The Healing Power of Living In Questions

Gertrude Stein once said, “the power of questions isn’t in the answers.  It is in the questions themselves.” Living in questions is one of the most healing tools I have found to come out of the reactive, struggling mind into a mind that is fully engaged with life.

One way to tap into this healing is by using what I call ‘check-in’ questions that put you into direct relationship with your immediate experience.  Check-in questions bring you back into a compassionate connection with whatever is happening in your life.  We are so used to living in the busy 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. Whenever your mind drifts off, bring it back to the sounds.  Do this for just a minute and then come back to reading.

Isn’t it wonderful to simply be here?  And isn’t it amazing how easy it is to just drift back into your mind, getting lost in the stories in your head?  The important thing to realize is that you are not those stories; you are that which can see the stories.  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.

I often use these four check-in questions when my mind is struggling with life:

 “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 and out. It is this curiosity that allows you to let go of the story about what you are experiencing and it invites you to look at whatever is happening in your mind that keeps you away from full connection with life.

 “For This Moment, Can I Let This Be Here?” is to move you beyond reaction into response.  It reminds you that if you resist what you are experiencing, you empower it more.   The quickest and most powerful way to dissolve your struggles is to let them be. If you can accept your experience, and then be willing to look and listen, the struggling mind loses its power over you.

 “For This Moment, Can I Touch This with Compassion?” is to cultivate the warmth of your heart.  If you truly want to transform your experience, touch it with the spaciousness and mercy of your heart.  As Jack Kornfield’s teacher Nisargadata says, “The mind creates the abyss; the heart crosses it.”

 “Right Now, What Do I Truly Need?” is to invite you into a deeper level of listening to your experience. This awakens the wellspring of deep knowing that is inside you. This is not a listening with your head, but an internal listening to the wisdom within that knows in any situation what needs to happen to bring balance back into your life.

Learning how to live through questions is a little bit like learning how to ride a bike.  You first need to start with a tricycle to see if you 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.