Living the Questions

Rainer Maria Rilke - Live the Questions Now

"...I would like to beg you dear Sir, as well as I can, to have patience with everything unresolved in your heart and to try to love the questions themselves as if they were locked rooms or books written in a very foreign language. Don't search for the answers, which could not be given to you now, because you would not be able to live them. And the point is to live everything. Live the questions now. Perhaps then, someday far in the future, you will gradually, without even noticing it, live your way into the answer."

I've been thinking about these words of poet Rainer Maria Rilke from Letters to a Young Poet for some time now. Specifically, I've been thinking about "Living the questions" and how it relates to where I find myself in my life at the moment. 

When I pause in acknowledgement of where I find myself, I stand in awe of what it's taken to get here. I feel so incredibly overwhelmed and cleansed in gratitude not only for the trials and blessings along the journey but for gratitude itself. One of my daily rituals is that I write in my gratitude journal. It's helps me to stay grateful for the incredibly BIG and abundant life I live that is just so incredibly full. It helps me to be much more aware of the mundane and ordinary blessings that are equally huge and meaningful in my day to day life.

Just like meditating or anything else, dedication becomes habit-forming. I'm starting to actually look for the things to be grateful for now. And everything "counts".


In this gratitude and in my quiet, continuous and daily "Thank You!" to the Universe, what I ponder most from my desire to be grateful are Rainer Maria Rilke's words about not searching for the answer but living the question itself. I've come across this quote so many times in my life but only recently did it really click for me. Only recently did the question, living it, turn into an action.

"How can I show them that I love them, today?"

Just having this question floating around in my consciousness has changed my way of being. 

My purpose today is to be a teacher of love to my family. It's the single most important thing in my life right now and my prayer is that through living my question, consciously, I can answer it through action on a daily basis beginning with the two people who matter the most in my Universe. 

What question are you living?

Radical Self-Care~Conversations of the Heart.

You know what's good for you but the voices get in the way. Then finally, in a single solitary moment after all of the other moments, you honor what you know you need to do. No matter how hard it may seem in that moment, you get up and out of something broken, you create something new; something beautiful.

I am committed to living an inspirational and limitless life; setting an example through dusting myself off, overcoming life's adversities and  doing so with dignity, grace and strength. Nothing is impossible in my world and everything that seems to be missing, absent or void; it's all in it's own state of flow and I will work diligently to strengthen my belief and trust in this. Every person and every experience I am meant to connect with in my life will arrive in the order intended by the Universe that conspires to support and reveal it's love to me. Because I am committed to learning and being open, I recognize them as such. So far you have come, so far you have yet to go. Keep your gaze forward, your heart open; continue picking yourself back up when you fall and never ever let anything turn the switch off of your ability to forge ahead with an always open and loving heart.

Train your body and your mind alike.

Train Olympic style.

Everyday is a new event; Your Best Life; Your opportunity to be the woman you are meant to become who lives the life she was meant to live fulfilling the promises and purpose she was put here to fulfill all while sharing it with the people she was meant to know, love and be loved by.

Feed and treat both your body and your mind as sacred. 

Monitor what goes in to both and demonstrate the highest, most optimum means to succeed, perform and build endurance because as you've already learned, this ride can be bumpy. You will be jolted from time to time. You must be able to sustain your faith when your foundation seems to have been rocked and you find yourself in question. You are strong, girl...you are SO strong. 

Stay open... no matter how much it stings

Look ahead...there's so much yet to be seen... be excited

Be graceful...so soft you are in some ways, so hard you can be in others... it's OK, none of it matters now... you can soften

Forgive yourself...we are all growing and learning.What is meant to be will be. 

And when you need it, remember the way is in knowing how to harness one's warrior energy; be strong yet graceful moving and communicating from your calm and fullness instead of confusion or fear. Harness the strength and use it as needed; in defense...not defensiveness. And always, always lead, leave and complete each experience with grace and honesty. No need to leave scars in anyone else's story.

In every choice you make, be it what you put in your body, who you choose to open yourself to, what you share, what offers you oblige and what you choose to pass on...remember to ask yourself

"What choice am I making with this decision right now?".

You will work harder on your personal and spiritual growth, your academics, your livelihood, and all relations than you have ever worked in your life, ever.

You must commit to this and trust the process of your life's unfolding.

You choose this way because this is your road map to the success and abundance of all things beautiful in your life. This is the way to the redemption of your perceived "failures" and to creating expansion for everything you want in your life while recognizing; REMEMBERING; the wholeness present within the woman you already are.

I will not fight myself.

Not today. Not again.

Today you SHINE. Today you FLY. Today you demonstrate radical acceptance...because in your acceptance, is also your trust that everything you need will find its way to you.  

You may find the need to go off on your own for a bit but only long enough to 

lick your own wounds, Sanieh. 

Depend on no one else for this. 

Then get up again, and bring yourself back into the world because you have a responsibility to it....you have a responsibility and an agreement you made that is the existence of your LIFE to share yourself with the world. You are the Universe's only opportunity for all of time to experience YOU in this lifetime. Don't disappoint and do not rob others of the gifts, blessings, love and insights they were meant to know through knowing YOU.

Honor your needs in their many forms.

A run or a hike in nature, a cry, a belly laugh, conversations with strangers, stepping on the mat when it seems to be the least of your needs or through a glass of wine with a good or new friend. We're all here to nurture and love another but you must first know when/how to call on your inner lover and your inner mother... You must know how to self sooth.

In the void...

Practice Patience. Radical self care requires patience.

And Patients requires Trust.

Trust, ahh trust...

And Trust requires Faith.

Faith, requires a bone chilling, knee knocking belief in the unseen; in the understanding that it's all happening just as it's meant to.

Every pain, disappointment and hurt...

Every success, gain, and joy...

all necessary for the unseen blessings that await you. Some of the familiar will come back around in new form as you (and they) grow and learn more about yourself while other's footprints will be a part of the pages in the story that continue to shape you.. Every day is necessary for your journey. Vow to see all things and people as teachers in one form or another. Did you get the lesson?

WHAT you are VS the belief of WHO you are...a practice of compassion, never self deprecation. 

You

are

ready.

See it all for what it is.

Trust.

Pray.

Meditate.

Focus.

Love.

Love harder.

Be open.

Be graceful.

Be patient.

Be mindful.

Be present.

Be open to new things, perspectives, possibilities and changes.

It's All You. The light is flashing and the stage has been set for the leading lady of this life to take her spot.

It's Right Now.

Begin.

Create it.

Now.