That most obedient servant, of course, is your own subconscious mind. Some forty years ago, as a fledgling author and workshop leader, I attended a one hour workshop at an Association For Humanistic Psychology conference. It was called “Asking the Right Question,” and was led by a psychologist named Dr. Edward Askren. I don’t know if my memory serves me well in terms of his name, as I never came across him or heard of him again. It seems odd that I don’t recall noting then that the first part of his last name was also his subject. But, be that as it may, his premise was that the asking of questions was more important than the receiving of answers. It was a fascinating and revelatory workshop, and a lot of fun. At one point, he had us sitting on the carpeted hotel meeting room floor and facing a partner of the opposite sex. We were then told to go back and forth and ask each other a question we never had felt comfortable asking someone before, and to answer that questions honestly. I don’t remember what my less-than-memorable first question was, but my partner boggled my mind by asking, “What do you imagine I would like to do sexually with you?” Hearing a question you’ve never heard before can stir the imagination. I remember a coach once asking me, “What is something you do every day that gets in the way of your achieving more in your life?” I’d like to say I came up with a brilliantly responsive and cogent answer, but I didn’t. Any answer I might have come up could not be nearly as thought-provoking as the question itself. What started me on this course of thinking and remembering was a statement I posted on Facebook this morning. I said that despite a lot of creative activities planned for the weekend, mostly involving writing, I had not a single coherent thought in my head yet as I had just gotten out of bed. I wrote: “my mind seems empty–but I trust it will deliver whatever I ask of it, as it always has.” I’ve had a pretty productive and satisfying life so far, but like most of us, I sometimes feel I should have accomplished and achieved much more. My conclusion is that this is true, and one of the main reasons for this is that I have not asked my subconscious the right questions. I’m not sure what those questions might be, but it is a ponderful subject (A word I just found and am using for the first time today) I will do a lot more thinking about. Back in the 1980s, Caroline, who was organizing a workshop for me in London, asked me a question that changed my life. She asked, “What can I do that will make this the most exciting, enjoyable, and memorable event you have ever done?” I usually had very modest requests of people putting on workshops or lectures for me. I answered her by saying that I would love to either go to England or come back on the QE2, have a really good massage before my workshop, and one on Saturday night of the weekend, and another one after we were done, and I would like to have a substantial advance payment before I even started my journey. She agreed so readily to all my requests, that I had two immediate thoughts: “Should I have asked for more?” and “Why haven’t I asked for stuff like this before?” Obviously, I had not been asking the right questions of myself or others. I am convinced that none of us have asked this obedient servant in our own heads as many right questions as we could have. If it always delivers on requests from our conscious minds, we are ultimately responsible for everything we’ve gotten or not gotten in life. And here’s the question I’ve come up with for myself, and all of us: “What more could you have asked for?” I’m going to take a few days to see whether I can come up with five to ten questions that might be productive stimuli for that bottomless source of answers: our subconscious. Whether I fail or succeed, this will be the subject of my next post.
