Spiritual Questions for Spiritual Answers

I believe that in order to discover your calling and your life’s purpose you will need to spend time in meaningful reflection. Let me explain what I mean when I say reflection and then I’d like to share just one very practical way of getting started with this practice.

Reflecting or what I sometimes call soulful inquiry, has much more to do with listening than it does with thinking. Listening to your subconscious mind, to your heart, not analyzing with your head. In many ways meaningful reflection is a lost art in western culture. Thinking about deep questions related to our purpose and calling, and learning to listen to your heart, or your soul, for answers rather than your head, is often seen as strange and impractical, a youthful luxury reserved for college freshman at liberal arts colleges, not those who have to slug it out each day in the real world.

However, I believe that soulful inquiry or reflection is very much a part of real world, and nothing has more practical implications for one’s life than knowing your calling and moving toward your purpose. But discovering your calling is much more of a spiritual question than an analytical exercise. If so, then listen to our soul is the only way to bring the knowledge of your calling into your consciousness . Reflecting lies at the very heart of self-discovery.

Here’s a practical way to get started. Try a 15 minute questioning exercise. Find a place where you will have completely uninterrupted quiet for 15 minutes. Write down the following four questions on a sheet of notebook paper.

1. What is getting in my way and keeping me from living the life I should be living?”
2. What would I do if I was completely unafraid?
3. What will free me to become the person I was created to be?
4. What can I do to live in a more authentic way?

Next, beginning with the first question, generate as many answers as you can as quickly as you can. Do not judge your answers, don’t think about them, just quickly generate answers, the first ones that come to mind, and write them down. One, two, three, or twenty answers, whatever the number just keep writing. Now move to the second question, what would I do if I was completely unafraid? And do the same thing, writing down as many answers as you can generate as quickly as possible. When you finish the last question, put the pen and paper down and spend a moment reflecting asking these final two questions, what surprised me during this exercise? And what did I discover that I want to think more about? Now, in a slower, more reflective fashion, capture the answers to these last two questions on the paper. This concludes your first 15 minute questioning session.

The next day, review your answers and simply spend 15 minutes quietly reflecting, quietly listening for answers not systematically analyzing the issues. Continue this practice of considering these questions, and listening to your heart’s answers for as many days as you find value in the practice.

This very simple exercise is just a beginning, a way of getting started in uncovering the answers to some of life’s burning questions. A way of beginning to remove the barriers that get in the way of your hearing of the quiet voice that’s calling you toward your unique Sacred Path.

Something to think about.