What is the value of questioning? What importance or significance does it have to life, if any?
Socrates may have said that the unexamined life was not worth living but was he right? Is it necessary to have an answer to some of the deep philosophical questions of life that we encounter?
How deep are we willing to dig?
Our ideas and beliefs are grown from a series of assumptions that flower into the way we see and relate to ourselves and the world around us. Many, if not most, of these assumptions are unconscious, only really being called into question when they cease to adequately make sense of reality for us. That seems reasonable enough: uphold your assumptions until you encounter evidence that they are inaccurate or untrue.
This is a very reasonable position to hold.
This would be all well and good except that this is often not the position that we hold. We simply do not always believe what makes the most sense and even when we encounter reasonable evidence that points to different conclusions than our own, we can (and do) choose to ignore, deny or marginalize this evidence for the sake of upholding our fixed ideas.
Why would would we do such silly things?
For most of us, many of our ideas about reality are not simply abstract objects but rather pieces of our own identity. What we believe seems inseparably connected to who we are. To put it simply, we believe we are our beliefs. This being said, it makes sense that to let go of some of our fundamental assumptions about reality threatens our very sense of self. After all, who would we be without them?
Sometimes it's not much of an issue. You used to like chocolate ice cream, now you don't. No big deal.
But the deeper our beliefs go, the more weight is resting on them, and the more resistance we encounter to deeply questioning their validity in the face of conflicting evidence. We may be willing to face such things momentarily but we tend to run away and hide when it seems too much for us to bear.
I tend to run away when it seems too much for me to bear.
So what gives us the courage to actually choose to bear this kind of profound philosophical inquiry that can threaten so many of our cherished assumptions about reality, and thus, our very self identity?
What I'm discovering is that our willingness to face the discomfort of these challenges is rooted in how important this inquiry is to any one of us. It it's not important to us then we will not bear it and our lives will continue to be an expression of unquestioned assumptions that may or may not be true.
This doesn't mean that if we don't take this seriously then our lives are a waste. Nevertheless, I am suggesting that this kind of exploration and questioning has incredibly more potential to transform ourselves and the world than we can imagine. But we likely will never see the potential until we begin to take this seriously and that's up to each one of us to decide.
Why is it so important to me? I honestly don't know. There are times when I wish it wasn't, that I could simply shut my eyes and ignore it all. It feels as though it's too much for me to bear, that I cannot possibly handle the implications of what is being revealed in my awareness through all of this.
And then I am reminded that I have to question that assumption, too.
Socrates may have said that the unexamined life was not worth living but was he right? Is it necessary to have an answer to some of the deep philosophical questions of life that we encounter?
How deep are we willing to dig?
Our ideas and beliefs are grown from a series of assumptions that flower into the way we see and relate to ourselves and the world around us. Many, if not most, of these assumptions are unconscious, only really being called into question when they cease to adequately make sense of reality for us. That seems reasonable enough: uphold your assumptions until you encounter evidence that they are inaccurate or untrue.
This is a very reasonable position to hold.
This would be all well and good except that this is often not the position that we hold. We simply do not always believe what makes the most sense and even when we encounter reasonable evidence that points to different conclusions than our own, we can (and do) choose to ignore, deny or marginalize this evidence for the sake of upholding our fixed ideas.
Why would would we do such silly things?
For most of us, many of our ideas about reality are not simply abstract objects but rather pieces of our own identity. What we believe seems inseparably connected to who we are. To put it simply, we believe we are our beliefs. This being said, it makes sense that to let go of some of our fundamental assumptions about reality threatens our very sense of self. After all, who would we be without them?
Sometimes it's not much of an issue. You used to like chocolate ice cream, now you don't. No big deal.
But the deeper our beliefs go, the more weight is resting on them, and the more resistance we encounter to deeply questioning their validity in the face of conflicting evidence. We may be willing to face such things momentarily but we tend to run away and hide when it seems too much for us to bear.
I tend to run away when it seems too much for me to bear.
So what gives us the courage to actually choose to bear this kind of profound philosophical inquiry that can threaten so many of our cherished assumptions about reality, and thus, our very self identity?
What I'm discovering is that our willingness to face the discomfort of these challenges is rooted in how important this inquiry is to any one of us. It it's not important to us then we will not bear it and our lives will continue to be an expression of unquestioned assumptions that may or may not be true.
This doesn't mean that if we don't take this seriously then our lives are a waste. Nevertheless, I am suggesting that this kind of exploration and questioning has incredibly more potential to transform ourselves and the world than we can imagine. But we likely will never see the potential until we begin to take this seriously and that's up to each one of us to decide.
Why is it so important to me? I honestly don't know. There are times when I wish it wasn't, that I could simply shut my eyes and ignore it all. It feels as though it's too much for me to bear, that I cannot possibly handle the implications of what is being revealed in my awareness through all of this.
And then I am reminded that I have to question that assumption, too.
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