Self-enquiry

If you would like to gain a deeper understanding of who you are, as well as expand your awareness, one of the most important practices to cultivate is that of self-enquiry or self-observation.

If you imagine the activity of your mind to be like a merry-go-round at a fun fair, the person you identify as is riding on that turntable – which means, as the ride goes round, so do you.

Self-enquiry or self-observation can be described as cultivating the awareness of that wheel going round rather than being on it.

The two main aspects of this are: distancing and non-identification. The idea is to become aware of yourself as a being or presence who can witness the activity of the mind and even observe the behaviour of the version of you that is on the ride.

In addition to watching and witnessing this automatic behaviour of the mind, we can use a variety of questions to break up the rigid structures of the mind and allow our perceptions of reality to become more fluid. Why? Because resistance and rigidity are central to the experience of conflict. The more fluid your perceptions become, the easier it becomes to flow and accept.

Self-enquiry has become so central to my life that I will return to this subject many times in the future but, for now, I would like to offer you some sample questions you can use to begin your practice. These are simply suggestions and by all means adapt them to whatever questions work best for you.

In the beginning, self-observation starts out as something to be practised and cultivated but, over time, it will become second nature. Beyond that, you may even come to regard it as “first nature” because it is a natural aspect of what I call the Inner Being, which is a label given to the true self or core self within.

Sample questions for self-enquiry

• If this had been designed for my benefit, what might that be?
• If I had chosen this experience, why might I have done that? Or…
• Why would I have chosen (or agreed to) this experience?
• How does it feel to believe that I didn’t choose this life or this experience?
• How does it feel to believe that I did?
• What would I have to believe is true about myself to be having this experience? (Credit to Bashar / Darryl Anka for this one).
• What am I afraid will happen if I become the person I am meant to be?
• What type of consciousness does this experience represent?
• What type of consciousness is this an example of?
• What am I judging about this situation?
• What am I resisting?
• What am I afraid of?
• Am I trying to change something I don’t like?
• Can I appreciate a situation I don’t like?
• Can I appreciate pain?

The virtual reality or VR simulation library thought experiment

Imagine a library containing virtual reality (VR) simulations that have not yet been labelled and filed. Your job as VR librarian is to immerse yourself in each of these simulations, one at a time, and answer one question:

What type of consciousness is this an example of?

So, imagine that your current experience is a virtual reality simulation and ask yourself, what type of consciousness it represents.

Finding the gift within the experience

Examples for enquiry into challenging experiences.

In general, we can ask:
Why would I have chosen this?

For example:

Q: Why would I have chosen to feel abandoned, alone and unsupported?
A: To encourage inner resourcefulness.

Q: Why would I have chosen to be lied to or betrayed?
A: To encourage a strong connection with Inner Truth. To develop the ability to access truth within and the courage to live that truth even when there is little or no external en-courage-ment or support.

To embody the truth that everything comes from within is the ultimate prize.

How does it change my consciousness?

 There are many possible benefits of practising self-enquiry and thought experiments. One of them is to become aware of how holding a particular belief can affect the way you feel about life and yourself.

Example one: I watched a programme on Amazon called The Lost Century, in which Dr Steven Greer presents compelling evidence for the suggestion that covert organisations in the U.S. have deliberately prevented new technology from becoming widely available that would provide humanity with sources of free energy.

After watching the programme I observed how I felt. Most of all, I felt like there was no longer any reason for me to feel guilty about climate change. I may still feel sad and angry but there was no need to feel guilty because, in watching that programme, I had effectively asked myself:

How would you feel if you saw compelling evidence that climate change – and all the pollution it causes – is being deliberately perpetuated by a minority of self-serving people whose only interest is personal gain?

In other words, feeling guilty about something I felt powerless to change, was based on an assumption that now seems like it is untrue.

Example two: Many years ago I conducted an enquiry into the causes of some chronic health issues I was having. One of the possible causes I considered was the idea that my health in this life was being affected by events in a past life.

I considered the possibilities: either something traumatic had happened to me, which I don’t remember; or, someone did something to me which was traumatic; or, I did something bad to someone else.

Imagine the memory of this past life event is stored inside a room, and opening the door to that room will reveal one of these three possibilities as the truth. None of them would be welcome news and there would be a one in three chance of discovering that I did something bad to someone.

