What
is
Transformational Inquiry?
For more than eight weeks now, roughly 14 of us who made
a six-month commitment have met on Thursday evenings to
engage in a process entitled Transformational Inquiry.
It
sounds a bit pretentious and very "spiritual," but it is
really quite direct and simple (though not necessarily
easy).
The work
we are engaging in together has an ancient history in
the contemplative branches of all the world's great
religions. The process called "inquiry" is simply
about inquiring into the nature of our being until we
find out who we are.
Perhaps
the greatest sage of the 20th century, Ramana Marharshi,
advised spiritual seekers to simply ask "who am I?"
until you know.
Jesus,
in the Gospel of Thomas, says, "When you come to know
yourselves, then you will realize that it is you who are
the sons of the living Father. But if you will not
know yourselves, you dwell in poverty and it is you who
are that poverty."
And
Socrates: "The unexamined life is not worth
living."
All
these are perspectives on the same wisdom: Your
salvation lies within; it is up to you; you can't do it
yourself (paradoxical, yes); why not begin now?
Jesus
again: "Recognize what is in your sight, and that
which is hidden from you will become plain to you.
For there is nothing hidden which will not become
manifest."
In the
East, as spiritual practitioners, we would be asked to
sit in some incredibly uncomfortable position for hours
each day and consider the question "who am I?"
Many in the West have taken to meditation with wonderful
results.
But, as
we are discovering, it is only a part of the story.
It appears that we imported only part of the wisdom of
the East in our search for contemplative practices.
(We go to the East because Christian contemplative
practices were disallowed; only Jesus was "one with
God.")
Another
part is Inquiry, an active questioning of the beliefs
and assumptions that enslave us but that we hold as
true. This kind of questioning was rejected in the
Christian tradition. We weren't supposed to doubt;
we were supposed to believe.
The
premise of inquiry is that by questioning beliefs we can
move beyond them into direct knowledge of the Divine
(and our own divinity). We started our process by
"walking" and "listening" to the Power of Now by
Eckhart Tolle, which was in itself a powerful exercise.
Some of the
tools we use in Inquiry are familiar if you participated
in Transformational Prayer: the four-column
process developed by Robert Kegan and Lisa Lahey from
Harvard.
The point
of this work is to discover the invisible architecture
of our meaning that can readily run our lives while we
think we are doing something else. Together and
individually in Inquiry we follow a complaint into the
noble commitments behind it, then into the
self-protective commitments that thwart us, and finally
into the Big Assumptions that run our lives because they
are assumed to be true and therefore remain
unquestioned.
The second
tool comes from Byron Katie and is called "The Work."
Some of you came to the introduction workshop by Celeste
Gabriel, so you have a sense of it. The Work is a
deceptively simple process that can bring profound
results. It inquires of any stressful thought, "Is
it true?" and explores alternative to that thought.
Our third
tool is role-playing. Role-playing is a way of
practicing what we have learned by bringing our new ways
of understanding to real-life situations.
So how are
we doing?
Well, no
one has become enlightened yet (so far as I can tell),
but folks are doing powerful personal work. One of
the challenging things about personal transformation is
that it is slow, really slow. Everything in our
culture -- our economic system, our educational system,
our media, and our deeply ingrained personal habits --
urge us to seek immediate, dramatic change.
And our
minds -- that evolved to keep us from pain -- lead us
away from the inner exploration at every chance.
But Inquiry
is like making a small adjustment in a spaceship
traveling a million miles an hour. A small
foundational shift can create profound changes that
might not even be recognized as connected with the
original issue.
Transformational Inquiry probably wouldn't sell well in
a capitalist market, but it is in the nature of
spiritual work that it happens in God's time, not ours.
And, as has
been said, "All things come to those who wait."
The saints, saviors, and prophets all assure us that
there is nothing more wonderful than the fruits of this
process.
So we work,
and we have faith.
Let me know
if you have questions or would like more information.
Meanwhile, stay tuned as you may want to be a part of
the next group.
With Love and Blessings… Tom
