Anyone who dares to reflect on life and its meaning finds that things tend to boil down to three primary questions.
I'll just ask the three questions here without commentary,
Because you know them already,
And in essence,
They are why you are here.
You have always known these questions.
Who am I?
What am I here for?
And is there a way to end suffering?
Seven other secondary questions feature prominently throughout the journey,
Which you will similarly find you already know.
Who?
What?
Why?
Where?
When?
What if?
And How?
Let's pause for reflection.
I invite you to pause for a minute and think about these ten questions slowly to yourself,
And see where you feel them in your body or your energy concerning your life's journey.
You may want to introduce these questions into your journaling from time to time.
Learning to Turn Toward Awareness You can notice or even encourage a shift within yourself toward awareness by the way you frame your questions as you meet daily life situations.
For example,
If we allow a movement from asking questions such as,
Why is this person doing this to me?
Or Why is _____ personal difficult situation always happening to me?
And instead try to drop taking the situation personally and allow appreciation of any other person involved.
Then we are not coming from the place of it being a problem.
Then we can ask things such as,
How can I bring awareness to what is going on?
What if I choose to respond rather than react?
What really would improve the world?
How do I step out of my way to transcend this situation?
And What if I choose love and forgiveness with this other person?
Notice how these more reflective questions lead to greater awareness if we drop our resistance and allow the momentary vulnerability that comes with this turning around.
All of our ten initial questions,
If asked with this openness,
Will take you toward a better way of meeting and experiencing your own life and other people.
We restore our humanity instantly and easily with a simple shift.
As you begin to work more consciously like this,
You will start to find that each question contains its own answer.
With all of this work,
I would encourage you not to search too hard for answers in your mind.
Everything is wonderful and has its place,
But we can often go much further by dropping into our hearts and letting the question just exist within ourselves.
This way,
Too,
We begin to be able to stay more open and curious about life.
The mind will always come up with its usual commentaries,
Of course.
Yes,
No,
How stupid this is,
And so on.
Yet as your awareness deepens,
You will see that the mind in this mode is only doing its job of trying to protect you by digging into what it already knows as it searches for what to do.
The mind without heart and awareness only knows what it has been conditioned with from the process of socialization.
This often keeps us limited in our ability to respond and close to much of life while unknowing of our real depths and basic goodness.
