Living the Questions: Inquiry as a Path to Grace, Connection, and Regenerative Culture
Introduction: Why Questions Matter
How can those of us with deep care and concern and who are attuned to the crises and possibilities of our time live with grace and dignity in an era of profound uncertainty? We might ask: how do I cultivate a deep sense of belonging and purpose amidst societal and ecological collapse? These are not abstract musings but essential questions that shape how dedicated changemakers engage with life itself.
I’ve come to believe that the journey of inquiry is more important than the answers I or others may seek. The questions I hold shape not only my consciousness but the relationships I forge and the culture I participate in. They are tuning forks of transformation.
Rather than being fixated on solutions, those with passionate purpose can choose to live the questions — not as a technique or a tool, but as a way of being. A disposition of openness, humility, and fierce curiosity. A willingness to stay close to mystery, to the edge of not-knowing, and to the emergence of something profoundly new.
This practice of living the questions has animated my life — from spiritual explorations to embodied philosophical experimentation. In this piece, I share glimpses from that journey — and why I believe inquiry is not just personal, but cultural, civilizational, and sacred.
The Origins of My Journey in Living the Questions
From an early age, I felt the absence of deep inquiry in the world around me. Mainstream culture seemed to skate over the surface of things, avoiding the big, essential questions. My hunger for depth drew me toward spiritual communities where questioning was not only permitted but encouraged.
In the late 1990s, I encountered the now recently deceased Andrew Cohen, a Western teacher in the lineage of Ramana Maharshi and Papaji (HWL Poonja), and whose approach to spirituality was profoundly influenced by JW Krishnamurti’s injunction to ‘question everything’. While Cohen’s legacy is mixed, the environment he curated offered one crucial gift: a space for experiential inquiry. This wasn’t philosophy in the abstract — it was lived, relational, raw.
The core inquiries were piercingly simple:
- Who am I?
- How should I live?
What made Cohen’s community compelling for me was the quality of energy between people. A collective curiosity. A dynamic tension between not knowing and wanting to know. Inquiry was not a solitary affair — it was co-created, co-held. Magic, mystery, and meaning would arise in late-night conversations, in the kitchen, on walks. What emerged was a spirit of camaraderie and togetherness — a felt experience of being met in the all embracing mysterious.
This wasn’t a dry practice. It was electric. I wasn’t just thinking — I was awakening, feeling, discovering alongside others. That sense of shared becoming, of live participation in something larger than any one person, was profoundly enlivening.
Five Dimension of Living the Questions
After my early initiations into spiritual inquiry, I began to notice a deeper pattern. The most transformative questions were not abstract or rhetorical — they touched the body, opened the heart, and recalibrated how I moved through the world. What followed were not just philosophical realisations, but felt shifts in perception and practice.
The five dimensions that follow emerged from years of dialogue, contemplation, and embodied experimentation. Each one captures a facet of what it means to truly “live the questions”:
- How questions shape the future I’m capable of imagining.
- How stillness deepens discernment and the capacity to choose.
- How inquiry becomes a compass for navigating the unknown.
- How discernment evolves through presence and reflection
- How I become the space where new possibilities can arise.
Each of the following elements builds on the last. Stillness feeds discernment. Discernment supports grace under pressure. Grace creates a container for emergence. And emergence is where the world begins again — within and between us.
Let me begin with the first dimension, the generative power of questions.
The Generative Power of Questions
Most of us live in a world saturated with answers. In a society obsessed with outcomes, speed, and efficiency, questions often feel like distractions from the “real work.” But I’ve found the opposite to be true: the quality of the questions I ask, determines the quality of my reality.
Some questions open me. Others shut me down. Some connect me to life. Others isolate me in fear.
When I live the questions instead of rushing to answer, fix or resolve them, I awaken a deeper intelligence. Inquiry becomes an act of worldmaking. It shifts my orientation from:
- Consuming to contributing
- Diagnosing to imagining
- Surviving to meaning-making
The questions I hold — alone and with others — form the scaffolding for the future I long to help bring forth.
