Why vs What

Another post? Yea, I know, I know. But when you figure I might not post again for another month you realize I'm kind of compacting a months worth of posting into one day.

Now this is something I've been learning from the Great Divine for some few years now. Like mathematics everything in this "little" lesson builds upon itself.

Now for quiet a few years I used to ask the question "Why?". Why this and not that? Why now and not later? On and on and on. Until the Great Divine finally got fed up with it and told me something that changed the way I saw everything (please for my own sanity's sake no one say "paradigm shift"), it "changed my lens". He told me that "Why is not important, why is not the question you should be asking. What is an important question. Stop asking why, and start asking what." Now reading this you might think, "Yeah, so? I knew that. Its pretty simple." Thats all well and fine, but its like so many things in life. Until you KNOW it, you don't know it. Someone can tell me how to find the area of a curve, give me the formulas and everything. But until it clicks somewhere in my brain until it all comes into focus in that one moment of mental clarity it doesn't mean diddly. The same was true for this. It was a simple thing to say, and it seemed so obvious but I hadn't thought of it and hadn't been doing it till that moment.

After that little revelation I would catch myself asking "Why?" and I would take the question and formulate a new one that was a "What?" question instead. "Why did this happen?" vs "What do I do now?" After doing this for some time there was another level of revelation that the Great Divine showed me. That answers where not as important as questions. That it was more important for me to ask the right questions than it was for me to try to find the right answers. If that makes any sense, cause how can someone find the right answer without the right question. A detective understands this truth. He goes into the investigation knowing that the right questions will bring about the clues he needs to close the case. His job is based on asking the right questions. Because there are things that he may not be looking for that may come out if he asks them.

The next level of revelation is the idea that what causes action it brings change and order. Why brings stagnation and it brings chaos. For example, think about all the people who ask why, think about the way they act what they do. They are stuck dwelling on the past trying to make sense of it, while the world moves on and they miss it. Even if they get an answer to their question they are not satisfied, it will not help any. Like a toddler who asks you why continuously but is never seemingly satisfied with the answers they are given.

If I know what answer I seek, but not what question to ask I may never get the right answer. But if I know what question to ask, I will come across answers which I would never have even dreamed of.

"The key to the mysteries of the universe are not hidden in answers but questions." This is the last level of revelation, something seemingly simple but again there is a difference between a simple knowledge of the sentence in which you can recite it and a moment of mental clarity where the sentence changes the lens through which you view the world. Where something simple like that changes "the way you are".