Photo: Buddha in garden setting - Ali'i Kula Lavender Farm, Maui (2018). Copyright SJPhotography.
HeartQuestions: What They Ask of Us, Reveal and Answer
Have you ever received those heartfelt questions that have knocked at your soul and asked you to get curious about their meaning, their timing, their relevance, and what door they might unlock for you should you choose to investigate them further? Sometimes questions arrive in my awareness in such a way that it seems as if the whole world has paused to highlight this one thing – this query or statement that has hit me squarely in my heart. Even beyond the simplicity of its coming is the timing of its arrival, and the feel of its weight and validity in my present circumstances. They hit me in a way that I cannot ignore their unbidden arrival. They sidle up in the moments when I am more open, and unguarded in heart and mind.
I know now when questions come, and I am stopped in my tracks, and my attention is fully drawn to these potent teasers that they are for me; that it is time to allow in this inspired invitation and all the spaces in between. It is time to expand, open, and elicit my heart and mind to look within for what resonates, for raw truths, and ruthless honesty. I call these “HeartQuestions” – loving missives arriving to guide me to open me up to a new way of thinking, to breathe into uncertainty, expand my comfort zone, and give way to what may not be easily unearthed or easy to hear but are meant for me and my continued healing and evolution. Maybe you have had tidbits of insights or HeartQuestions arrive in your life, questions that grab your attention or linger in the background of your being; poke you in subtle or bold ways to go within and inquire further about a burdensome thought or belief, experience or lasting suffering that has held you in place, and left you unable to move ahead and grow with life.
When you become comfortable with uncertainty, infinite possibilities open up in your life.
In the last episode and podcast (No. 43) of HeartBalm Healing, I write about a question that arrived in a similar and profound fashion: “I am at peace with my own feelings.” It arrived as an affirmation but morphed into a gentle question that I felt drawn to ask myself. Was I truly at peace with my own feelings? And thus began the exploration for it felt relevant, timely, needed, and offered an opportunity for healing and understanding that I was ready for. Somehow, I knew that it was on a different level of healing that I would not have come to myself – as the ego mind and world-weary heart tend towards a more controlled, limited, and self-directed focus when in the process of navigating self-healing. Yet, my journaling, my understanding, and continued revelations that came out of holding this tiny song of words close – in the inner space where tender, important knowings are kept to help ignite and burn away all that no longer serves us was profound. These gems of wisdom come as bold guidance to help our being become more fully alive – more fully present and allow us to let go of old stories and restrictive beliefs, weighty life experiences that continue to hold us back, and long-held egoic questions that have no satisfactory or real answers – for these are the mind’s query and not the heart.
The best gifts I’ve ever received have been questions I couldn’t shake off. Good questions are better than good answers, in this sense: they give us purpose.
_Robert Fuller, “Questions and Quests: A Short Book of Aphorisms”
Another HeartQuestion that arrived and stopped me in my tracks was, “If nothing was wrong what would you do?” As a trauma survivor, I have spent a lifetime looking for relief, healing, and answers to questions that have few answers or none at all. But this subtle question was not so subtle, and was broader than just one emphasis – it was all-encompassing. What about world events, political discord, and environmental upheavals? What about physical injuries that linger or people or jobs that frustrate with tireless effect? This question arose to point to everything I thought was wrong in my life. To everything I thought was wrong within me and about me in general. It began to unravel long-held beliefs and stories that were no longer serving me.
One particular profound revelation that arose around this question was in a sound healing session. I am a practitioner of a sound healing modality called Biofield Tuning which utilizes tuning forks to promote healing and release contracted, stuck, or traumatized pockets of energy and bring the body’s energy centers and biofield back into balance and harmony. It is a gentle therapeutic modality and works well for complex trauma so it has been a wonderful resource for me. I felt drawn to do some sound healing work on myself so I set up my massage table and prepped, grounded, and did my usual opening ritual to ready for the session. As I moved through my energy centers and biofield to find areas of contracted energy and places in need of healing I was surprised to find none. I laughed a little at this outcome but nevertheless thought it had been a while since I had worked on myself so why not reground, recenter, and start again. I went through the process once more, and again found nothing that stood out for healing or needed therapeutic attention. This was new. This had never happened with any client I have worked on let alone myself. I have even worked on animals and a particular area will always show up for healing. I was a bit baffled but the thought occurred to me that maybe I was ok – that nothing was wrong with me and that this was an invitation to truly believe it – to understand and sit in the space of being ok – and move to the broader question of “now what” – “what would I do if nothing was wrong?” This brilliant HeartQuestion was arising during this physical process of healing that was so unlike any other session I was left with no other choice but to take notice. It offered me a new way of thinking about myself, my life, my past experiences, and how I believed they were affecting me in the present. It revealed the grace of just being – an opportunity to accept, hold, love, and embrace my body and being more fully than I ever thought possible. It was an “ah-ha” moment of grace and understanding that I could not ignore.
Why does question always start with quest? Is it because it is wanting us to find the answer?
There was, however, an echo – old feeling patterns, reverberations of past ways of being, acting, existing, and surviving that kept trying to push in and discount this space of “nothing being wrong.” A barrage of skeptical thoughts continued to try and disprove or chime away what felt so profound and healing within me. But the depth and wisdom of the experience held me present and the deep and loving nature of its understanding left me with no more questions on the subject. The idea that after all these years of work, healing, trying, fixing, searching, and learning that I was indeed fine – I was ok – there was nothing wrong with me. It was an incredible sensation and an invitation to look again at my innate wholeness – to know myself from this new perspective, to release the old patterns of relentless searching for something wrong with and within me, and let the echoes of the past go.
I love questions and HeartQuestions even more. Over the years I have found that when struggling to find answers to something in my life, or when I found myself consistently asking a question that I could not find an answer to by way of someone else’s help or advice, by way of research and study, or within myself, I could, as a last resort, offer it up to Source – to Love and Life itself. I knew then that if the question was meant to have an answer or provide me with some clarity or understanding that it would come through and be revealed in some way and in its own time – a time that was right for my continued evolution. My job then was to just be aware, stay present, pay attention, and welcome all that came. This process is affirmed by Rilke, the acclaimed poet, and novelist who wrote:
Have patience with everything that remains unsolved in your heart. Try to love the questions themselves, like locked rooms and like books written in a foreign language. Do not now seek the answers, which cannot be given you because you would not be able to live them. And the point is, to live everything. Live the questions now. Perhaps you will then gradually, without noticing it, live along some distant day into the answer.
I invite you to ponder the HeartQuestions that show up in your life as whisps of text, lyrically worded threads in favorite songs, or passing mentions in conversation. Ask yourself the question noted here, “if nothing was wrong, what would you do?” If it resonates for you explore it, step into, and sit in the space of wholeness, of being healed and being enough and see what you would or could do next knowing that “nothing was wrong.” What opens up for you is in the asking and in living the questions now. For more HeartQuestions check out past HeartBalm Healing episodes:
Join me for a moment of meditation to sit with your “okayness”, your “enoughness”, your space of “nothing is wrong with or within you,” and move into feelings of wholeness and rightness. This meditation came through as an automatic writing download after my “failed” healing session attempt and has been adapted for you and the HeartBalm audience.
As always, thank you for joining me sweet one. Go feel free and adored. I love you.
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HeartQuestions: What They Ask of Us, Reveal and Answer