There is nothing more intriguing and wonderful for me than spending time doing inquiry. The shifts and changes have been profound….my life is changed.
That’s a big statement…..“my life is changed by self-inquiry”.
For me to think this is true, there has to be a memory of what my life was like, what happened when I first began to inquire and learn to sit with myself…and then what life is like now.
It seems true my life is deeply changed.
Something happened…..and the time between fretting or making sweeping decisions or engaging in self-harm or being confused is a fraction of what it once was.
I argue with what is far less. I am not against what is happening much of the time.
There seems to be this mind that gets worked up sometimes, busy busy busy. Anxious, analyzing, worried, stressed, tired, angry, determined, fearful.
It got more like that after age 10 or so. Before that, life is sort of foggy and sweet. I remember major events, but I wasn’t an anxious mess. Some really troubling things happened, but then they passed and life kept going.
Somewhere into puberty the world and my thoughts became much more vivid. Like technicolor. More alert, intense, and more full of really big questions.
As more questions entered my awareness, more assumptions did too, based on experiences. Almost like the mind is filling in answers. Like something’s going on and there’s a voice saying“You want to know the meaning of life? Go find out, grasshopper! Look around!”
I was looking around and sometimes I really loved what I saw and sometimes I thought this place was a loony bin, or worse….quite dreadful. A horror show.
The world was beginning to look pretty scary. Bad stuff seemed to happen. People got very upset. People died or left. Wars broke out. Tsunamis occurred. People did mean things to other people, really confusing, terrible things.
The agony of looking at the world and seeing a frightening vista will inspire just about anyone to understand better, to seek freedom, to end the suffering.
Reading great spiritual works seemed like the first place to go, starting in my late teens.
And then various therapies, groups, workshops, conversations, graduate school, training.
Self-inquiry, that is, asking oneself questions about how you operate, what’s going on, why you’re responding, what you’re thinking or feeling…what a fantastic breath of fresh air, a slowness, making things simple.
One of my favorite authors and teachers, for years and years, is Geneen Roth. She had the eating issue I did….and learned to ask herself what the heck was going on and study the answers, study the patterns.
She wanted to know.
I realized at some point that I wanted to know….more than I wanted the issues and stress and pain to stop, I wanted to “get” what this was all about.
Wanting to know the answers, to explore and investigate, makes all the difference.
The difference between doing something soothing, so that you feel temporarily better, and wanting to know the truth for yourself.
The truth is so dang interesting, so amazing, so satisfying. So rich, varied, full, revealing.
And automatically, I found that when I questioned what I was believing, the world opened up and things became lighter, more wild and free. And do did I.
“Of this I am certain….something happens every time I stop fighting with the way things are. Something happens to every one of my students when they stop running their familiar programs about fear and deficiency and emptiness. I don’t know what to call this turn of events or the freshness that follows it but I know what it feels like. It feels like relief. It feels like infinite goodness. Like a distillation of every sweet fragrance, every heart-stopping beauty, every haunting melody you’ve ever heard. It feels like the essence of tenderness, joy, peace…like love itself.”~ Geneen Roth
I know that when I look head-on at a troubling situation, and wonder about my response to it, and how it happened, and what role I played….my heart is full of compassion, I see the essence of love in everyone involved, I feel accepting.
The world is so friendly these days, I can hardly contain my happiness about it. A quiet, simple happiness without anxiety. I feel like clapping my hands!
I don’t know what This (the world) is all about. I really don’t know what its for, or how it got made. I don’t have sophisticated answers…the questions all still hang out and are still here.
But there is such a profound peace, it really is a feeling of peace beyond all belief.
Until I believe something difficult and then I get to have my little reaction, and then inquire and look. So fun.
“A thought is harmless unless we believe it. It’s not our thoughts, but our attachment to our thoughts, that causes suffering. Attaching to a thought means believing that it’s true, without inquiring. A belief is a thought that we’ve been attaching to, often for years.” ~Byron Katie
Who knew that unhooking attachment to my ways of thinking could change my life, could change the world as I see it.
Much love, Grace