How to Practice Inquiry
Inquiry is a spiritual practice that is designed to uncover belief systems and concepts that a person holds and bring them to conscious awareness. When practicing inquiry, initial answers may be from the conscious mind, but with repetition and openness deeper and deeper layers of the subconscious are surfacing.
The process of inquiry is to repeatedly ask the same statement or question over and over so that deeper and deeper layers of the subconscious are facilitated to surface. Whatever the statement of the inquiry is, it is critical to stay with the same phrase throughout the practice and to allow anything to arise automatically and effortlessly without censoring anything.
The allowance of free associations is creating the space within which everything that is even loosely associated with the subject can bubble to the surface over time.
For highest levels of effectiveness longer repetitions are recommended, 5 min or more for most lessons in this course per inquiry.
The format of inquiry is that one poses a question or statement, following one allows for any experience, thoughts or anything else to occur. While for many people thoughts or concepts may arise, it may as easily happen that one’s experience shifts. For example, the statement “Who am I” or “What am I” tends to lead people into a shift where they experience pure witnessing (without thought) or even Consciousness.
The spiritual practice is to learn to more and more allow to happen whatever happens without censoring it , conceptualizing about it or having any form of position, judgment or belief about it.
After whatever has arisen or change has occurred, one states thank you (either silently or out loud) in order increase further invitation of the process.
One then repeats the process until one practice cycle is complete.
Any insights or answers may be written down after the practice is complete but not during in order to not disturb the process itself. If one is familiar with automatic writing one may write down the answers as one states the inquiry.
