In times of challenge and tragedy it is our nature to ask Why? Why me? Why did this happen? We are seeking to make sense of things that often don't make sense to us or seeking an answer to a question that is often unanswerable.
Asking Why? leads us down a deep dark path to which there is no answer. We start questioning, blaming or seeking fault with ourselves and others, feeling guilty, thinking if only I had done this, or done that. We then begin to collapse what happened with everything we've concluded or decided by asking Why? and our sense of reality becomes distorted, which leaves us stuck in a perpetual cycle like a hamster in a wheel...and we get nowhere.
I'm not suggesting that we not question. I'm rather inviting you to ask a different question. The place to being the inquiry or seek the answer is not in Why? but in What? or Where? What is the lesson I am meant to learn from this experience? Where in this time of desolation and dispair is God (source, the universe etc.) at work? Where is there an opporunity to invite God into my sorrow? What is planned for me? What spiritual growth can come from this?
These are all wonderful questions to bring to your prayer or meditation practice. Begin by centering yourself and being still. Then think the question and release it to the universe, trusting that the answer will come...at the perfect time when you are ready to hear it.
My own spiritual lesson in learning to shift the question came in 2001 after a bike accident. I was training for my first triathlon and had just gotten cast in my first play (after auditioning for a year without producing the desired result). I was on top of the world by how much I was risking myself and stretching beyond my comfort zone. Competing in this race was a huge accomplishment for me. I remember being elated as I was nearing the transition area to switch to the final leg of the race and thinking to myself "I'm actually going to finish this race."
A moment later, I was hit from behind by another biker and I fell off my bike, shattering the ball of my right arm in three places inside the shoulder socket. The pain was excruciating and I went into shock. What followed was a trip to the ER, follow up appointments with doctors, surgery and a long recovery. I had to give up the part I had gotten cast in, as my recovery time was going to take me beyond the run of the production. I think I was more upset about that then the surgery. Then nine days after my bike accident 9/11 happened.
For months, I asked Why? over and over again. Why did this accident happen? Why did I have to break my arm? Why did this happen just as I had gotten cast in my first play? Why did those men fly those planes into those buildings? Why did so many people have to die? Why did I feel so afraid? The more I asked Why?, the more I sunk into a deep depression.
In a conversation with a very wise women, she suggested that what was missing in my life was any sense of a spiritual compass. She was dead on. I had always been a seeker, but had long become resigned to any sense of spiritual connection, prayer or relationship to a higher power at work as a positive force in my life.
After that converstaion, for the first time I asked What? and Where? What was I meant to learn from this? What was God trying to show me? Where was my life moving so quickly that I was missing out on the sweetness of it? I inquired into these questions for awhile and it led me on a spiritual journey and onto a path that I have continued on since that moment. I knew that I couldn't seek these answers alone so I started studying all I could and found my way to the spiritual teachings of St. Ignatius of Loyola, which led to me dwell in these questions with a Spiritual Director.
What came from that inquiry was the realization that my life was so focused on accomplishment and achievement. That me achieving success or awards or accolades was what made my life great. The funny thing was in spite all I had accomplished, I was never satisfied. I always viewed things from what I hadn't yet accomplished and it was exhausting. What I learned from this revelation was that what truly made my life great were the people I had in it. The richness and sweetness of my life came not from my accomplishments but from the beauty of my relationships. My family and wide circle of friends from various aspects of my life that I collected along the way. This caused my heart to expand wide open and I became present to my profound love for people.
I equate this experience as my own spiritual awakening. My Saul on the road to Damascus moment. I literally had to be knocked on my ass to begin asking different questions, which led to me experiencing life from a whole new lens.
The What? or Where? questions has given me peace over the last week in the wake of my nephew Zach's death. I've been inquiring into questions like What lesson was Zach brought here to teach our family? What is God's plan for us from this experience? Where can I surrender this problem that I can not solve by myself to God for the solution? What messages do our Angel have for us?
I don't have answers yet, but asking the questions and being willing to sit with them that have brought the peace. The answers have not yet presented themselves, but I trust that they will when the time is right and I'm ready for them.
Asking the What? or Where? questions can also help us begin to name and identify our desires. And it is through our desires that God speaks to us. Our deep desires, the ones that stir in our heart and have us long for something or the ones that we often keep a secret, are the voice of spirit moving in us and God's desires for us.
In her book Wise Choices, Margaret Self describes desire in this way. "Without desire, we would never get up in the morning. We would never have ventured beyond the front door, We would never have read a book or learned something new. No desire means no life, no growth, no change. Desire is energy, the energy of creativity, the energy of life itself."
Expressing these deep desires lead us to becoming our authentic selves.
I always look to my favorite quote on being with the question, when I find myself becoming impatient for the answer.
"Have patience with everything unresolved in your heart and to try to love the questions themselves as if they were locked rooms or books written in a very foreign language. Don't search for the answers, which could not be given to you now, because you would not be able to live them. And the point is to live everything. Live the questions now. Perhaps then, someday far in the future, you will gradually, without even noticing it, live your way into the answer." - Rainer Maria Rilke
What questions are you asking?
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