3 life-changing questions to ask yourself (and the 3 questions that are changing my life!)

One of the most surprising things about having deconstructed my faith and entering into this…shift? transformation? awakening? in my understanding of life and identity, is realizing how deeply unaware I was. If you read my posts pre-Dec. 2019, you’ll see that I thought I had things somewhat figured out. I was comfortable with the fact that I had questions about God and faith and I believed that I was thinking pretty deeply about things. I thought I knew! Now, in this place of unknowing, I realize how little I knew, how little I know, and how much I was unaware of in my inner life. Over these last two years, I’ve investigated various philosophies and ideas about the world and there are 3 questions that have become an integral part of my ongoing spiritual growth.

1. What am I aware of?

On the surface, this may seem like a lame question. But it’s because most of us are only familiar with a surface awareness. We are aware of our finances, our job situation, and the minute details of our daily lives like what we need to get from the grocery store and how much toilet paper is left on the roll in the downstairs bathroom and which shoes belong to which child. Right now, on the surface, I am aware of the time (8:51am), the amount of coffee left in my mug, and that my kids are listening to music while playing Minecraft. I’m aware that the heater just kicked on and that I have a phone call at 2pm today.

BUT – If I allow myself to sit with the question, to look deeper into my spirit, I can sense a different kind of awareness. I sense a subtle shift in my thinking about work and my law practice. I sense a thread of peace underlying everything I do. I sense an expansion when I think about one thing and a narrowing when I think about another. I sense an ease, a feeling of floating, like relaxing in a pool… I sense that there are sounds and experiences happening below the surface even though I don’t necessarily see tangible evidence of them around me.

This question, if I allow it, draws my awareness inside, sinks down into the depths and reminds me that awareness is beyond my circumstances and my outer world. Awareness is beyond my body and physical sensations. Awareness is beyond my feelings and emotions, although it may underpin them. Awareness isn’t just about what is happening around you, but what is happening INSIDE of you. And awareness is definitely a “muscle” in the sense that the more you tap into it, the more you exercise it, the stronger it grows and the better able you are to work with it. Awareness is what a lot of people mean when they refer to “intuition.” Too often, when I think of intuition, I think more like listening to my gut instinct which is not necessarily the same thing. It can be, but not always. Maybe intuition is a sibling to awareness? I’ll have to ponder that some more… but let’s just say that they are very closely related!

When you ask yourself “what am I aware of?” you can zoom in on your awareness around specific situations or relationships, or you can zoom out to see the bigger picture.

Over the course of 2021, I’ve become aware of the big-picture ebb and flow of my friendships, the inherent tug of war between where my spiritual life is taking me and where society is demanding I go, and the strange soul transition from hating where we live to loving our home and feeling deeply grounded here. On a more specific level, I’ve become aware of my emotional triggers, how I self-sabotage, ways that I distract myself, and how attached I am to certain things.

The beauty of this question and why it’s been so life-changing is that it can be asked at any moment and draws your awareness both up and out and deep and in all at the same time. It is all-encompassing and you are reminded that awareness itself is all-encompassing and you are inside of it and made of it. Awareness IS what you are, you are just unaware of it most of the time! This question is a call back to yourself.

2) Where is there resistance?

This is a natural follow-up to the first question. As you tune into what you’re aware of, notice where there is resistance. I had a hard time with this at first. I couldn’t recognize it for what it is. But over time, I’ve learned that resistance is where the internal voices get loud and talk a lot. Two signs of resistance are chaos and confusion. For ex. Let’s say you become aware of a struggling friendship, and your internal voices start piling on the guilt or the questioning or the worrying or the “what do I do about this??” thoughts. That is an indicator that you are resisting something. Maybe you are resisting the end of the friendship, or resisting the truth that you don’t want to be or can’t be that close anymore, or maybe you are resisting owning up to an apology. Whatever the case, that outburst of chaos and confusion in your thinking is a sign of resistance.

Another sign of resistance is an inner sensation of steeling yourself against something. Like the way your body involuntarily tenses up before you get a shot. As you’re massaging your awareness and checking in, you might notice something inside of you stiffen or tighten up. THAT is resistance! Often we want to sidestep it, excuse it, because a lot of times, that stiffness comes up when we become aware of our desires, our ambitions, our hopes, good things, things we want. Those things need to be investigated.

Just this past summer, I became aware of a need to let go of this blog and to stop writing here. I didn’t want to! I wanted to continue offering encouragement and comfort in this space. I wanted to continue to grow it! There are people out there who need to know they’re not alone!! I resisted. Even though I wasn’t actively writing here very much, my mind and heart were focused on this space and consumed with what to do with it and guilt that I wasn’t writing. And every time I tuned into my awareness, I heard the message to surrender. The amazing thing is that as soon as I leaned into it and accepted and surrendered, that feeling of resistance totally dissolved. Even more amazing are the lessons I learned about recognizing resistance, fighting it, grieving it, surrendering, and experiencing the grace and peace on the other end.

