It is inevitable that each one of us will ask this question of ourselves and perhaps of humanity or even the Universe.
I remember asking the crazy making question that many of us pondered...What was there before God was there? Who made God? Where did God come from?
Each time someone tried to answer, I would just ask the same question using different words. It seemed that no matter how intelligent a person thought that their answer was to me, I just wasn't buying into it.
As I moved away from relying on my family and systems of origin stories, I asked more and more questions. I asked about Time, What is Real, Perspective and Objective versus Subjective, Relativity, Do I Matter, and probably the entire list of deep mysteries which, will never be answered.
We wonder what is the reason, the purpose, the life mission, the goal for our existence? Some people believe there is none of these and that all of life is random. Some people believe we are here from other planets or dimensions. Some people believe in reincarnation, or that there is a Heaven or Hell that we find ourselves in after we die, or that there is an afterlife situation when we leave this life.
So, what do we do with all these unanswered questions? What is our focus of our life when we want some sort of security, some sort of direction, some really clear path, to knowing we have not wasted our life. Or, if we mess up in this one do we get another? Or is there even such thing as messing up? Oh no! It is a slippery slope my friends of unending questions...just how deep does that rabbit hole go?
HHmmm....what if we do what my A Number 1 super therapist of five sessions told me in 1987. As I told her about all the open ended unknowings of my past...questioning what was and is real, she looked calmly and loving at me.
"Aileen, what if you never find out? What if you never know the answer of what happened?" She waited to let that all settle in for moment. She continued on, "Can you live each day with the truth that you may never know? Can you let go of the need to know and just be present in each moment of what is happening today?"
I felt relieved. I was given permission to put all the questions aside...all the mystery...all the unknowing. I could, in fact, just enjoy my life. In the meantime of not knowing the answers, I could just live. I could laugh, and love, and just engage in each moment without knowing anything bigger than the moment itself.
Why are we here? Who or what was here before the Universe started? How do I know I am real and not some play set doll of some giant person? Where do I go after here or am I already simultaneously living parallel lives in other dimensions?
Well, until I know those answers (which I don't expect I ever will)... in the meantime, I think I will go out to lunch with my friend Sue and laugh and cry and be hilariously funny together just until the Official World Decreed "This is What It Is All About" book comes out. I probably will even be having lots of fun in the meantime, until it comes out in a Cliff Note version or a movie.
My answer to your therapist is No, I cannot let go of the need to know. I don’t think that is the same as not living in the moment, because it seems to me that within the present moment IS the knowing—the remembering—and furthermore, we are supposed to keep asking those questions precisely because they have the power to expand our consciousness here and now—which is where the “answers” reveal themselves to us. So with each turn of the wheel we get a more nuanced piece of the puzzle… leading, of course, to more never-ending questions, and in that sense, no, we will never have the Final Answer. But does the need to know necessarily have to be about security? can’t it be about freedom and joy?
ReplyDelete“What is happening today” for me is the exploration of those Q & As and the richness of experience it attracts to me. Having even a smidge of an inkling of an answer, about the afterlife, spirit, why I’m here, who we are, allows me to live a more authentic life. Am I wrong? Maybe I’m reading things into this that are not there because of the particular story I am dreaming. Well, whatever it is, thanks for your thought-provoking post, and I look forward to the Cliffs Notes!
=) Ahhh..I do love the questions, Lyssa and thanks for these great comments!
DeleteMy sense would be that life is all movement..all energy flow...and once we "stop" any of it for a solid answer we create a limited world view. If there are no answers, and any answer would bring us outside of the ever evolving motion of all things...why would would we spend so much time on illusions of questions/answers/outcomes. Is a belief an eventual outcome of a process? If it is then would that not be an attachment to an outcome..."the belief"? is a belief not also a judgement of sorts?
what if our minds and bodies just experienced? what if it was as basic as...that ice cube on my skin is something I don't like there after a while. I will take it off of my leg right now.
Having an answer about anything then can create behaviors in us that are modified based on the answers that we created in our minds...which then would not be authentic but rather reactions to perceptions of information that we subjectively determined to be true. We are authentic in every moment because that is who we are in that moment...even if later on we believe that we were reacting to an old wound. Our behavior is still authentic as a person reacting to an old wound.
Perhaps we could express it more as enjoying the messing around with different energies...like trying on clothes or tasting different foods at a huge buffet table. I could spend time wondering if I am really tasting food or I could just taste it.
And any choice that I make is the right one....because I have made it.
I think you are saying that when the mind can be broken of its hamster-in-a-treadmill, obstructionist ways it is free to function in a more harmonious rhythm with the flow of energy, rather than getting in the way of it. Maybe the desire to question, even in service of exploding habitual beliefs we have uncritically internalized, is an “old paradigm” strategy because we are so afraid to jump into pure experience.
DeleteAnd yes, I agree that beliefs are by definition about limitation and judgment. But I guess what I mean by questioning is exploration, which engages heart, mind and soul and opens up access to the universal life flow for a mind that is used to the illusion of being in control…maybe letting go can be the “outcome” rather than a rigid belief?