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In self inquiry, you have to be willing to question everything. The right question asked with the appropriate attitude & energy can make of you an alive, embodied answer. This is self inquiry in its truest sense. You’re not asking a question to get some conceptual understanding but in order to become a living embodiment of the quest inside the question.
There are innumerable questions which can penetrate into the depth of our quest for true spiritual revelation and freedom. Some common ones are:
What am I?
What is reality?
What is God?
What is illusion?
What is truth?
To answer such questions from a memory, a thought, a belief or even emotion can leave us deeply dissatisfied and in the same old, habitual state of consciousness. But to take these questions and live and cook inside them can begin to reveal our deepest nature. The first & most critical part is the aliveness of the answer and second is the conceptual understanding. The difference being similar to a real landscape vs a map of the landscape. One has depth, dimension, and experience of all sort. The other is simply a pointing, a way to orient in the landscape.
There is a time though, when a verbal, descriptive answer can benefit the alive unfolding of the answer. It happens that each description can actually brings us closer and closer to the alive experience of the answer. The key point here being that we are valuing our immediacy more than the verbal answer and therefore our words serve aliveness.
As we get nearer the aliveness, the verbal answer becomes an inseparable extension of aliveness. Here the precision of our description and articulation actually brings us more fully into our experiential answer. The precision and clarity of articulation is lit by the immediacy of our experience, and upon articulating it, it brings us even more fully into the experience.
You can feel when you’re answering with your head and mind vs when you answering with your entire body. As you become the answer in a fuller and fuller way, you begin to experience the total gestalt of the moment as the living answer. Then it doesn’t much matter if you speak an answer or not, you feel that the entire manner with which you are is the living answer.
It’s possible to speak, to be, to experience yourself as the inseparable entirely of the moment. You, the answer and the alive moment are one moving whole. In the end this is what self inquiry is truly about.
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