A Practical Guide To Living In The Question

This is a game changer.

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My relationship with living in the question started when I realized that I had the greatest question-answering machine inside my head.

Around 5ish years ago my spiritual teacher began coaching me how to communicate with my higher Self.

I was guided to get into a calm, relaxed state, open my heart and use my intention to connect with my true Self.

I’d then pose a question, and wait for information to emerge into my awareness.

In the beginning, the information was less consistent and often hard to decipher from my consciousness patterns.

I had tasted the nectar of insight through this process, which motivated me to refine this ability.

So I kept at it by consistently asking my higher self for guidance each day, while working to purify the layers in my subconscious that were no longer serving me. With time, the connection strength to the information and my capacity for discernment improved.

The meta insight revealed through this process was the recognition that every answer to every question I ever had was inside myself. And when the answer needed to be revealed through life itself, it would come to me.

But to stimulate the insight, I had to ask the question.

Asking for guidance was the powerful precursor.

I was, and to some extent still am, a recovering optimizer.

So once I understood this capacity, I began to try to leverage it in all sorts of ways.

One example was writing down all questions that I wanted answers to in a notepad before I went to bed.

Insights would come as I was writing the questions down, in the middle of the night, when I woke up, and even days later when I was least expecting it.

The more this happened, the greater my confidence became that I could pose questions to my deeper essence and would receive the answer.

In order to realize and embody this capacity, you have to consistently experiment with it. It’s the only way you’ll start to recognize the connection between asking for things and receiving information. Otherwise, you’ll just think the information entering your awareness is random or good luck, instead of recognizing you have an ability to influence the information stream.

Although I had this amazing tool at my disposal, sometimes I'd forget about it. I continued to bring specific, pointed questions about timely matters to my intuition, but I’d often forgot to engage the bigger questions I had about my life and goals.

Only this year have I been more diligent about exercising this ability, or what many popular teachers like Joe Hudson or Brian Whetten call "living in the question."

Living In The Question

To many people, living in the questions simply means being okay not knowing the answer while continuing to trust that it will emerge. When you have a big hairy question about life is spinning your wheels trying to figure it out.

I have moved from the second approach to the first one, and find it a much more enjoyable way to live. The degree that you can do it successfully depends on your innate state of trust. When your consciousness is filled with patterns around self-doubt and fear, it's pretty hard to simply rest in the unknown. However, when you use these situations to adjust the underlying consciousness through using methods like this, it becomes much easier.

What I'm advocating here is bringing an increased level of intentionality into living in the practice of living in the question. This is where you evolve from surrendering to the not knowing, to wielding the innate power of your consciousness. Here’s what has worked for me.

Get Clear On Your BIG Questions

To live in the question effectively, you first need to understand what are the questions worth asking?

There are spontaneous questions that arise as you go about your life, and there are more fundamental questions that align with bigger aspirations.

In addition to setting intentions and goals for myself, something I did differently this year was write out the major questions I had related to those goals.

I then refined those questions to come up with the best ones and put them in a note on my phone.

So I have a big set of questions related to my aspirations that are more enduring and then smaller questions that come up as I pursue them.

For example, one of the bigger questions for my goals is how my book Conscious Accomplishment can reach and positively impact the greatest number of people?

As I work towards this, and start the process of defining the cover image a new question emerges: "What is the most effective visual representation of this book that will help it reach its highest potential?"

Create Rituals To Engage Them

Once you have your questions, you need to develop rituals to stimulate them. By stimulating, I’m referring to posing the question with a strong intention to stillness or a higher intelligence. You might even continue to do this throughout an activity like revisiting it every 10 minutes during a workout.

Ideally, the rituals are attached to things that you're already doing.

I look at my question note and pose some before I work out, do myofascial release, go to bed, go for walks and eat (when I’m alone.)

After you do this, you simply just continue doing whatever you are doing while observing the contents of your mind.

Prioritize Conditions For Insight

Insight comes in the space between inner content. When the mind is quiet, there’s enough room for your inner guide to be heard.

Therefore, part of living in the question means prioritizing the conditions for insight.

When I work out, I listen to light music vs. something more distracting like listening to podcasts. I do activities like myofascial work, walking, and eating without screens or noise.

When I first started doing this a few years ago, it was difficult to get used to.

However, as the realization strengthened around where valuable insight comes from, prioritizing stillness just became the more interesting and attractive choice to make.

This illuminates how behavior change is more a function of understanding than willpower.

To be clear, I still listen to podcasts and things like that here and there. But it's no longer my de-facto method of getting valuable information.

Trust. Enjoy. It Will Come

After these conditions are met, you simply just do your thing. You can't will an emergent insight. You can instigate it and allow it to come to you though.

At some point, you'll experience that sweet aha moment when the seeds blossom, and that insight comes.

Sometimes this occurs in the contents of your interior world. Other times it is delivered to you by reality itself.

This recognition creates greater allegiance to the practice of living in the question and a desire to further explore this ability.

So, how will you use the world's greatest question-answering machine?

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