The nature of the mind is to try and understand, sort, fix. Sometimes our minds get so set on trying to force a solution. When that happens, our world can get very small very quickly. We feel trapped and without options.
To live in the question is to accept the fact that you don’t yet know, and to have faith that you will figure it out. You are without an answer and no amount of thinking will generate one. So you engage in a dance with inquiry and curiosity. You take on beginner’s mind. You imagine the canvas as blank.
When we are able to let go in this way, the answer comes to us. We not only see the situation in a new way, we also see that it’s not a black and white issue. We see that there is more than one right way to handle our problems.
But how do we achieve this when we are in pain or in a state of despair? We find, first, a way to lessen the charge: we unhook ourselves from the thing that is over-stimulating us. Quite often we simply need to walk away so our nervous system can “thaw out.” That may seem impossible to do but almost as soon as we leave that energy field, we feel a sense of relief.
When we are ready and have something to offer, we can choose to return. Sometimes all we offer is the question that is in our heart. It is alright to come to the table and say you don’t have it all figured out. This will give others permission to meet you there, right where you are in the moment. In that space exists the freedom to create something new, something not previously imagined.