The Value of Asking Questions to Yourself (it’s Easy and Free)

Great myths often highlight the importance of asking questions. To ask a question implies something beautiful. By doing it I humbly admit that I lack knowledge in a certain field and at the same time I confess I want to learn a new thing which will help me to move on.

Whenever we are trapped in the notion that we know everything about a specific topic (not an uncommon idea among human beings, is it?), we are actually saying that we are stuck. Without our capacity to admit our lack of knowledge, we are unable to learn new things.

What if we apply this to ourselves? One can have the notion: ‘I know all about myself so I do not need to further explore myself.’ This idea may temporarily comfort us but in the long run it will bring discomfort.

It's then a great gift to have pen and paper and ask ourselves questions: What do I really know about myself? Are the conclusions I’ve drawn about myself true or do I need to revisit them? And what could it be that I do not know about myself but that I will know after thirty minutes of trying to answer this question?

To be full of wonder is wonderful

Questions and answers are like breathing in and out. We both need them to survive. Really, how is it possible to survive without asking questions? It is natural to a human being to be full of wonder about existence. If this answer is not fulfilling, ask yourself the question why all children are whole day long asking questions why this is like this and why that is like that. When we get older we tend to lose this capacity to be full of wonder but really what do we know about this big mystery called a human being?

Therapy is all about relating to oneself

In therapy the idea is to establish a healthy relationship with oneself. A simple and helpful tool that helps me in my own process and in the processes of the people I work with, is to start relating to yourself on paper. Asking questions is vital in this process. For instance; I have the notion about myself that I am not a creative person. I can then ask myself if this is really true or does this notion needs correction? And if I am not creative what do I call myself then? What is the opposite of being creative? And what did I create today? A simple answer to this last question can be; I have created a lunch for me and my friend. It does not always have to be a two by two meter canvas oil painting. In fact, if that is my idea about creativity, I surely need to create a new idea about creativity for myself. Especially with creativity we tend to give our power away to others. ‘I can never be as creative as Van Gogh’ we might think. He certainly was an exceptional artist revolutionizing the art of painting in his time but it does not mean there is no creativity in you. When we project the capacity to create outside ourselves, it means we do not value our own capacity to create. This is what can be learned from asking ourselves questions. A great book which I often recommend to clients and that can be of help with discovering and recovering our creative self is Julia Cameron’s The Artists’s Way. In the book many questions are asked to help you change your own perspective on yourself for the better of yourself.

The question asked in the myth of Parsifal

One of the myths that emphasize the importance of asking questions is the myth of Parsifal who is in search for the Holy Grail. In the story he is instructed by godfather Gournamond to ask a question to the Fisher King who is sick and only can be healed by someone who asks the right question. However on the first occasion when Parsifal enters the Grail Castle, he fails to do his duty and is not asking the question. There is a lot of symbolism to this but the simple idea is that one is not ready for the answer when one fails to ask the right question. What follows then is a twenty year during quest wherein Parsifal is maturing to finally come back for the second time in the Grail Castle. Now he asks his question to the Fisher King which can be seen as his greatest contribution to mankind: Whom does the Grail serve?[1] This might seem a strange question but understanding the meaning of it can really change one’s life.

In modern language we could translate this question into: Do I use my free will and my actions to serve myself only or am I able to offer my free will and my actions to something of higher value then myself alone? Don’t get me wrong; to answer this question is not meant to whip yourself that not all your actions are yet meant for the greater good and that you are a bad person. However, answering it could help you gain clarity where on your path to maturity you are. It’s called ‘a path’ to maturity because it is not something simply gained overnight. It is a long process and it took Parsifal twenty years to change from consumer to contributor.[2]

A lifechanging question Carl Gustav Jung asked himself

Another example of the value of asking questions comes from former Swiss psychiatrist Carl Gustav Jung (1875-1961). In his autobiography he writes:

‘About this time I experienced a moment of unusual clarity in which I looked back over the way I had travelled so far. I thought, ‘Now you possess a key to mythology and are free to unlock all the gates of the unconscious psyche.’ But then something whispered within me, ‘Why open all gates?’ And promptly the question arose of what, after all, I had accomplished. I had explained the myths of peoples of the past; I had written a book about the hero, the myth in which man has always lived. But in what myth does man live nowadays? In the Christian myth, the answer might be. ‘Do you live in it?’ I asked myself. To be honest, the answer was no. For me, it is not what I live by. ‘Then do we no longer have any myth?’ ‘No, evidently we no longer have any myth.’ ‘But then what is your myth – the myth in which you do live?’ At this point the dialogue with myself became uncomfortable, and I stopped thinking. I had reached a dead end.’[3]

The uncomfortable feeling Jung describes is a necessary part of not knowing. There are different ways of dealing with this discomfort. One option is to look away from it and actually not deal with it. The other one is to sit with the discomfort, even embrace it, and ask what it has to tell you (a quality that involves courage but also one that can be practiced). While Jung describes in this paragraph the experience as a dead end, later in his life he would emphasize the importance of this question to his life. One could say that the search for one’s own myth destroys the experienced lack of meaning in one’s life. The search in itself is meaningful.

So what does it mean to you to ask yourself the question what your own myth is? What step could you take today to get closer to an answer? Or what could otherwise be a meaningful question for you at this moment? Please share below in the comments.

Used literature

Carl Gustav Jung – Memories, dreams, reflections

Julia Cameron – The artist’s way. A course in discovering and recovering your creative self

Robert A. Johnson – He. Understanding masculine psychology

Swami Dayananda Saraswati – A contributor more than a consumer https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8P8Zgdnu_Zs

[1] Robert A. Johnson – He. Understanding masculine psychology.

[2] ‘From consumer to contributor’ is an expression I’ve learned from Swami Dayananda Saraswati (1930-2015).

[3] Carl Gustav Jung, Memories, dreams, reflections (194-195)