gift of Our Compulsions. This blog is much too short to cover them in depth, so here is a link to the chapter that includes Check-In Questions if you want to explore them further.