Day 3 Practice: Questioning
“The longer I managed to live on this earth, I collect more questions than answers.”
If we were to truly slow down and notice our inner life, we may come to understanding just how often we are trying to predict outcomes. Our minds are prediction making machines: constantly looking for certainty, seeking known outcomes, or controlling what happens next. And of course, this prediction making has been an integral part of our survival for generations, a part of our DNA. So, today's practice of questioning… questioning our thoughts, beliefs, habits; questioning our assumptions, expectations, judgments, even our “knowing” can be uncharted terrain for many.
Questioning, aka curiosity, is our capacity to look more deeply, more honestly at our own experience. It is an opportunity to see our patterns and habits more clearly, to drop beneath assumptions, and to recognize the mental states that cause us harm. So, what might we learn if we question all this even for a moment? Question the stories we tell about ourselves and others? Question our assumption and expectations about relationships or the future? We may come to realize how much we truly don’t know, how much we get wrong, how much we dramatize, sensationalize, or go to worse care scenarios. We don’t need to believe everything little thing that goes through the mind. We wake up to reality instead of being lost in stories, lost in what if’s of the mind. We are not our thoughts, our moods, or our emotions but rather the one aware of them with the capacity to question, learn and discern
With a renewed sense of curiosity, we even may rediscover our lives, seeing that which is familiar and stale through fresh eyes with wonder and awe. As Albert Einstein said, “Knowledge is experience, everything else is just information.” So, may we all gain wisdom by paying attention to our own experience, questioning, and learning from what is happening each and every day.
“Let’s stop making deals for a safe passage.”
“Be patient toward all that is unresolved in your heart and try to love the questions themselves.”
“Not-knowing means being open and playful. Not-knowing means engaging without an expected outcome and being willing to be wrong so that you can ultimately get it right.”
“The fruit of meditation is not the absence of thoughts, but the fact that thoughts cease to harm us. Once enemies, they become friends.”