What if life is actually an invitation to inquiry?

The more I look at how people are acting in the world, the more I can see the value we've created around knowing. 

We want to know how things work. We want to know the perfect answer. We want to know the gossip. We want to know the truth. We want to know we are right. We want to know we have been seen. We want to know we have power. Some of us even want the crystal ball to know the future.

There are two things to be aware of here. First, that this approach has an over abundant attitude of wanting. This kind of wanting has the a tinge of continuous striving or efforting to it. As the wanting increases it demands more and more. It always takes more energy than it gives.

The second is how narrow the focus becomes. Seeking the perfect answer is like stepping into a tunnel looking for a scrap of light at the end of it, all the while missing the veins of gold you can't see in the dark. You missed them because you were looking straight ahead, keeping up the pace to get to the end

A compelling question, on the other hand, is like a magnetic attractor.  It opens the door to a new landscape. It invites you to look around. It will continue to work in your brain and heart until answers come to you. It acts like that bit of sourdough starter that helps a new batch of bread to rise.

If you keep feeding it, it will keep on acting as a rising agent. Once you become attuned to questions, you'll keep finding more and more of them out there.

Moving from "I know" to "I wonder"...

If I look back on my life and the times when I wish I'd acted differently, many of those times were predicated on assumption. I let my mind take over with "I know", instead of letting my heart lead with "I wonder." It would have been a saving grace to start with a question instead.

As Charles Eisenstein said, in his interview with Oprah, perhaps the most generous question we can ask others is: "What is it like to be you?"

When I think on my favourite passage in The Little Prince then I ask myself whether every living being might be best appreciated as a living question -- an inquiry into being. The fox is telling the little Prince about how to tame him. Except that in the original French, this verb actually means "to befriend."

The fox tells the Prince not to look at him directly, but slowly, day by day, to sit a little closer. This is the true nature of deep inquiry, to slowly come closer and closer and allow someone or something to tell you its true name of its own accord.

A question does not need to beat down the door. It opens the door instead. Beyond the door might be a new landscape. But it might also be a well known landscape truly seen for the first time.