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The Power of Living in Questions

island universe william hayesAs 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 in my life. It enables me to come out the reactive, struggling mind into a mind that is fully engaged with Life. 

Asking questions without expecting an answer is a way to open so the answer will come from the deepest and wisest part of yourself. Maybe you are thinking to yourself, “You must be crazy – ask a question and not look for an answer? That is insanity. I don’t have time for this. I’m too busy trying to figure it all out.” If you watch carefully, you will see that looking for answers keeps you caught in your head and your own limited understanding. Lost in the search for answers to our lives, we miss the power of the questions themselves.

The power of asking a question without expecting an answer comes when you realize that Life is a field of Intelligence. Everywhere you look, you see its handiwork, whether it is the dance of electrons, the play of the wind, or the laughter of a child. This Intelligence is beyond the ability of our limited human minds to comprehend. If you doubt that, consider your body. It is made up of more than seventy trillion cells that all work together with barely a thought from you. Even to begin to grasp this astounding creativity, imagine every person on Earth working with everybody else for the common good of the whole. Hard to imagine? But that wouldn’t even begin to come close to what your body does. It would take over sixteen thousand Earths, each with six billion people, all working together, to approximate what your body does every day.

When I began to live in questions, a wonderful truth became clear to me: problems and solutions are two sides of the same coin and they always show up together. The resolution to every problem we have ever had or ever will have is nestled in the heart of the challenge, and Life waits for the spaciousness of a question. Three of the questions I use most of the time are: What is the way through this?, What am I ready to see here?, and What do I need to say, do or be that is for the highest good?

Asking a question without looking for the answer literally creates a vacuum in the Universe. It is a law of physics. The Intelligence of the Universe rushes into the vacuum of the question, and the answer automatically, in its own time, condenses out of the void and into our lives. Asking a question also signals the Universe that we are willing to listen to the truth and the wisdom that comes with every challenge in our lives. This type of question doesn’t work in linear time – a question followed by an answer. Answers will come in their own time and in their own way. They can come with startling clarity or arrive gradually like the dawning of a day.

When you are living in questions, you don’t have to know what is going on, what you are feeling, or even what kind of answer you want. You also don’t have to have a concept of this Intelligence that is waiting for the opening of a question. You don’t even have to trust that it will answer you. All you need to do is ask and let the question go, and the answer will show up in the vacuum created by your question. The beauty of asking questions, allowing the Universe to answer rather than relying on our own limited intelligence, is that you don’t just get an answer. The answer is part of you. There is a huge difference between understanding something with your head and understanding it with your whole being. As the answer lives you, you then experience true partnership with Life.

Image of ‘Island Universe’ by William Hayes  http://www.theartistsloft.com