The Crippling Voice that Always Goes..."Why???"

About a decade ago, when I first wanted to dip my feet in the still waters of meditation, I found myself in a pattern. The pattern went something like this - I'd sit down expecting bliss, soon after the thoughts would come rushing in, then the voices in my head would multiply and later, I would abandon meditating. This pattern played out cyclically, each cycle lasting anywhere between a week and a month depending on how determined I was to "get it right."

Things did improve incrementally as my patience improved, my expectations lessened and my mind wavered less. Even then, one part of the pattern continued - the part where each voice in my head, for entirely different things, would fire and say, why me, why this, why now, why not now...why, why, why. 

An unshakeable little jerk of a word. 

Why. 

That comes with massive proportions of self-doubt. 

Why. 

Screaming until all else that makes sense quietens down. 

Why. 

Well, I don't need to tell you how frustrating it can be. This incessant need to find out. To dig, to wear the lenses of a private investigator, to get to the heart of the matter. And then? Then perhaps dig beyond its grave. 

Don't get me wrong. "Why?" is a good question to ask. But anything overdone can push you off the tracks. Something I would eventually find out through my meditation process (even during waking hours) and then feedback I received from trainers and mentors. 

So what is it that sits behind the big question and wields the power to shatter your mental health? 

THE NEED TO BE IN CONTROL

Once I had had enough asking more why-s than I could handle, I began to sit with the need of asking the question. Hoping that sitting would lead me to the impulse behind it and then the one behind it, an d so on. And, well, what did I find? Behind all the why-s I have ever asked is a compulsive need to know, behind which is an even more compulsive need to be in control. Of myself, of the other, of the situation. Which takes us a step further. 

THE NEED TO FEEL SAFE

As much as it might seem like a case of circular reference, when I asked why I asked so many why-s, I met with my own need for information. When we know (or at least feel like we do), we feel safe in that knowledge. It's this evolutionary need to find guidance in the familiar, to feel like we are not lost. This is just the technicality of it. In reality, though, one why after another can trigger us to look for information where none exist. Situations where we can only know so much. People who will only tell us so much. The list goes on. But if this is our go-to to method, sooner or later "safe" is replaced by a sense of "unsafe". 

THE NEED TO FEEL SUBSTANTIAL 

When I meditated on the voices that needed to have answers, readily and steadily, I found that behind the pattern was an insistent want to feel substantial. To feel like I was looking at everything from the depths, to feel like I was not being shallow. So each time I delved deeper for the source of something, I felt like I was someone who isn't afraid to look within. The felt-sense of "substantial" is different for different people and you'd want to see if this even makes sense for you. 

In essence, a proclivity to ask why is a welcome one, because imagine if you didn't or couldn't. But then, if you didn't or couldn't, there would still be a world to look forward to. A world, inner and outer, that perhaps then would be driven by letting things be and a sense of safety in feeling that way. In allowing then, would things emerge and not as a result of frenzy.