When we ask questions how can we know whether we simply want to confirm our pre-conconceptions or seek open-minded understanding?

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Question When we ask questions how can we know whether we are simply seeking confirmation of our own understanding or are actually in the mode of learning from the spiritual teacher Answer The two The two options are not necessarily in opposition to each other That means it’s not that our questions are simply meant to confirm our understanding nor is it that necessarily that the spiritual teacher to whom we are asking questions will give us an understanding that is entirely different and completely contradictory to our previous understanding Generally the possibilities can range from 1 to 3 Confirmatory Complimentary and Contradictory Confirmatory means that for a certain question which may be about philosophical siddhanta or it may be about practical application or whatever we have based on our own study and our intelligence got some understanding and we want to confirm whether that understanding is correct or not and this is also a good attitude because at the very least we are seeking confirmation from a higher authority and that is not wrong unless our goal is simply to show people how well we know ourselves and it’s not if that is the goal then that is undesirable but if the primary goal is to ensure that we have a correct understanding then asking a question and sharing a particular understanding with that question of the possible answer that is not wrong, it’s a confirmatory attitude The other attitude in the same continuum could be complementary Complementary means that which completes so our answer is in its own way correct and we get a confirmation for the correctness of that answer but beyond that we also understand that there are other aspects to the answer which we may have not thought of based on our limited perspective we may have thought of things from one particular perspective but that perspective may not be as broad or as deep as that very possible may be there with our spiritual teachers Bhaktanath Thakur gives the example of observing a mountain peak from different perspectives in the Chaitanya Shiksha Amrit he says that different sees and thinkers they are all looking at the same mountain peak but depending on where they are situated and what they are seeing may differ slightly so like that we are also looking at the truth and we see it partially and beyond that there is more to see and what is more to see can be seen from the answer that we get from our spiritual teachers that means in this case the answer is it confirms what we have heard or what we have thought of based on our understanding which can come from past hearing and studying along with that it also gives additional perspective and thirdly it could be complementary sorry it could be contradictory that means we ask a question and we have a particular understanding of the answer and then after that when we hear the answer first when we hear the answer from authoritative senior devotee then we may find that the answer is actually different from in fact opposite to what we had thought of and then there is an explanation given why the answer is that in that particular way and that also helps us to understand Krishna consciousness helps to broaden our understanding it also helps us to refine our understanding so and this sort of contradiction which happens that would not happen if we ourselves did not have a previous understanding of the answer also so often when we ask a question it’s not that we have to be we have to be a blank slate in the sense that we should be ready to accept the answer when it comes but we can also use our intelligence as Krishna says in 18.63 in the Bhagavad Gita Krishna says deliberate deeply on it and based on that decide how you would like to act so that way we don’t have to bother too much about whether I am simply trying to confirm my preconceptions we can just ask in a clarificatory mode that means ok this is my question this is my understanding I want to clarify whether it is correct or not and often when we have done our homework in terms of our thinking properly then we are able to express our question more clearly and then when we get the answer also the answer is we can appreciate the answer better especially when we are able to contact a senior devotee who can give us a proper authority answer then the answer also becomes more thorough because we have thought about it and we see the breadth and depth of thinking of the senior devotee who has answered the question we can appreciate the answer better also so overall we should not be afraid of using the god given gift of intelligence when we are trying to understand the philosophy of Krishna consciousness and we can use it to ask questions and to try to think of answers possible answers asked and then to confirm the answers based on the insights that we get from senior devotees