Living Life Questions

 

 “Be patient toward all that is unsolved in your heart and to try to love the questions themselves like locked rooms and like books that are written in a very foreign tongue.”  ~ Rainer Maria Rilke 

Questions Life Asked of Us

After over 80 years of living and close to his death, C.G. Jung reflected in his memoir, “the meaning of my existence is that life had addressed a question to me. Or conversely, I, myself am a question which is addressed to the world. “  (Memories Dreams Reflections, Jung).

Our question is existential and spiritual. The question comes from a place in between. It is a place where I detach from the “I” that I think of as me. I look out of these particular eyes. I look down at my hands. I have these thoughts and these experiences. And I wonder why this body, these eyes and these hands, this history, these parents, this past and these struggles? Why not someone else? Why this life? How did I get here?

 

“ Our lives may be determined less by our childhood than by the way we have learned to imagine our childhood. We are less damaged by the traumas of childhood than by the traumatic way we remember childhood as time of unnecessary and externally causes calamities that wrongly shaped us”
~ James Hillman  

Two Stories and Two Paths 

Perhaps we can best understand our life not as the story of one path, but rather, a story of two paths. Both paths, or maybe it is best to think of them as tracks toward an inevitable end point, where we begin with a violent push into existence – crying as we gasp for our first breath. At the other end, we are sucked back into eternity.

Depending on your belief system, we get recycled to begin the process again and again for subsequent life times. The hyphen in between the beginning and the end is filled with a rich tapestry of events, experiences, triumphs, sorrows, laughter, tragedy, and legacy. 

It’s as if Janus, the two faced of god of duality, paradox; and past and future, watches over us as we travel each path. One life, two paths, two faces – each with a view and gaze upon the world.    

One path can be seen through the lens of outer events and actions. It is the historical record of our lives.

I was born on this day
I had these parents and these siblings
I had this profession
I lived in this town
I had these children and grandchildren   

Our perception is like looking through the rear view mirror staring back into the past. We see where we have come from, why we are wounded, searching for causes and pathology, and maybe for a place to lay blame.   

“We dull our lives”, says James Hillman, if we see our lives through the lens of “genetic code, ancestral heredity, traumatic occasions, parental unconsciousness and societal accidents” (Hillman, Soul’s Code pg. 6 Kindle) 

Within the second path lies an invisible thread running through the underground of our being.  Like an electric cable, this path supplies meaning and energy. It is here that we contemplate destiny, fate, and life of the soul. If we see our lives through this lens, the seed of destiny that is inborn in our character becomes a story of a unique unfolding in the universe. The plot of the journey is the realization of the soul. 

Our biography becomes a play with a set of characters with an invisible director, and the unfolding  remains hidden until a dream, a hint, a synchronicity, intuitions, symptoms or a crisis appears. Using Plato’s and Hillman’s metaphor, the acorn must become the oak.  

The myth (Hillman Soul’s Code pg. 8 Kindle) opens a door to view our life with all its exhilaration and sadness through a redemptive lens. Through it, we see the invisible thread of soul in action attracting to it events and experiences necessary for its realization. We experience events and experiences as fate until we reflect on the underlying pattern or image that is revealed. 

Most of the time the two roads do not intersect. They run parallel. In our journey through our daily lives, we can be blissfully blind to the deeper course that lies beneath. Unless of course, there is a fateful meeting, a tragedy or a dark night of the soul that plunges us into the underground.

This is when we start to ask questions . . .  “is that all there is?” or “is there something more”? It is conceivable that during these moments of collision, we understand that our life is a work of fiction, that is, a series of imaginary events and invented people.   

soft generic viagra For some, it is a few isolated incidents but for others, it is an ongoing, never-ending painful process. What this means is that the search should provide us cheapest sildenafil uk with more visitors and money, and all of that. Reproductive technology is viagra canadian rapidly expanding and improving every day. For common ailments that are not life threatening, a homeopathic product is probably secretworldchronicle.com viagra no prescription a cheaper and more effective alternative. Failure to Ask the Question 

When we don’t acknowledge the question that life is asking of us, we suffer.  In the Grail Legend, we see the implication of what happens.

In King Arthur’s court, Parsifal is on a quest for adulthood and ultimately, the holy grail. His mother offers what she thinks is helpful advice. She says, “don’t ask too many questions”. When he encounters the Fisher King, the King of the Grail Castle, Parsifal notices that the King is severely wounded. His land is dying and suffering. The King invites him back to the castle where Parsifal witnesses the solemn ceremony involving the Chalice, the thing that he seeks. He was instructed by his mentor to ask the question, “who does the Grail Serve”?  But instead, he listened to the voice of his mother and did not ask too many questions. 

The next morning Parisfal wakes up to find that the Grail Castle is lost because he did not ask the question. This simple question would have opened up a new world for him and healed the King of his agonizing wound. 

It is gone and lost. 

Thinking New Thoughts

Whenever we ask a new question, we embark on a quest.  

Asking a new question, also means that we need to let something of the old die e.g. an old thought, an old idea, and an old way of seeing things needs to be shed like the skin of a snake for a new thought, idea or way of seeing things to form.  

In this process of symbolic death and rebirth, the old questions need to die as well.   

The etymology of the word question has the same root as quest. We seek an answer. We are searching for something. The quality of a chase, the hunt, pursuit, or an inquiry is also present in the mere simple questions.  

To embrace these new ideas, we must be curious and open to the exploration and the investigation. We must also be open to being surprised, shocked or awed.     

Questing, according to Sam Keen, is a life of asking questions.  

What Are Your Questions?

Over the years,  I have heard people ask many questions. Sometimes these questions get stuck for there is no answer. There are so many ways to ask a question.  

For example, “Why did this happen to me“? One could ask this question from the place of the victim hoping for an answer that will come from a divine source or outside of us. We are prevented from any possible healing or redemption because there is no living this question.   

Or, you could also ask this same question from a place of curiosity. “Who am I that this happened to me”?  The pursuit of this question calls us to look deep inside ourselves to examine the places where we have been unconscious or blind to the decisions that have harmed us.

Questions to Consider

How do you live the questions of life in a curious and groundbreaking way?

Do you even ask the questions?

Are you asking the questions in such a way that you also live the question?

What simple question can you ask that would open up a new world for you?

 

Copyright Christina Becker
February 2021

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