BEING CURIOUS

Questions & answers...

Jan 24, 2026

I was reading the 6th Core Principle of the Center for Action and Contemplation:

Life is about discovering the right questions more than having the right answers. (The primacy of discernment)

Here are some considerations that my reading suggested:

The key word is discovering versus having. I have tried my best to make my post inquiries with an open mind. Yet it is maintaining sincere openness in the questions that I raise that is crucial to approaching a truthful answer. That is difficult, and sometimes, as many people do, I may phrase questions to obtain the answers that I seek.

As Core Principle #6 notes: “A discerning and inquiring spirit will make us a discoverer in touch with our deeper unconscious and the deeper truth; whereas a glib ‘I have the answers’ spirit makes us into a protector of clichés.”

There is something inherently valuable about an attitude of spiritual curiosity and persistent “knocking” on the door seeking an answer. It allows what philosophers and Thomas Aquinas called the cardinal virtues to flourish: prudence, fortitude, temperance, and justice.

Again, from Core Principle #6: “[prudence, fortitude, temperance, and justice] were considered the ‘hinge’ virtues (cardo) on which all the other moral virtues hang and depend. If you study each of these four central virtues, you will see that they each require an ongoing broadening, discerning, balancing, and discovery of God’s will and God’s ways. They are never virtues that you ever fully possess or have, but they are always dependent on time, discernment, prayer, and listening to others beyond your self. They demand gradual discovery and humility, and they refuse to be ‘had’!”

Since we can never claim perfection in exhibiting those virtues, the temptation is to grant our ego a sense of superiority and settledness about the “truth” by focusing on issues that are binary in nature, such as abortion, homosexuality, contraception, extramarital sex, attending church every Sunday, etc., that allow for instant judgment and the awarding of shame. This direction leads to superficial morals that tend to separate people into the “ins” and the “outs”.

Lastly, from Core Principle #6: “The title of the classic Quest for the Holy Grail came from Parsifal’s endless search for—and forgetting of—“the question” (“Whom does the Grail serve?”). It took his whole life and journey to remember the question at all, and eventually to understand it. It was holding onto the right question that kept him on his quest!”

There is much wisdom in the 6th Core Principle of the CAC as can be seen in the link below. As Pythagoras would say, are we humble “philosophers” (lovers of wisdom) or holders of our own “Sophia” (wisdom)? Are we seekers or do we think that we hold the truth?

The answer to the question may well be key to our wellbeing, that of our community, of our nation, of humanity itself. And as we resist the tyrannical POTUS regime we must have a clear purpose.

RESIST with clarity.