Why, and what is, self-enquiry?

For a long time now I have been looking for a modality - to complement my acupuncture practice - that can influence the affective and emotional landscape of a person. Whilst Chinese medicine theory does speak to this in a manner, it doesn’t really provide a roadmap for altering someone’s psychology (outside of the later, elaborated ‘styles’ which in my opinion are just giving people another version of a story to believe). This search has taken me down many roads, and I have studied almost every existing version of Chinese medicine, as well as dipping my toe into cranial-sacral therapy, fascial release, breathwork, psychic studies, biomechanics and family constellations. Whilst the latter of these has also provided some invaluable insights (another post coming on those soon) it wasn’t until reading “Loving What Is” (1) by Byron Katie last Christmas that I really felt like my search had born fruit.

There is a wealth of information available online about Katie (as she is more commonly referred to) and videos of her guiding people through what she calls The Work, a method of identifying and unpacking beliefs, often unconsciously held, that colour our perception of and interaction with the world. In her book she outlines her journey to discovering this Work, which essentially came to her as a form of spiritual awakening after years of trauma, depression and suicidal thoughts. The Work is a form of self-enquiry, essentially that can be done by anyone (many free resources are available on her website), which takes you through a series of four questions around a particular belief, and then asks you to turn them around. After reading the book, I immediately saw how the practice could benefit my own life, but also realised that this is what I had been looking for as an adjunct to help my acupuncture clients.

Why do I think it is so helpful? Personally, by using the method to work on several painful thoughts that I have been struggling with for years, I realised with shocking clarity how much unnecessary energy I had wasted creating suffering for myself, and how - although I had blamed others for that suffering or attributed it to external causes - I was ultimately completely responsible for it. Whilst it was not a particularly comfortable realisation, it was at the same time incredibly empowering and freeing. If I had created the mental constructs on which to hang my pain, then I could just as effectively dismantle them and open myself up to new beliefs, new understandings, and a new relationship with my history. It was experiencing this remarkable efficacy that inspired me to train as a facilitator of the Work myself.

One of the many things I am learning is that any problem we have is never a problem of reality, but rather it is a problem caused by our map of reality. A map of reality is what dictates how we see the world and how we react to it. What is present in our map of reality is in turn dictated by the experiences we have in life. It exists in our brain and our nervous system, and it is the filter through which we interpret life. It holds our entire understanding of the world, the unspoken rules by which we live, the expectations we have of others, the meaning we attribute to certain situations. It’s the culture we were born into, the landscape of our families, the generational trauma that we have inherited. It is deep rooted and self reinforcing; having seen something once we are more likely to notice it again, and take meaning from it, and so on, constructing our own original algorithms for feeding us what we believe to be true. Anything that isn’t now isn’t real. It only exists in our imagination, our thoughts, our mind. Time, whilst a useful construct, is an illusion. All we have is now. You can make all the plans in the world for the future, but you can never totally know for sure that they will come to pass just as you are hoping they will. As Katie points out: “Life is simple. Everything happens for you, not to you. Everything happens at exactly the right moment, neither too soon nor too late. You don’t have to like it... it’s just easier if you do"(2).

The work is not therapy (I have also done a lot of that), but a meditation, an exploration, and an enquiry into what we are making things mean. It does not require the presence of another, although being guided through the process by an experienced and trained facilitator can often allow for deeper and more impactful insights. It is, in essence, a form of metacognition, a process that helps us to see the mind’s strategies, patterns & histories, that helps us observe our minds at work, not as an experience to feel but as a pattern to recognise.

The role of the facilitator is simple in some ways, but highly nuanced, as they help to guide clients by reflecting their experience back to them so that they can see it more clearly. Unlike a therapist or a counsellor, they do not interpret on behalf of the client or point them in any particular direction, but simply help them to become more aware of what is going on for them, catching and calling attention to, for example, the micro-shifts in physiology and expression. A good facilitator will match their client and offer a path forward, meeting them where they are, inviting them to follow certain directions of investigation but never forcing or leading somewhere they might think they should go. This is the client’s work, the facilitator is only ever offering an invitation, never an instruction, regarding what to feel into and explore. This includes helping them to ground and centre if the client gets too agitated or emotional, and to reconnect with their body and surroundings if they shut off or disconnect or dissociate.

One of the many nuggets of wisdom offered by Katie is that “to argue with reality is to argue with God, and I lose every time” (3). This is not a new concept – we all know the famous Shakespeare quote that “there is nothing either good or bad, but thinking makes it so”(4). What is happening to us at any given moment is our reality, and it is the only reality that we have access to. So, it follows, we can accept and make peace with that reality, or we can tell ourselves things should be different and suffer the consequences of believing that to be true.

It is remarkable how much pain and suffering we can cause ourselves through identifying with faulty beliefs, and how much resistance and friction we bring about through believing that things should be different. But, with the help of the Work, it is also wonderfully heartening to see how much hope and levity can be brought to someone on realising that they can let that all go. Granted this realisation often comes with a great deal of emotion, as the veil lifts and we see how responsible we have been often for feelings that we have attributed to external circumstances, or blamed on others’ actions. But it is precisely in taking this responsibility for where we are that get access to the agency and freedom and power to change it all. It is the most empowering form of ‘help’ that I have come across so far.

1. Katie, B., & Mitchell, S. (2002). Loving what is: Four questions that can change your life. Harmony Books

2. Katie, Byron. Question Your Thinking, Change the World: Quotations from Byron Katie. Edited by Stephen Mitchell, Hay House, 2007.

3. Byron Katie, ‘Prison of the Mind’.  YouTube video - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k8f0empn4kM

4. Shakespeare, William. Hamlet. Edited by G. R. Hibbard, Oxford UP, 2008.