Article Title: Love to Hate to Love the Questions Author Name: Julie Jordan Scott Contact Email Address: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Word Count: 702 Category: Personal Development Copyright Date: 2006 ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Publishing Guidelines: Thank you for publishing this article in its entirety including the resource box. When possible, please notify me of publication by sending either a website link or a copy of your ezine upon publication via email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] THANKS! ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Love to Hate to Love the Questions © 2006 Julie Jordan Scott I have an odd love-hate relationship with questions. I find myself getting frustrated by people who seem addicted to asking questions. question after question after question and then they just hop scotch across the surface of any semblance of an answer. "Stop asking!" I want to shout, "Please, take some time in responding!" I was a bit surprised, then, with my own response to an exercise a book I had read several years ago and started revisiting about a month ago. I don't remember even reading about this particular exercise. Michael Gelb's "How to Think Like Leonardo da Vinci" was an instant favorite of mine, but somehow the "List 100 Questions" flew from my consciousness before it had time to build a nest of awareness. Today, in my 2006 experience of the same book, this section is golden. Absolutely golden. I am a rebel, though, and didn't do exactly like author Michael Gelb said. I didn't only ask "significant" questions - I asked whatever popped into my brain. So - if oddities popped in, I kept them - figuring they were pointing to something perhaps even more divinely or universally significant than a "significant" question. My inquiries range from the silly to the sublime with examples such as these: "What is it about the rain in Spain that makes the plain so significant?" to "Who will say my eulogy?" to "What will God say when we hug?" to "What is my next big thing?" In cataloguing these questions and then purposefully holding them close to me without immediately rushing to find "the" answer, instead I am finding both incredible peace AND the responses to the questions came throughout October, without effort, without asking, without chasing the questions to find "the" answer. I am reminded of the wisdom of Rainer Rilke when he wrote "Be patient toward all that is unsolved in your heart and try to love the questions themselves. Live the questions now. Perhaps you will find them gradually, without noticing it, live along some distant day into the answer." What I have done with my questions this time is quite compelling. I added a form of spiritual practice with my questions. Each week I am gleaning ten questions for my focus. For that week, I am asking the questions - all then of them - throughout my day. On some days, I will write a separate question on a page within my morning pages notebook and free-write in response to the question. I ask the questions and then, I live. I ask the questions and then I go about doing whatever I was doing before I asked them. It is like seasoning my life with inquiry and then allowing my life to slowly unfold the answers without attachment, without "answering them right", without getting stuck in the process of response. I am, in fact, loving the questions. It is like building a relationship with them, over time, instead of having a rough-and-tumble quicky with them. Part of the gloriousness is seeing the Divine respond in the space I have provided, the space that was there all along but that sometimes my ego likes to clog with "how-to's" and "you can'ts" and "who do you think you are's?" Here are three simple steps to discover how you can take this concept and bring it into fruition. 1. Create a list of 100 Questions you would find interesting to live, to play with, to respond to, to contemplate, to love. 2. Open yourself to plentiful space to respond to the question through creative and spiritual practices such as free writing, singing, haiku, movement, painting or whatever calls to your being. (This opening may be, in and of itself, a form of question.) 3. Share what you discover on the "Stretch" 100 Questions blog where you will find both my 100 Questions list as well as my 10 questions a week. http://juliejordanscott.typepad.com/stretch/2006/10/100_life_questi.html Paul Riceour, French Philosopher, reminds us of the importance of this process when he said, "This brief period when we appear in the world is the time in which all meaningful questions arise." Now you have the tools to cradle your questions with love. Love to love the questions. Love to live your life with passion. ====== Julie Jordan Scott is a Writer, Speaker, Success Coach, Actor, Workshop Facilitator and Mother Extraordinaire who created the DreamActivation program to ignite your dreams. Fre.e. audio coaching - immediate download: http://www.5passions.com/giftofaudiocoaching.html [Non-text portions of this message have been removed] THINGS TO KEEP IN MIND WHILE USING ARTICLES POSTED ON THE GROUP: 1. Print the article in its entirety. 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