About Meditative Inquiry
I became familiar with Inquiry with the first Englightenment Intensive I partook in 1985. I fell in love with Inquiry and started sharing NVC mixed with Inquiry about needs, beliefs, thoughts, perceptions. And then I found Adyashanti, in 2003, and his work encompasses Meditative Self-inquiry, and it helped me enormously. I went to see Byron Katie for the first time in 2005 and her form of Inquiry is very, very powerful to me. I now combine different types of Meditative Self-inquiry into my NVC work.
Below are some excerpts from Adyashanti and then Byron Katie about their work.
from Adyashanti:
It is important that we do not use this type of inquiry simply as a mental tool. If we do that, we start to understand everything on a mental level. The problem is, the mental level is often disconnected from the emotional level. We may understand something clearly in our minds, but emotionally we may still be conflicted about it. When we inquire, it is important that we are using both body and mind: both feeling and thought. We must see which thoughts generate which feelings, and which thoughts are generated from feelings. It is a cycle, a thought creates a feeling, and that feeling creates the next thought, on and on. . .
I would write and then enter into the feeling. I would look at exactly how that thought viewed the world. To do that, I would have to enter into how I felt. I would have to zero in on what believing that particular thought, be it condemnation or embarassment or whatever, generated at the feeling level. Then I would enter into the feeling and allow myself to feel the feeling.
The next step would be to ask myself about the belief pattern of the feeling. How does this feeling see the world? How does this feeling see self? What is the world view? What I started to see was that eadh thought and feeling contained a world in and of itself. A whole belief structure. Through a willingness to enter into the feeling, I discovered that the feeling HAD A VOICE. I could hear that voice in MY mind, and I discovered it had certain specific Beliefs and Ideas. [Gina’s note: that is why I also practice Inner Relationship Focusing, to connect with the voice.]
Very often we find that the beliefs and ideas contained in our thinking and feeling come from childhood. If we start to investigate in a meditative way, where body and mind are linked, our inquiry can start to uncover these deep inner experiences. You can’t just think about it; you can't say, "this is a thought, I know it is not true." And be done with it. I would sometimes spend hours getting down to one single thought pattern. I knew that if that thought could hook me into re-idenfication, it could hook me again.
As it did, I would get down to the core beliefs, thoughts and feelings. What is required is a willingness to stick with the inquiry so that the illusion could be pulled up by its root. . .
When we sincerely inquire into these belief patterns, we find that they are no longer useful strategies.
from Byron Katie:
There are no right or wrong answers to these questions. You are listening for your answers now, not other people’s, and not anything you have been taught. This can be very unsettling, because you’re entering the unknown. As you continue to dive deeper, allow the truth within you to rise and meet the question. Be gentle as you give yourself to inquiry. Let this experience have you completely.
The Work does not condone any harmful action. To hear it as justifying anything that is less than kind is to misinterpret it. If you find anything in the following pages that sounds cold, uncaring, unloving, or unkind, I invite you to be gentle with it. Breathe through it. Feel and experience what arises in you.
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