“The act of asking questions breaks open the unexamined and stagnant shell of the present, revealing the hidden and stale surfaces of the way we think about things”.  … Fran Peavey

The practice of asking questions systematically is called INQUIRY.  Inquiry means investigation, exploration, but mostly it means wanting to find out. It is a questioning. “What is this? Why is that? What is happening? Where is it going?”

INQUIRY is not the same as analyzing or thinking about a question.  It means to live in the question of something, to consciously engage our experience in a way which invites it to unfold. Exploring experience from a place of inquiry is an invitation, a receptivity to discovering something new. 

To be genuinely curious about what we DON’T KNOW has the potential to turn life on its head, revealing things in unexpected and marvelous ways.

The overlapping surfaces of Buddhism and psychoanalysis have been examined by psychoanalytic thinkers for more than half a century. Given the centrality of ‘mindfulness’ in today’s cultural narrative, a clear understanding of the role of mindful awareness in the clinical encounter is more relevant than ever.

‘Inquiring Deeply’ is a therapeutic framework which blends relational psychoanalysis and Buddhist wisdom into a single coherent frame. It borrows the methods of deep inquiry and investigation from mindfulness practice in order to amplify and unpack subjective experience. It can be conceptualized as awareness practice which focuses on the psychological world of our lived experience with others.

Inquiring Deeply within the framework of psychotherapy is a form of psychoanalytic treatment in which the focus of therapeutic inquiry remains the ‘relational field’, contemplative awareness deepens the experience of intimacy in the therapeutic encounter and privileges the felt sense of the emergent relational moment.

Because psychological wounds are fundamentally relational wounds, relationship is also a natural path of healing.  By inquiring deeply into the upsets that occur for us in relationship, it becomes possible to begin to understand what is wounded, missing, or dysfunctional in us.  

Deep emotional understanding of developmental psychological wounds, such as childhood trauma and neglect, and recognition of their impact on present-day life, lays the groundwork for healing in psychotherapy.

“Inquiry” is an attitude of mind.  It means to live in the question of something, to consciously engage our experience in a way which invites it to unfold. When we ‘inquire deeply’ into a problem or concern, we approach our experience with the attitude of delving into it, feeling whatever it is more fully, and inviting it to reveal itself.   Through this practice of awareness, presence, and self-reflection, we become more Real; more fully who we are.

When someone engages in both psychotherapy and meditation practice, it can become difficult for them to delineate between the two lenses of view.  A “mixing of minds” occurs;  or, more accurately,  we can notice that experience does not neatly sort itself into one category or the other.  Our experience lends itself equally well to interpretation within both of these narrative contexts (and many others).

We could say that the mind is always itself,  exactly as it is in any particular moment;  and yet never the same in any one moment and the next.   A constant stream of “minding” in process.

It is exactly as Heraclitus famously said:  no man steps in the same river twice, for it’s not the same river and he’s not the same man.

The Buddha’s first noble truth was that there is suffering. Suffering is embedded in the nature of the human mind and in life.  

Contemporary psychodynamic theory recognizes that a great deal of psychic pain takes shape within our relationship to others.  Much of our human suffering arises from relational wounding.   

Analogous to mental scar tissue which forms at the site of injury, psychic structure embodies the history of our pain and our attempts to defend against that pain. Self is constructed within the matrix of our connection to intimate Others.

Relational wounds are complex, transmitted from generation and enacted in painful human dramas of involving love, hate, blame, resentment, greed, rivalry, conflict, heartbreak, betrayal, jealousy, and war (among other themes).  These complex threads of human drama create the intricate emotional tapestry of our lives and the structure of our subjective world.

Our relationships are the building blocks of who we become and who we take ourselves to be. Overinvested and/or unwise identifications with Self gives rise to suffering.

It is only when we can be sufficiently intimate with ourselves that we can be comfortable both alone and with others. 

Whereas the common definition of “solitude” is the state of being alone, solitude (in contrast to loneliness) paradoxically implies the subjective presence of the other.  From this perspective, loneliness can be thought of as a failed experience of solitude.

From INQUIRING DEEPLY,  Reflections on Connection  (ch.6)

https://www.amazon.com/-/e/B01N24V17T

FINDING YOUR TRUE HOME WITHIN YOUR LIFE

When you face your aloneness, something begins to happen. Gradually, the sense of bleakness changes into a sense of true belonging. This is a slow and open-ended transition but it is utterly vital in order to come into rhythm with your own individuality. In a sense this is the endless task of finding your true home within your life. It is not narcissistic, for as soon as you rest in the house of your own heart, doors and windows begin to open outwards to the world. No longer on the run from your aloneness, your connections with others become real and creative. You no longer need to covertly scrape affirmation from others or from projects outside yourself. This is slow work; it takes years to bring your mind home.

John O’Donohue
Excerpt from ETERNAL ECHOES

“Reorganizing the meaning of psychological problems is not only a cognitive process but also one of deep emotional understanding.  To be transformative, it necessarily includes the felt sense of connection with an empathic other.  Being understood is a relational process which reorients awareness away from defensive identifications with limiting narratives of self and toward a sense of being-with others based in appropriate boundaries and a mature sense of autonomy.”      …Marjorie Schuman         

“Mindfulness-Informed Relational Psychotherapy and Psychoanalysis: Inquiring Deeply”, ch. 10, p. 186