“Is there anything troubling that can happen if you do inquiry ALL THE TIME?”
A woman asked me this once as she considered joining Year of Inquiry.
Isn’t that kind of, well, obsessive, to constantly question yourself and all your concepts and beliefs?
I had to chuckle.
Maybe so, maybe so.
Recently, I had another person exploring if YOI is right for her make a similar comment, imagining that in one year, after lots of inquiry week after week, she would be completely detached.
She said she wasn’t sure she was ready for that level of not-caring-about-anything, although it was probably nice.
Hmmm.
Having thoughts about where inquiry will get you can definitely be a little tricky.
All I can really share is my own experience, and by being a facilitator, what some people report about questioning stressful thought.
This is really the big grand story of what was it like for me before inquiry, what happened, and what’s it like now!
And lemme tell you, I sure don’t feel unaffected and detached towards life.
In fact, I’d say I feel more connected, more attached, more excited and intimate with what happens than I ever felt before.
Although there is one way I do feel detached.
I feel more detached from taking all interactions so dang seriously as I once did.
Or from being sure I’m right….
….even about spirituality, or evolution, or (gasp)…..inquiry itself.
I feel more detached from the voice that seems to comment negatively on everything, including MYSELF.
I do indeed also feel I was once quite obsessive. If that means getting on a train going down a track, going faster and faster and faster without putting on any brakes, on a particular stressful story.
I get off the track much quicker these days.
Sometimes, I even just see the track, and the train station, but I don’t actually wind up getting on.
The thing is….
….inquiry has not made me become an entirely different personality, it has not turned my life upside down to looking absolutely nothing like it once did, it has not made me unrecognizable.
But….
….it has made me become an entirely different person, it has turned my life upside down (in a wonderful way) to looking nothing like it once did, and it has made me almost unrecognizable to myself.
All I know is, I used to think something was very frightening, or something about life made me very angry, or I was filled with sadness about the human condition.
Now, I get those feelings and sensations and the accompanying thoughts and I notice images spring to mind and rove across my path, and I consider certain issues a “problem”, and my mind starts running off chattering its opinion about this, about that, and there is something present that Is. Not. Concerned.
In a very good way.
I think it was there all the time, that unconcerned place.
My mind is still here, too.
It LOVES to think. It gets OFF on thinking.
But it is not taken seriously, it just can’t stick with a story for long.
And what I’ve found is that as I live my life, in time, here on planet earth (meaning, not everything happens all at once, but things have a way of unfolding step-by-step) things have become more and more…..
…..hilarious.
I really have no answers.
I’ve gotten cancer, my dear family members and favorite people in the world have gotten cancer, people close to me have died, some relationships haven’t worked out super well, I’ve been betrayed in a weird way by someone I thought of as a friend, I lost tons of money and had almost none, I’ve been injured in a way I’ll probably notice for the remainder of my time in a body, I’ve been an imperfect parent, I’ve had weird conversations about fees, I’ve been afraid in my business.
But all of it is such an incredible adventure, and every day I enter more into recognition of the way reality is, is the way it is.
And it’s sooooo fun.
Life is just so incredibly beautiful, and exciting, and free, and I love the human race so immensely and find it all so bizarre and wild.
I used to feel like I wanted to be dead.
Now I love being alive. I have little hissy fits and feel like a very normal human being. I share with you the life of regular human.
I see how brilliant you are, even if I don’t know you. I see how brilliant I am, even if I don’t know myself.
Life is very, very good and very, very astonishing.
This is always true.
Join me in Year of Inquiry if you want to see how inquiring affects YOUR particular life (not mine, not anyone else’s).
Inquiry is about answering profound questions, falling into reality at just the right pace and format for you.
A year of inquiring may lead you to some kind of detachment, or love, or awareness where you are nothing like before….
….or it may lead to seeing that, like getting a good night’s sleep, you feel better when you do it, and you keep going (maybe for another year).
Who knows. You get to find out.
“When a superior man hear of the Tao, he immediately begins to embody it. When an average man hears of the Tao, he half believes it, half doubts it. When a foolish man hears of the Tao, he laughs out loud. If he didn’t laugh, it wouldn’t be the Tao.
Thus it is said: The path into the light seems dark, the path forward seems to go back, the direct path seems long, true power seems weak, true purity seems tarnished, true steadfastness seems changeable, true clarity seems obscure, the greatest art seems unsophisticated, the greatest love seems indifferent, the greatest wisdom seems childish.
The Tao is nowhere to be found. Yet it nourishes and completes all things.”
~ Tao Te Ching #41
I have found self-inquiry to be the Tao.
That’s why I’m doing Year of Inquiry. Again.
Much love,
Grace