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The Gift of Inquiry
There’s something interesting and even miraculous about dropping a question into your consciousness without expectation. When you expect no answer at all and remain open to whatever unfolds, you prepare the way for almost anything to happen.
In this way, inquiry is an exploration of the unknown, allowing surprises to arise, listening for the deepest inner voice. It’s a way to access awareness and allow your innate wisdom to emerge.
I’m not talking about simple questions like what to have for lunch or whether you need to buy milk. Those are simple questions, not inquiries, and are easily answered by your mind.
Inquiry has to do with things better felt into than thought about. Who would you be without your core beliefs? What’s your deepest intention? How can you best respond to whatever is puzzling or bothering you about your life right now? And the biggest one of all: who and what are you really?
These inquiries have limitless potential to shift your perspectives and change your way of being in the world.
It’s not easy, though, to let go of your mind’s automatic need to come up with answers. For your entire life, your mind has been trained to believe that it’s not polite to ignore questions. Your parents asked lots of questions, and made it very clear they expected you to answer. In school, you were taught to solve problems, analyze, follow logical trains of thought. The mind sees a question and leaps on it like a cat on catnip.
But your mind isn’t you, and who you are has a deeper response to inquiry than your mind can possibly produce. Inquiry allows you to lay down the burden of figuring things out — which is a painfully heavy burden, especially when it comes to questions that have such influence on how you live and how you feel.
Here are three ways you can give yourself the gift of inquiry. Don’t limit yourself to trying just one — or even to trying all three. Explore, be curious, invent new approaches. If you find yourself struggling, try something different. There are no wrong answers.
But First — What Question?
You may feel as if the question you’re considering isn’t “weighty” enough, but if it’s something that concerns you, something you’ve been puzzling over and trying to figure out, then it’s worth taking into inquiry.
Remember, inquiry isn’t analysis. So if you’ve been wrestling with analyzing a question that’s central to your life, let go of the analysis and allow deeper, truer insight to arise from inquiry.
Meditative Inquiry
Meditating upon your question is probably the most widely known approach to inquiry. However, I prefer to keep my meditation a pure reflection of everything as it is in that moment, without introducing anything external.
So instead of taking inquiry into meditation, I take a meditative mindset to inquiry by sitting in silence with the question, staying open to what is, and allowing the inquiry to permeate all of me, not just my mind.
When you do this, you bring the inquiry to awareness rather than to your mental process. Sometimes insights arise — and sometimes they don’t. Or they may arise hours or days or even weeks later.
A drawback to meditative inquiry that many people experience, especially those well-trained in logical thought and analysis, is that your mind may fixate on the inquiry, trying to solve it as a puzzle instead of resting in stillness. If this happens, remember that there are no wrong answers to inquiry. And consider trying one of the other approaches.
Writing to Discover
For many years, I taught high school English and Humanities. I worked with my students to allow writing as a natural flow. As one of the gifted girls said to me, by the end of the year they’d learned to “write from heart to hand.”
This is the goal in writing to discover. Submit the inquiry to awareness and start writing. Don’t think. Don’t analyze. Don’t edit or censor yourself. Just write from your heart. Write fast, and write honestly. Write your feelings, your reactions, your thoughts, the history that comes up for you, the cognitive leaps your mind takes.
Writing to discover is constantly amazing, revealing powerful insights and deep inner wisdom. If you find yourself analyzing or getting “stuck” — not knowing what to write — then your mind is getting in the way. Rest in the knowledge that your writing is only for you (though sharing it is powerful in its own way), and let your hand connect directly with your heart, your inquiry, and your intentions.
Ask and Observe
This approach explicitly folds inquiry into your life. In a way, it’s an inevitable outcome of any other approach: when you inquire with a meditative mindset or write to discover, you aren’t limiting your deeper response to just the time you’re meditating or writing. Your response will continue to unfold and develop from the moment you first create your inquiry until the inquiry is complete — which might take a lifetime, or only a few moments.
In asking and observing, introduce the inquiry to awareness and then observe what happens as you go about your day. Be curious. Notice how you respond to the day’s events; observe how ideas, images, and concepts arise, whether or not they appear related to the inquiry; notice your physical reactions; and observe your daydreams and your sleep-dreams.
You may find your mind trying to impose order on all of these observations. Observe that, too, and recognize the futility of it. That which is notable will be clear to your observing perspective; there’s no need for your mind to sort, categorize, and analyze. It’s your body’s wisdom that you’re opening to.
The Gift of Inquiry
Inquiry is a gift, although my clients report that it’s also frustrating and painful at times. It won’t give you the answers you think you want; it will only give you deeper truth. And sometimes it appears not to give anything at all. But isn’t that just another sort of answer?
“I keep the subject of my inquiry constantly before me, and wait till the first dawning opens gradually, by little and little, into a full and clear light.“ Sir Isaac Newton, 1643 - 1727, English physicist, mathematician, astronomer, natural philosopher, and alchemist.
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