Stillness and the Tenderness of Discernment
If the questions I ask shape the world I inhabit, then the quality of my listening determines how deeply I engage with those questions. This is where stillness enters — not as passive silence, but as an active and tender receptivity. It is through stillness that discernment begins to take form.
Stillness is not the absence of movement — it is the presence of awareness. It creates the space where I can begin to hear the quieter truths beneath the noise. Through the gentle practice of pausing, of slowing down, of attending carefully to the subtle textures of thought and feeling, I begin to discern:
- Fear from intuition
- Habit from calling
- Reaction from response
This is not a practice of control. It is a practice of surrender — of giving attention to what is already present and allowing it to reveal what is real.
Graceful Navigation of the Unknown
Discernment, once grounded in stillness, offers a way of being in the unknown with presence. I no longer grasp for premature resolution or perform with false certainty. Instead, I allow uncertainty to become a field of discovery.
To live the questions in uncertain times is to:
- Choose existential trust over control
- Move with a sense of graceful ease
- Let mystery reshape reality from within
This is not passive resignation. It is participatory openness. The questions themselves become a compass — guiding me through complexity not by offering fixed points, but by refining my orientation.
Over time, this way of navigating cultivates an inner ground that is stable, even in the face of great upheaval.
Refining Discernment as a Lifelong Practice
The discernment I speak of is not a static skill. It is a lifelong unfolding. A muscle that strengthens through feedback, humility, and lived attention.
Living the questions sharpens this inner compass. Each engagement with uncertainty, each pause for reflection, hones the ability to choose wisely. I begin to move with:
- Greater coherence
- Clearer boundaries
- Softer edges
I do not always get it right. But through the practice of review, conversation, and alignment, I notice a deepening capacity to stay with discomfort, to sense into complexity, and to respond from wholeness rather than fracture.
Becoming the Space Where New Knowing Emerges
And from this ongoing practice — of listening, navigating, refining — a new possibility opens: I myself become the generative space. Living the questions is not just about what I ask, but about who I become in the asking.
This final movement is not about method — it is about presence. A posture of humility, of openness, of becoming. I begin to embody the qualities of the questions themselves:
- Wonder
- Aliveness
- Deep receptivity
Over time, the questions shape me. They undo my defenses. They soften my certainty. And they awaken a deeper intelligence that moves not from knowing, but from attunement.
Conclusion: A Quiet Revolution of Being
To live the questions is to commit to a quieter, more intimate revolution — a transformation not of systems first, but of self and soul. In a world that rushes toward premature answers, I have come to see the act of sustained inquiry as a radical posture. Not passive. Not indecisive. But fiercely alive.
This way of being isn’t neat or easily measured. It asks me to soften, to stretch, to relinquish the illusion of control and step into the dynamic current of unknowing. In doing so, I begin to source my choices, actions, and relationships from a deeper well — from presence, from attunement, from love.
Each of the dimensions explored here — generative questioning, stillness, graceful navigation, refined discernment, and emergent presence — has revealed itself not as an endpoint, but as a living thread in an unfolding tapestry. They are invitations, not instructions. Openings, not conclusions.
If you too are called to co-create a more beautiful, regenerative culture — one that honours life’s complexity and listens for its wisdom — then perhaps this path of inquiry is already quietly guiding you.
Let the questions do their work. Let them shape you. Let them lead you into a future you may not yet be able to name — but can begin, even now, to feel.
Two other articles on Medium that reflect on similar themes around enquiry, attention and awareness:
Cultivating and Nurturing Attention (2022)
Three Crucial Practices that Awaken Your Super Powers of Attention (2022)
About the author Dave Pendle; I am synthesising almost 30 years experience in non profit enterprises with over 40 years of deep personal development experience. I am passionate about enabling others’ sense of fulfillment, impact and trust, to engage wholeheartedly with inspiration and commitment to 21st century work and life.
My website Generative You, explains my interests in more in depth, so do sign up for my newsletter or use my contact form to share there how you best like to connect with me. I run a monthly live in person conversation series Phenomenal Conversations exploring fascinating contemporary questions in order to co-explore life defining topics, with pioneering changemakers who embody systemic and regenerative change in every aspect of their life.