I love how it is possible to receive something completely new from profound wisdom - even if I’ve heard it over and over again. Recently I dusted off some old Tony Robbins CD’s and was surprised that who I am today received something incredibly different than the last time I listened. He was talking about the incredible power of questions - how they truly focus the attention of your mind. What is so amazing to me is that we continually are asking questions; in fact every situation in your life is truly a response to one or more questions. Sitting here and writing this is the answer to "How do I express what I have learned?"

Our minds are continually asking questions... unfortunately they are often the same questions as well as disempowering. For example, asking the question "Why can’t I do this?" will definitely focus your attention to all of the reasons why you can’t. But if you ask "How can I do this and feel great at the same time?" will open you to a completely different caliber of answer. Or everyone’s favorite "Why does this always happen to me?" yields quite a different reality than "How can I learn from this?"

The entire process is so natural that we are completely unaware that our minds are always asking and receiving what we are willing to expect. So I sat down and went through the main areas of my life and brainstormed all the questions I was asking to generate my present circumstances. A rather humbling process - and I must admit my mind often asks "What can I do to feel more secure?" (super gynormous sigh), or "Why won’t this work?" -- Always a winner when you’re looking to find a solution, focus your attention towards how to fail! Don’t worry, your mind will ALWAYS deliver the answer you’re looking for!

So it makes sense to conclude that a truly effective technique to changing your thinking is to monitor the questions you are continually asking yourself. And before you can even monitor you have to be aware that you are doing it all the time. Like Faith, we already have faith, the power of our belief, yet we direct our faith towards fear or love. Well we have the power of Intelligence, and depending on what questions we ask-- we also direct it towards fear or love.

"Ask and you shall receive." When Jesus said this perhaps he was pointing out the obvious more so than offering a method. However no matter how effective we become at mastering and directing our minds in the direction of what we intend to manifest, there is something beyond.

Which brings me to the idea of contrast. How do you know light without the experience of dark? How do you know it’s not about getting all of the stuff until you have all of the stuff? Lately I’ve been pondering the seeming pointlessness of always striving to become more through mastering belief, when the experience of boundlessness lies beyond the level of the mind. At this moment in time it seems that unless you become spontaneously enlightened or are willing to abandon what symbolizes your security - you must master the mind in order to transcend it. Or rather surrender to it after you’ve tried to figure it out. And of course once you surrender true living begins. To me it feels like I’m unwilling to give up the fight until I’m absolutely convinced that every question I can possibly ask doesn’t lead me there.

So I continue to ask...How to be "in the world" and not "of it?" The answer comes via Krishnamurti - we really only know how to relate to the words in our heads rather than to reality itself. For example how long do you experience the sky before you start labeling it as cloudy, blue, sunny, gray, etc? How long do you experience a friend before the inner conversation begins about your friend? How long do you experience a feeling before it becomes your depression, loneliness, hatred, or even happiness? When we are "in the world" we use this most incredible tool called our words to create, yet at the same time we are imprisoned by them.

Awareness is always the first step, and although it seems too simple to be true, I do believe that "seeing what IS" - is really what can transform life as we know it. Watching the incessant patterns of my mind is all it takes to step out of it. Truly we must think this is too good to be true, because we so rarely just watch -- we are too busy labeling to really experience who and what we are. And when we stop labeling, judging, analyzing, perhaps we will be able to hear the answer to the question of all questions....

"Who am I really?"