Mystical experiences offer glimpses while spiritual awakenings lead to lasting transformation.  Both are valuable experiences that guide us toward deeper understanding and connection.

A mystical experience is often a one-time event, a glimpse into the deeper reality beyond our familiar perception.

A spiritual awakening is a more sustained and transformative process.  It involves realizing one’s true nature and understanding the interconnectedness of all existence.  Your perception is fundamentally changed.

Inquiry is a very old practice.  Buddha’s approach involved curiosity, experimentation, and mindful observation. By questioning and adjusting, he discovered the path to awakening.  Ramana Maharshi’s self-inquiry involved unwavering attention to the inner awareness of the “I” or “I am” which can transcend false identities imposed by the ego and society.  Nisargadatta Maharaj emphasized going beyond the identification with the ego mind and discovering the true nature of one’s being. Here’s one of his quotes I particularly like:  “Reality is here and now, and all is one. Multiplicity and diversity exist only in the mind.”

I find that often, when beginning to practice inquiry, the word “inquiry” itself can bring up thoughts and ideas about formulating questions in the mind.  That’s just what the mind does.  It interprets the word “inquiry” to mean we need to seek, to find answers to questions.  Inquiring mentally like that is an exploration of everything that’s already known. 

Living Inquiry is very different.  It’s a Nondual practice and by that I don’t mean that duality isn’t included.  Everything’s allowed to exist, because it IS.

Nondual practices invite us to explore reality beyond the confines of dualistic thinking and encourage us to recognize what’s happening directly instead of what we think or imagine. Nondual consciousness accepts and includes whatever is happening right here, right now.  Nondual awareness recognizes that nothing is separate.  

Living Inquiry evolved out of decades of practicing a form of inquiry known as Dialectic Inquiry where two people share what’s happening for them while they’re sitting together.  This practice begins with noticing whatever is happening — a sensation in the body, a sound, a thought. Every happening is welcomed in the noticing. Each person shares what their own experience is while simultaneously being affected by what the other person is sharing.

Recognizing how each of us have our own experience yet we are also being touched by what the other person is experiencing is important. Even though I’ve always resonated with the spiritual concept of “all is one,” in these inquiry practices, we have direct experiences of no separation. The concept of inner connectedness drops from a mental concept to an experience of immediacy of what is actually happening right here, right now. 

We began to notice that this form of inquiry is naturally happening in life. We’re not doing it. We actually recognize we are not the “doer.” 

As a practice, we are noticing what’s happening; and we are open to whatever is happening — a sound, a movement, some aliveness. Curiosity is a natural happening. We don’t really have “to be curious.” Wonder and love are happening without our “doing” it. There’s a freshness and a clarity especially in not knowing what’s going to happen next. 

The nondual nature of Living Inquiry is how it happens spontaneously with no agenda.  There’s complete acceptance of not-knowing; and it’s often experienced as delight with a multitude of paradoxes messing with the mind.

Private Inquiry Sessions offer focused one-on-one practice inquiring into what’s actually happening instead of telling a story about what’s happening.  These sessions give practice-time on how to return to ourselves.  We use the session time to pay attention to what’s happening in the body.  We learn, through practice, to notice when thoughts interrupt and distract us from experiencing the now. We get to notice when the mind steps in “to help” by naming something we already know as if experiencing “what’s happening now” has already been experienced.  Whatever we’ve already experienced is in the past.  Whatever’s happening right here, right now is always fresh and new. 

It’s important to know that these private inquiry sessions do not replace other self-care sessions with therapist, coaches, healers, ministers, etc.  That said, our inquiry sessions can intersect and enhance any nondual therapeutic process where instead of trying to “fix” the personality, a nondual practitioner recognizes individual moments of experience as a part of the evolutionary dance of existence.  

Awakening is not about a destination. It’s not a future place. True awakening is about wholeness. The only place that wholeness can be found is in the present — not in the future, not in the past. The mind lives in the future or the past.  

I see our experience in group inquiries similar to the Indian parable about the blind men describing an elephant from their own limited perspective.  Each man was touching a different part of the elephant: an ear, the tusk, and the tail. Of course, each of those parts of the whole felt different. In our group inquiries, each of us share what’s happening from our own perspective.  It’s all happening however it’s unfolding; and, we’re open to the wholeness of the experience.  And often we recognize there is no separation from what’s happening.