Prayers Are Seldom Answered

<b>Prayers Are Seldom Answered</b>
"Prayers not answered” means your “expectations not fulfilled.” The TAO wisdom explains why: your attachments to careers, money, relationships, and success “make” but also “break” you by creating your flawed ego-self that demands your “expectations to be fulfilled.”

Monday, February 17, 2020

Asking Questions and Seeking Answers to Love Longer


ASKING QUESTIONS AND SEEKING ANSWERS TO LIVE LONGER

If you wish to live longer or to a ripe old age, you must ask yourself many questions about life; after all, living is about asking questions and seeking answers to the questions asked. Livingfor life in this contemporary world may never be easy because it requires wisdom, which is essentially finding answers to the questions asked about life and living, and then applying those answers to everyday living in the material world.

Have you ever wondered: there has to be much more to life than this—the kind of life that you are living right now?

If you have, then maybe you should, first and foremost, ask yourself questions about why you want to live longer. Your reasons could be some of the following:

You desire to live a better life than the one that you are currently living.

You want to see your children or grandchildren grow up and mature into adults.

You have your life passions, some of which are already accomplished, while others are being pursued but remaining unfulfilled.

You are experiencing some core values, which are not just your life goals but rather your beliefs in humanity that have to be lived in order to fully experience the meaning of existence as well as the innate happiness in humanity.

You still like to enjoy some of the mundane pleasures of life and living that have satisfied your five senses.

You love to maintain good relationships and true friendships with those who are close and dear to you.

You may be fighting some life challenges or health issues—just like Alex Trebek, the 77-year-old TV celebrity famous for hosting NBC's “Jeopardy”, who openly declared in 2019 that he had to live longer in order to fight his pancreatic cancer because of his still-standing three-year contract with NBC. 

Asking the question “Why you want to live longer?” may initiate many other why questions specifically related to you, to others close to you, and to the world around you. Living is all about asking the many why and how questions in your everyday life and living.

In the Bible, Jesus said: “Ask, and it shall be given you; seek, and ye shall find . . .” (Matthew 7:7) In real life, we must always ask ourselves many thought-provoking questions at all times. Asking questions is self-introspection, which is a process of self-intuition and self-reflection, without which there is no self-awareness and therefore no personal growth and development. A static life is never a life well lived and worth living. Therefore, asking questions is self-empowering wisdom—a tool necessary for living longer.

The truth is that the kind of questions you ask determines the kind of life you are going to live. Your questions often trigger a set of mental answers, which may lead to actions or inactions, based on the choices you make from the answers you have obtained. Remember, your life is always the sum of all the choices you have made in the process. No matter what, life is a journey of self-discovery, a continuous process of asking questions and seeking self-enlightening answers from them. It should be noted that the answer to every question you ask may change over time, because life is forever changing, and changes are often transformative. The more questions you ask, the clearer your mind will become, and the more ready you will be to receive the answers.

Although asking questions is a self-learning process, do not seek absolute answers from the questions asked; more importantly, do not seek answers that might not be given to you. The most important thing in questions-and-answers is to experience everything, not just to pursue the knowledge. As a matter of fact, knowledge can help, but it can also hinder. When you only follow what you know, and forget what you feel, you can easily be led down the wrong path. Extensive knowledge and logical reasoning may not necessarily compound true wisdom.

The bottom line: live every question you are going to ask yourself, and live in its presence. Be patient toward all those questions that you cannot find answers immediately. True enlightenment may dawn on you one day when you find yourself asking no more questions because you already have all the answers; that is the ultimate awakening.

Enjoy the process of self-reflecting all the questions you are going to ask yourself; without this self-reflection, you may exist for other people, and not for yourself. Now is the time to start asking questions, and putting yourself on the right path to intuiting the TAO of living longer.      



Stephen Lau
Copyright© by Stephen Lau


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