"Whenever anyone asks us a question—even the simplest question imaginable, like “What’s your favorite color?”or “What kind of music do you like?”—we should train ourselves to respond immediately with the phrase “I don’t know.”Otherwise we find ourselves trotting out habitual answers, not the way we feel or think at the moment, but the way we felt or thought long ago.
Perhaps someone asks us how we feel about capital punishment. Usually we do not really answer that question at all. In all likelihood we have no idea how we feel about capital punishment at the moment, because whenever someone asks us we trot out the brilliant answer we formulated fifteen years ago—our habitual answer, one that worked very well back then and continues to dazzle whenever we pull it out. But as brilliant as it may be, it is obscuring how we feel about the matter now, the answer to that question which is waiting to arise in this moment.
We need to effect a leave-taking. If we want to discover how we feel and what we think about capital punishment now, we have to let go of that brilliant answer. We have to say “I don’t know”and spend a moment or two in the void, having let go of our old habitual, secure response, and having no idea what will arise in its place. This is the only way we can get at the truth of the moment, the only way we can continue to grow and evolve."
-- Alan Lew, Be Still and Get Going: A Jewish Meditation Practice for Real Life
Photo ~ When the child was asked, 'Do you know if you are Jewish?' She shrugged.
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