Questioning, Part 1

2012-12-30
The theme for today is "Questioning"

What is a "question" ... and what's happening when we do that?

I've noticed that questioning is often unpopular, in various ways:
A request for information... will I get it right? ...
A temptation to become mental ... purely hypothetical ..."in your head" ...
An invitation to doubt something, shaking some article of faith.
The memory that "answers" don't really settle anything.
The possibility that doors may be opened
when one is not quite ready.

A question might be a request:
to someone else or yourself - for an "answer".

A request for "information":
One perspective sees this as something factual

Another sees it as
a request for an encounter
with something that will "form" you from the inside
if you are available to be formed.

Questions and answers are like looking at a doorway
the doorway of knowing
from different sides.

Questions spring up from, and break away from
the unnamed known
and as they reach for answers,
they go back there again
and find it to be different.

What's the "opposite" of a question?

In the world of knowledge, of facts
   it is an answer
but in the world of spirit
   it is a vow.
A saying that
this is how I will participate
in something being created.

What else is a question?
It's a way a person connects with reality
and it bears the imprint of that person's depth.

A wish, an aspiration,
A prayer,
reaching toward another intelligence
calling something.

A practice
that creates a delayed response
like burying a seed, planting a tree:
with water, with patience and time
it fruits by itself.

There are times that are good for questioning
one of them is the quiet time just after midnight

another is at the start of a new year
the calendar year is symbolic, activated by our regard
the solar year is something we might sense
feeling the way the light is returning
having finished a cycle
and starting a new one.

When asking a question
there's always something

in the back of your mind

that gets changed by the asking

a community of possibilities
clamoring to be graced by your consideration
or waiting patiently
until you hold them in your heart and mind
in just a certain way.

You might even notice the background
of possibilities forming and unforming,
from which questions arise.

The way that something is asked
determines what comes back.

Questioning takes many of its qualities
from that which is known but unspoken, undecided.
The space and situation
the question is "coming from" and reaching towards
a particular landscape, a climate
of possibilities and limitations.

What would you ask
if it were like you were
placing a seed
where there is later going to be a tree?

What would you ask of Another
if they would carry the question for you with care
until it were ripe?

What would you ask
if you were free of all the "don't asks"?

What kind and quality of questioning
would YOU like to do?