Lately I’ve been thinking about questions. How asking the right ones can open our minds up, sparking curiosity, and offering new perspectives. When someone asks a thought-provoking question, it sets our neurons a-firing. We get interested, we lean in, or we might lean back in reflection. Good questions are like that: juicy, the meat of rich conversation. A good question can change us, reverberating into the soil of our internal landscape. This week, these three podcasts asked exactly these sorts of questions.
In this episode of This Jungian Life (Lee et al., 2022), Machiel Klerk discusses dream incubation, and reminds us that the dream want to help us. By asking a good question, we can tap into the highly personal wisdom that our dreams offer us. He discusses what kinds of questions are good ones and how a vague question—or a biased one—is going to yield a confusing answer.
Ayana Elizabeth Johnson, marine biologist and all-around cool human, in a recent interview with Krista Tippett (2022), asks one of those reverberating questions: ‘What if we get it right?’. The entire episode is so good, including Johnson’s recitation of Ayisha Siddiqa’s poem, called “On Another Panel About Climate, They Ask Me to Sell the Future and All I’ve Got Is a Love Poem” (which you can find at 34:56). Johnson talks about how being motivated by love is a wonderful way to approach our work. The times we are in are uncomfortable, everything is shifting, breaking, collapsing, and yet there is also great possibility for transformation.…and, what if we get this right?
Krista Tippett talks with Dr. Rachel Naomi Remen (2005). This is not a recent episode, but it is timeless. Remen is a repository of wisdom and insight, and I enjoyed her voice; familiar, raspy, wise, and kind. In sharing about tikkun olam, Remen says, “We heal the world one heart at a time” (6:20). Regarding the Mystery that is Life, she shares this gem: “I have no answers, but I have a lot of questions, and those questions have helped me to live better than any answers I might find” (38:17).
References
Tippett, K. (Host). (2005, August 11). How we live with loss [Audio podcast episode]. In On Being with Krista Tippett. https://onbeing.org/programs/rachel-naomi-remen-how-we-live-with-loss/
Tippett, K. (Host). (2022, June 9). What if we get this right? [Audio podcast episode]. In On Being with Krista Tippett. https://onbeing.org/programs/ayana-elizabeth-johnson-what-if-we-get-this-right/
Lee, J., Marciano, L., Stewart, D. (Hosts). (2022, June 16). Dream incubation with Machiel Klerk (No. 218) [Audio Podcast episode]. In This Jungian Life. https://thisjungianlife.com/episode-218-dream-incubation/
Libra Kaplan | where's your heart at? 