Inquiry

Inquiry is a dynamic functioning of our consciousness, of our soul, that has to be flexible, responsive, and playful for it to be truly intelligent. It has to be inspired by intelligence and informed by understanding. As you inquire, you need to use your intelligence, and you need to apply whatever understanding you have to the experience of the moment. Inquiry is not a matter of asking a question haphazardly; all questions have to be asked in an organic way. That is what the intelligence is: an organic and appropriate responsiveness to each situation. (Spacecruiser Inquiry, pg 55)

Inquiry is also intelligent in its application of mindfulness and concentration. Inquiry requires the global awareness of mindfulness without identification so that you can see the entire situation you are working with. As you take on the whole situation, you start recognizing patterns. As you see the patterns, the inquiry starts focusing and concentrating on where all the patterns lead. (Spacecruiser Inquiry, pg 57)

Inquiry is something that arises in the midst of your experience – as part of your experience, not separate from it. In other words there is not a person here inquiring into something over there. The Inquirer has to be within the field of inquiry itself. This is different from inquiry in natural science, where the object of inquiry is outside you and all that is needed is to not interfere with it. (Spacecruiser Inquiry, pg 113)

Inquiry is a process of nuzzling into God’s bosom, delving into the secrets of existence. Ego encrustations begin to break up when we start to see images as images, structures as structures, patterns as patterns, and projections as projections. All of these are created and held together by our beliefs that they are reality. The more you see them as they truly are, the less you believe in them and the more they start to break up and dissolve. (Spacecruiser Inquiry, pg 280)

Inquiry doesn’t necessarily mean that you’re always thinking about things or formulating questions in your mind. You are simply aware and curious; you love to know and feel reality fully and clearly. You’re happy to know reality as deeply and precisely as possible. If experience is not clear, you are simply curious about it. Openness to experience becomes dynamic, challenging experience to reveal its truth. Once in a while, this curiosity might formulate itself into a specific question. You recognize that you don’t understand something, and out of love, you wish to understand it. So questions come on their own when necessary. The ongoing practice is therefore more an awareness of your experience, a recognition of when you are transparent and when you are opaque. Your interest is in understanding, and clarity will itself bring the Diamond Guidance, which will reveal the truth of the experience. (Spacecruiser Inquiry, pg 372)

If we understand that inquiry springs out of the lightness and openness of joyful curiosity, we begin to see that the heaviness and seriousness are not characteristic of inquiry itself. They are only characteristic of some of the content that arises in inquiry and from the beliefs we have about it. So the content can be very happy or very painful, but the attitude of the inquiry itself doesn’t have to be influenced by the content. The inquiry itself is an expression of openness, lightness, curiosity and love. (Spacecruiser Inquiry, pg 262)

Inquiry takes a lot more energy than doing your job because it takes all of you, all the capacities of your psyche. Even when you’re not tired and not avoiding difficult issues, you still need energy to inquire. You need energy in order to be open and interested enough to remain engaged with such a subtle process, to allow such a subtle capacity as our inner guidance to function. That’s why it is important to practice inquiry when you feel energetic and robust, when you have vitality. That is also why you need to live in such a way that you have sufficient energy for inquiry, just as would be needed for doing any other inner practice. So if you’re really serious about engaging this work, you need to conserve your energy and balance your life so that you can be effective in your inquiry. (Spacecruiser Inquiry, pg 270)

You see, the beauty of working with Essence is that there’s no place that you can get to emotionally that doesn’t turn out to be fine if you just stay with it. When you work with something—in this case, the absence of the needed father—you may lose yourself at any step of the way, and then you have all your emotions about losing yourself. But if you stay with your experience, you realize that even losing yourself is wonderful. You might get to another state, and suddenly you will have a self, and having a self can feel wonderful. It doesn’t matter what steps you go through; Essence manifests in all kinds of ways, and each one of them is fine. So there’s no bad place that you can get to on the essential level. Essence can manifest as self or as no-self, or as neither, and there is really no need to worry which way it is going to go. Inquiry and exploration, if carried deep enough, is bound to manifest Essence in one way or another. (Essence of Intelligence, pg 244)

Inquiry and brilliancy

When we are inquiring, we are holding the content—the various facets of experience—and then interrelating those elements, seeing relationships, and analyzing and synthesizing. But our consciousness not only holds the whole interrelated field, it also sees through things; it sees through the veils, defenses, and resistances to underlying meanings, to underlying parts of our experience. We notice that our perception not only has a wider vision, but also that it can have a penetrating capacity. The penetrating capacity goes directly to the essence of the matter through brilliant illumination that pierces as it illuminates. Our consciousness is so smooth that it can move through little cracks, into tiny, subtle places. Brilliancy can seep into and penetrate those little subtle cracks and allow our consciousness to see things we wouldn't normally see. (Essence of Intelligence, pg Word p109)

Inquiry, Teacher orientation

The teacher's lack of interest in reaching an outcome also reflects his basic trust in the natural unfolding of the soul when one aligns with its truth. This law of movement in the human soul, and the teacher's trust in it, are both fundamental to the practice of inquiry in the Diamond Approach. Inquiry is not an activity aimed at bringing one to a particular state or capacity. Nor is it a means of discovering what stops one from arriving at a certain outcome. Inquiry is a means of inviting our true nature — which has much greater intelligence and awareness than our conscious mind will ever have — to reveal itself and guide us to a deeper understanding of reality and our own truth. True inquiry does not assume that one outcome, one experience, or one feeling state is better than any other at any given time. Inquiry invites whatever is here to show itself and reveal its truth. And each revelation, if allowed and held with respect and interest, will lead to understanding and revelation—and the further unfoldment of the soul. (Essence of Intelligence, pg Word p114)

Inquiry, knowledge, action

Inquiry itself is knowledge in action; it uses ordinary knowledge in conjunction with our innate intelligence to open up basic knowledge. It is informed by knowledge, is open to knowledge, and invites further knowledge. Knowledge in action is both inquiry and understanding, which is also the unfoldment of Being. We can say that understanding liberates basic knowledge from the rigid patterning of ordinary knowledge, freeing it to unfold according to its own intrinsic patterning, which we experience as inherent discriminating wisdom. (Spacecruiser Inquiry, pg 90)

Inquiry and openness

We can say that inquiry is a process of always opening and opening and opening, endlessly and freely. And it opens from any place, from any direction, from any level, from any position. If you really want to go into your adventure with no limitations on how far and how fast you can go, openness has to be total and absolute. The moment you limit the openness you have limited the amount of energy available for the journey. So the process has to be open-ended in every way: in terms of how you go about it, what you inquire into, and where the journey takes you. Every limitation has to be challenged, or at least you have to be willing to challenge it. (Spacecruiser Inquiry, pg 27)