Fear is usually hidden in the resistance. Fear of losing a part of ourselves that we believe is crucial for our sense of self and our happiness. Do you remember the feeling of being a teenager in love? Feeling that if you couldn’t be with your boy/girlfriend, you would die? Your entire body would rebel at the very thought of breaking up… As we mature, we largely realize that not everything is a life or death situation, BUT there remains a part of us that hasn’t quite grown up, yet, and still becomes deeply attached to any number of things. When that attachment is threatened, that part of us tenses up and resists. Breaking that attachment can feel like death but there is also a freedom and peace that comes from letting go. I mean, have you ever experienced constipation?!?!? Ha! That internal resistance is basically emotional and spiritual constipation. Hope that visual helps 🙂

3) What is the energy?

This question may sound too woo-woo for some but it’s really not. All you’re doing once you’ve checked in with your awareness and resistance is to ask what the energy is surrounding the things you’re concerned about or aware of. The word “energy” here basically means all the thoughts, feelings, and deep sensations you’re experiencing about something. This question helps you tap into another layer of awareness. For ex. when I am wondering what to do about a certain situation, I ask myself what the energy is around it. I sit quietly with the question and become aware of the sensations in my body, any visual images or words that come up, any feelings I experience. I watch whether there is a sense of expansion and opening or a narrowing or closing or darkness… I observe whether there is a feeling of joy or excitement, curiosity, fear, boredom, anxiety, wonder, apprehension, etc. I try to think in terms that create a picture for me – does the thought of this thing/situation/relationship make me feel big and wide inside, or narrow and small? Does it make me feel weightless and easy, or heavy and tired? Does it make me feel light and bright, or dark and blurry? Does it make me feel clear and focused, or confused and scattered?

Tuning into what the energy is inside of me expands my sense of awareness. It helps me see where there is resistance that I may have missed and potentially what the nature of that resistance is. Asking about the energy also allows me to acknowledge clarity and expansiveness that I didn’t realize was there. That’s how I found out that my awareness around career stuff had shifted. When I finally stopped to think about it and tune into the energy, I noticed that the angst and resistance that had been there previously was now gone! There is now an ease and lightness and feeling of openness even though nothing on the surface is different. Had I not asked this question about energy, it could have been months before I realized how much my feelings about things had changed.

One of the most difficult things about this question is that it reveals to us things we don’t want to hear. This is one reason why people don’t like to get quiet within themselves, or don’t like to journal their feelings, or face the truth about themselves. When we tap directly into what the energy is, we discover things we tried to bury under busyness and distraction. We realize that we are bored and tired in a relationship and there is a heaviness about it weighing us down. We realize we are gripped with fear about losing a job or dealing with a health situation. We find that the path we had always believed was narrow and dark now feels exciting and free and open, and that is scary. We are forced to acknowledge deeper truths about ourselves that maybe we wish weren’t true.

This question expands our awareness, it doesn’t mean we have to do anything about it. We can observe these feelings and sensations and know that they are there and we don’t have to act. Sometimes the best thing to do is nothing! Other times, we can go back to the first question and ask again, what am I aware of around this? And ask ourselves whether we need to act, or if we are ready to act.

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I know we don’t always have a lot of time for this kind of deep self-discovery. But I’m not advocating that you spend hours in silence with this stuff. That is always, always a good thing to do but I know it’s not realistic for me. I’ve found that the best way for me to sit with these questions is to talk into a phone app I have. It’s a basic recording app called “voice recorder.” It’s free and super easy to use. When I am driving in my car by myself, I start a recording and go through the questions and speak my thoughts and observations out loud. When there is a more challenging situation, that’s when I will sit in silence or journal, but this voice recording thing has worked really well for me over the past year.

These 3 questions are absolutely changing my life. I am tapping into depths of myself I was unaware of for decades. I am facing inner resistance and learning to lean into it and investigate it and get to know it. I am learning to not be so afraid of stepping into the unknown. I am learning to let go more quickly and I’m becoming more familiar with the sensation of peace and expansiveness (which, for a long time, I referred to as “emptiness.”) I am learning to recognize what it looks like to have mental “ease” about situations and circumstances, and am better able to see when I’ve fallen back into old patterns of quick reactions and snap judgments.

Friends, we are each a world unto ourselves and yet all contained within one another. There is a deep “God” wisdom within each of us and as a collective.

If you find yourself balking at these thoughts or questions, boom! That’s resistance! Investigate that! It’s not that I’m saying I’m “right” and my way is the only way, I’m just challenging you to look into what about these ideas triggers you. What is the energy around it? What comes up when you allow yourself to entertain these ideas?

If these ideas and questions intrigue you, that’s awesome. Lean into them, play with the questions, believe that you ARE awareness, that you are like a drop of water – contained in the ocean and, yet, the ocean itself.

Believe me, I never in a million years would have asked myself these questions or thought these thoughts even just three years ago. As an evangelical christian, I would have seen them as blasphemous, anti-God, unbiblical, etc. etc. Now, for whatever it’s worth, I wholeheartedly believe that these are questions Jesus would rejoice in and celebrate and encourage.

You are a divine being having a human experience. You have immense wisdom inside of you if you will just allow yourself to see it.