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The Big Questions

Written by: Jeff Belyea

Article Overview: Answering (or quieting) the gnawing questions can open the door to clarity about our life goals and our life purpose.

The Big Questions

The Big Questions

Was there a time in your life (like now?) when you carried around a “big question”, or maybe several big questions, that you thought were unanswerable? Were they questions like, “Who am I…What is my purpose in life…Why am I here…Where is my career going...Where's my next sale coming from; questions like that? As we develop goal achievement strategies in our lives, it is critical that we not ignore the gnawing questions. They can overshadow and obscure our clarity of thought, and interfere with our sales and career confidence. “Inner work” is a critical first step to clear and meaningful goal setting, goal achievement, and it is important to the sustaining of goals we have achieved.

Practical exercises and structures for goal achievement, like writing our goals and identifying time lines are important, and have been show to pay handsome dividends. And so, it makes good sense to begin here. But once we begin inner work, we will want to return to our earlier written goals and re-examine them. Inner work will cast new light on our priorities and often dramatically effect our “reality”. As our reality changes, our goals will change.

What is all this talk about “inner work”. Well, it can be thought of as introspection, or stress management techniques, relaxation techniques, or even meditation. Here’s an example of inner work:

In the Mystic Heart Meditation that I teach as part of Mindgoal Goal Achievement Strategies, we enter quiet awareness, in which we stop and consciously become “present”, look around our immediate environment while just being there; without any narrative or internal dialogue for a moment or so. Then to maintain the silence of quiet awareness a little longer, we overlay quiet awareness with breath awareness, simply noticing when we are inhaling and when we are exhaling. And then we listen intently for what we call, “the wisdom whisper”. We listen for an exquisitely subtle wisdom whisper that often comes as a solution to some problem or dilemma we have been dealing with for some time, maintaining an inner silence so that we will not miss it. Maybe we use the mantra, “Q’Baha” (Quiet Awareness, Breath Awareness, Heart Awareness) and silently repeat this “word“ as we inhale and exhale - Q on the inhale and Baha on the exhale. It may seem silly at first, but it helps keep us focused, and keeps the mind from chattering.

This wisdom whisper comes from a “place” deep inside of us, the center of our being, the heart, the seat of kindness, caring, love and compassion…and wisdom. It rides the breath, as a whisper-quiet messenger, carrying a wisdom beyond anything we can think or imagine.

The wisdom whisper comes without words as we know them, yet, it comes as a flash, like a light switch of understanding that startles us with sudden wisdom -- a new way of seeing, feeling, knowing…life. This “knowing”, this sudden and startling new “knowledge” informs us of things that seemed before to be unanswerable. The big questions are answered, or they fade away as ridiculously unimportant, in the light of our new understanding of who we are and what our purpose in life is meant to be.

Being especially careful not to “prescribe” any behavior, attitude or lifestyle, it seems important to note that those who are the most successful in achieving an inner peace and other benefits of meditation (and there are many; some beyond words) begin or soon adopt a “holistic” approach to life in tandem with their meditation practice. Diets change (often to primarily vegetarian), and a new sensitivity to other people, a new tolerance for differences in dominant personality styles for instance, and a new loving awareness and gratitude for the simple pleasures of life emerges. Among other things, a new sense of well-being or even the adoption of an exercise regimen becomes part of the new meditator’s life. The point here is simply that meditation as an isolated “activity” (or non-activity) will either not bear much fruit or it will lead the practitioner to a sometimes unexpected change in lifestyle. It’s all good.

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