What is Inquiry

Inquiry is a deeply transformative process that is helping people around the world approach their problems from a perspective of clarity and inner peace.

As a species, we human beings tend to put our happiness on hold until something changes. We'll be happy, we think, when we get what we believe we want or need: more money, a healthier body, a more attractive or understanding partner, a loving mother, children who behave. Many of us spend our lives trying desperately to get the world and the people in it to satisfy our desires. No wonder we don't feel any lasting sense of peace; mentally we're continually engaged in war with reality, postponing our happiness for a day when it is what it "should" be.

Without any story about how life is supposed to be, we are left with peace far beyond what we hoped to find through wish-fulfillment. On the other side of our myths about reality is reality itself, indescribably joyful (and unknowable as long as we keep trying to change it). Only when we give up "what should be" can we experience the perfection of what is.

This "giving up," however, is rarely achieved by the thinking mind. I am not suggesting that you become better at controlling your thoughts. My experience is that I can't control my thoughts, because I'm not the one who thinks them in the first place. If you can control your thoughts, try waking up tomorrow morning and not thinking. One day I noticed that I wasn't breathing, that I was being breathed. Then I notice that I wasn't thinking, that I was being thought, and that thinking isn't personal. Thoughts just arrive, like clouds in the sky. Would you argue with a cloud? "No, you're not like the cloud that was here yesterday. I liked that one better. From now on, I will see only positive clouds." Arguing with a cloud is hopeless and so is arguing with a thought in the hopes of finding peace.

In Inquiry we make friends with the mind and put it down on paper. We then investigate our own thoughts, intending only, to find the truth. What happens, out of that, is something wonderful. The "I know" mind, sincerely looking for the truth, reaches a point where it opens to the thought "Maybe I don't know." This creates an opening, a space, a possibility to step beyond the past. Then the aspect of mind which was held at bay by our thinking, floods into the "I know" mind, leaving the experience of peace, freedom and love. Unconditional Love is who you are without your story, and this work is uncanny in its power to unravel your stories, your false concepts about reality.

Inquiry is the direct route to freedom and you don't have to meet this train at the station. It will meet you wherever you are. It is a penetrating process of four questions and a "turn-around" which can be easily learned and practiced on your own. By exposing unconscious beliefs to the clear light of direct investigation, the mind wakes up to its innocent mistake and drops its losing battle with reality. This happens naturally when we see that something we once believed is not true, for instance when you see that an ancient hatred was based on a simple misunderstanding. With The Work, we don't have to wait months or years to resolve our lingering issues; liberating insights happen consistently and on purpose. We find that epiphanies aren't something which requires patience and hope, but rather something we can intentionally cause, whenever we want. What is ultimately revealed by The Work is that suffering is based on a misunderstanding... our own.

Facilitator of The Work of Byron Katie
Graduate of The School for The Work
(480) 329-0306
Frank@1Being.com
www.1Being.com