ON QUESTIONS AND STORIES

We are largely unconscious and therefore it is intuitively obvious that to tap into that for which we are otherwise unaware requires a lot of detective work using brutal self-honest examination with searching and fearless search for patterns — coupled with a fierce determination to improve questions and quietly listen.

All our knowledge, collectively, in the whole, is a drop in an infinity of what we don’t know. We’re swimming in a sea of the undiscovered and it is hard to see the additional insights because the unknown is by nature the unexpected. The unexpected is hard to see without exceeding commitment to an open mind and willingness to strive for better questions.

Better questions aren’t a tool to have more material accumulation or celebratory notoriety. The best questions advance the soul of the whole creation. A really good question tends to be contagious and quickly become not just the question one is asking one’s own unconscious but a question “we”, a new band of explorers, are asking broadly and boldly of ourselves. The best questions initially generate ridicule and persecution — because a profound question would inherently feel threatening to the status quo and ego. Adopting a great question requires great courage.

In regards to stories. Dreams are stories, memory is a story, all that engages us in art and literature is a story — the sum of it is that our lives are a story. Story is the tie that binds humanity. Nothing is so engaging, memorable or evocative as a good story. The really good movies make us forget where we are, the parables of mystics can reach into our souls and explore who we are. Stories can help create questions or be used to avoid and repress questions.

Questions are for the living, awake and not for the critic or faint of heart. Stories are what we fabricate to either generate or avoid the questions. What question did I ask myself today that I have never asked myself before? It is the only way to see in the dark.