If any of these turned out to be true, these are what I would see as the implications:

1. Shit happens and it will haunt you in your next life.
2. The pain we inflict on others is felt not only in this life but also in subsequent lives.
3. If you do something bad in this life, you’ll pay for it in your next life.

The common theme for all three is: shit happens, life sucks, nobody tells you how it works, so you’re doomed to feel powerless whatever you do.

Consequently, I went off the idea of conducting further enquiries into past life trauma! The crucial realisation was that my own self-image, the beliefs I hold about myself, and my core beliefs about life in general play a key role in how I feel.

This line of enquiry contained a key assumption: that the “I” of this life and the “I” of the past life belong to the same soul. There has to be some kind of continuity of identity from one life to the next for the previous life to be considered “mine.”

With that in mind, I asked myself a different question:

What if there is such a thing as a soul, which evolves through successive lifetimes, but the soul is not your true identity?

I’ll explain what I mean. Imagine that who you are in essence is pure awareness or pure consciousness. Now imagine that, when you take on a physical incarnation (such as this one), the first thing you do, before you enter the womb, is to put on a “soul garment” which contains imprints of consciousness from all of the lives that soul has lived. As soon as you put on this soul garment, you become identified with those patterns of consciousness and believe that you truly are this soul.

If you had asked me the question, 20 years ago, who are you? I would have said I am a soul. But following many years of self-enquiry, I would now say, I am pure awareness.

This is not a mental evaluation but what I feel deep inside of me. I feel that I am pure awareness wearing a soul-suit inside a human body.

This change in perspective makes a huge difference to how I feel and how much resistance I have toward past life enquiry. Because I don’t identify with any of the past lives of my soul, I have no resistance to discovering what may have happened during those lifetimes.

On an intellectual level I have accepted for a very long time that we have all most likely played a variety of roles in other lifetimes, of both the oppressor and the oppressed. On an intellectual level I consider it highly likely that “I” (my soul) will have committed all manner of crimes in other lives. And on an intellectual level that doesn’t bother me one bit.

Equally, if I identify as pure awareness and believe that the purpose of this life is to heal any unfinished business contained in my soul-suit, I have no resistance to discovering what that unfinished business might be.

However, if I identify with the soul or person who had those other lives, it’s a different story altogether.

I’m aware this might seem a bit complex and long-winded but the point I’m making is very important. If you feel stuck in your life in some way, that stuckness is most likely founded on assumptions you may have never questioned and which may well prove to be partially or completely untrue. And, consequently, letting go of those assumptions can help you to move on in a positive way.

Taking this to another level: conducting this rather extensive enquiry has brought me to an extremely valuable place of non-resistance because a deeper truth has emerged: even more important than who I think I am (i.e. my self-image) is who I really am. And who I am will not change by discovering more details of other lifetimes, regardless of who lived them.

And here’s the crucial point: I can feel who I am and that feeling contains peace and joy. It makes no difference how my mind or someone else’s mind might define me, because I remain who I am regardless.

And this reflects what I see as the deeper truth: whatever we experience during physical incarnations does not define us.

I might discover something bad about myself

 From many years of observation, I have come to believe that the idea

“I might discover something bad about myself”

is a major obstacle in the minds of many people, preventing them from practising self-enquiry and discovering deeper truths about themselves and the nature of life in general.

I do not believe this idea (that “I might discover something bad about myself) is a conscious belief but rather a subconscious program that tells the person “not to go there”.

For example, with the subject of mind-body medicine and chronic illness, if you suggest to someone that their physical health issues may be caused by mental or emotional issues, many people take that to mean that “it is all in the mind” and that they are simply “imagining the whole thing”. This, however, is not at all what is implied.

The idea that mental and emotional health affects physical health is simply saying: some physical illnesses may be caused by unhealed emotional trauma and/or limiting beliefs held within the mind (frequently at the subconscious level).

In other words, many people assume that having a psychogenic illness (one that originates in the mind before it becomes physical) implies something bad about them – that they are bad, inferior or inadequate in some way.

I believe this ties in with a widespread unhealed emotional wound of shame which affects most of humanity. Deep-seated feelings of shame prevent self-enquiry as a means of self-protection.