I used to feel unwell, often. I used to feel confused often, too.
For many years, as a person living with chronic health issues, I was desperate to seek answers to two desperately important questions: ‘’What is wrong with me?’ and ‘Who can I find to fix it?’.
These questions became the centrepoint of my life, weighing heavily on my mind and influencing my work, life decisions, self esteem and relationships.
And then, I learned something crucially important about life.
Life doesn’t just happen to us, it responds to us. More importantly, as Amy Oscar teaches in her Soul Caller Training, life responds to the questions we pose; Amy describes this as ‘living in a call and response Universe’. She teaches that the questions we intentionally or unintentionally ask, become an energetic centre around which responses from the Universe will constellate. When we ask a question, we are essentially calling to the Universe for a response. Through experimenting with this myself, I have found it to make a lot of sense, in fact this understanding has been a game-changer.
With this newfound knowledge, I came to understand that I had literally been asking life to show me ‘what was wrong with me’ and someone ‘who could fix it’. It quickly made sense to me that I hadn’t found any cures – I had simply learned a lot about health issues and met a lot of skilled health practitioners.
With a myriad of symptoms ranging from fatigue, low moods, anxiety, digestive troubles and significant back pain- of course it was reasonable that I was seeking answers. The problem didn’t lie in me wanting to restore my health, nor did I lack determination. The issue was simply that I hadn’t consciously formed the question guiding my efforts; it had formed itself in the murky shadows of frustration, desperation and a deep-seated sense of ‘not-enoughness’. Consequently, I experienced a cycle of painful emotions which I turned inward, causing myself further harm. My desire to heal was thwarted by a cycle of painful emotions that kept me stuck.
The wisdom I discovered about what makes true healing possible is this: When we consciously create our own question(s), we are co-creating with life and inviting responses which align with our true desires. The opportunity for us all is to decide for ourselves the kinds of experiences we’d like to have and to form questions from a place of self compassion and kindness.
It took many many years for me to recognise that I needed to pose a new question, and for now, one such question I am consciously asking is ‘What do I need to understand about nurturing myself?’ This question guides my focus towards that which is nourishing and wholesome, and invites life to respond with the same.