”A question can shape the direction of someone’s thinking without coercing a specific answer” https://x.com/tasshinfogleman/status/1520824884829450240?s=61 --- **Focus controls your feelings.** **Focus controls your life.** **And questions control your focus.** from [[Tony Robbins - Primary Question]] --- St. John's Seminars have an opening question, and questions get answered along the way, but then they probably lead to more questions, and the seminars often end with another question. So the questions are like portals, is how it seems. See first episode of Combat and Classics Podcast with Lise van Boxel... has a good description of the St. John's seminar format. --- Hypotheses: - If I were really good at asking questions, I would be of more service to the world and I would be more able to benefit others. - If I were really good at asking myself the right questions AND answering them by going through a process, I would become more fully myself or I would know myself more deeply. #### Meta-plan - [ ] Look up Narrative Therapy quotes about questions - [ ] Tasshin’s question practice from hostwriting - [ ] 5 minute journal --- ## Feldenkrais Type Questions through Movement - [ ] How do Feldenkrais lessons use questions? In that Gaby Yaron, workshop she says, “This is really a question! There are going to be a bunch of different answers to this question because everyone is organized differently.” Feldenkrais lessons can be built out of questions that are usually directing attention towards sensations and kineasthetic self-perceptions. - [ ] What kinds of questions am I NOT talking about? Test questions… I’m talking about questions that are about self-knowledge. What is ur favorite question to ask? What is ur favorite question to be asked? What makes a good question? What makes a bad question? - A bad question is something else disguised like a question, but it’s actually a comment or a suggestion: “Don’t you want to do something about that?” is a way of saying, “You should be doing something you’re not doing…” - One thing that can make a question bad is the timing or the context. --- We can also talk about object-level questions vs. meta-questions. --- Tasshin is someone with a practice of asking questions, and I really like his approach. I first understood his approach in his host writing course, in which he says to write by coming up with the questions first, then just answering them. - in the reach truth podcast episode where he is the one being interviewed, he suggests that his time at St. John’s college is when he spent a lot of time learning how to ask questions and have conversations based on questions Something I first started doing because of the 5 minute journal is, everyday at the end of the day, I ask myself, What are 3 amazing things that happened today? - then, after I came across Tasshin’s Mindful Review, I changed the questions I’m asking to questions about Enjoyment/Games, Learning/Growth, and Service/Benefitting Others, and then the kinds of things that I focus on start to change. --- How are questions related to quests? What are the questions of my quest? (pre-supposes that questions are a feature of quests, sort of like some sentences have hidden propositions inside them) Then there are the kinds of questions that show up on tests - or the questions that show up on flash cards in Anki. Questions with correct answers. The answer is 42, from HitchHiker’s Guide to the Galaxy. --- how will I know when I’m done? How will I know when the project is finished? What does Done mean today? (From Austin Kleon, maybe quoting Oliver Burkeman?) --- Shared as a story on Instagram by Shaina Savoy on Friday, May 23, 2025: “So let’s talk about JAQing Off. JAQ stands for ”just asking questions” It’s a rhetorical tactic that quacks use to frame statements of belief as a question. Essentially the individual asks “questions” while simultaneously being unwilling to accept an answer that doesn’t align with their preconceived worldview (which is anti-establishment and rooted in conspiracy). Which means this person, no matter what way they spin it to you, is not concerned with evidential quality or the integrity of the scientific method, or… The spreading of health misinformation that causes public harm.“ ![[IMG_1837.png]] --- ## Roger Kamenetz - 2025 book, Seeing Into the Life of Things How do we identify afflictive emotions? How does your spiritual practice purify afflictive emotions? “During the historic dialogue between rabbis and the Dalai Lama, as told in his international bestseller _The Jew in the Lotus_, Rodger Kamenetz heard a penetrating question from His Holiness to the rabbis, “How does your spiritual practice purify afflictive emotions?” To Kamenetz this seemed the most fundamental question to ask of any religion or philosophy of life. How do your practices help you with negative emotions like anxiety, envy, resentment and shame?” For me this raises another question, How can you become aware of which emotions are afflictive? - In my dreams, this is how, even tho the doctor is pulling worms out of the back of my hand, I’m not really buying it… I don’t need help. - I don’t even recognize the things in my life that are afflictive emotions… --- [[2025-07-12]]  Who does the grail serve?  The grail serves the grail king. This is really important because this came up in my dream last night. I’m asking a question of the animus even though I don’t recognize him. Now I don’t even remember what the question is. As soon as I ask the question, my own wound in my stomach opens. I have the sense I’m being shot or I’ve been shot. Yhis is relevant to the Fisher King myth, where the most important thing is for Parsifal (the young fool) to ask the question. He doesn’t ask it the first time he’s in the golden world. The second chance he gets, after 20 years of trials and tribulations, he asks the question, and as soon as he asks it, the fisher king is healed.