The practice of Loving Inquiry encourages emotional openness and the examination of personal belief systems to overcome fear and suffering. By questioning our thoughts and beliefs, we can dissolve false fears and promote healing. This approach fosters a return to love, inner peace, and self-awareness, ultimately leading to authentic connections and personal freedom.
Loving Inquiry teaches us that fear can only be surrendered to. We find the courage (heart) to surrender and accept when we stay emotionally open and heart-brain coherent. We literally slay the dragon with the emotion of love by asking ourselves what we are thinking we believe and then we do the contemplative questioning work of examining our belief systems to look for thinking-errors. Examples of these can be he is a bad father, I dislike all immigrants, woman are bad drivers, she died way too young, he will never amount to anything and she never let’s me get a word in. Only when we examine these beliefs will we be sure that we are not falling prey to false beliefs that create our pain and suffering in the world.
Full article: https://markllockwood.com/loving-inquiry/
Loving Inquiry teaches us that fear can only be surrendered to. We find the courage (heart) to surrender and accept when we stay emotionally open and heart-brain coherent. We literally slay the dragon with the emotion of love by asking ourselves what we are thinking we believe and then we do the contemplative questioning work of examining our belief systems to look for thinking-errors. Examples of these can be he is a bad father, I dislike all immigrants, woman are bad drivers, she died way too young, he will never amount to anything and she never let’s me get a word in. Only when we examine these beliefs will we be sure that we are not falling prey to false beliefs that create our pain and suffering in the world.
Full article: https://markllockwood.com/loving-inquiry/
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00:00So, what I'm going to introduce you today is the practice of loving inquiry.
00:07And if we're ever going to find a solution to our anxiety, we need to look and find a
00:15solution for fear.
00:17And we're going to do that with loving inquiry.
00:20You see, if we're going to cure our anxiety, now anxiety is a very, very broad field.
00:28One suffers anxiety, uncertainty, fear of the unknown, separation, death, the end of
00:40good things, the not starting of good things, the not ending of bad things.
00:49And on and on we can go where a lot of what we experience in life is based in fear.
00:58And it's a subject we hardly ever look at.
01:02You can go into therapy today and be lost talking about issues and problems and so on
01:08that are symptoms of fear, that are not even going near to the real thing.
01:17When we're looking at doing loving inquiry, we must understand what love is, which is
01:22an intense feeling of seriously deep affection.
01:28And all affection and compassion that we want to have in the world, in other words, in the
01:34world of form, is something that we need to feel on the inside.
01:40We need to have intimacy with the self, a fond regard for ourselves, some kind of tenderness
01:47that a lot of us don't even know we're missing.
01:52Love can be defined as a great pleasure or interest in something, and we lose interest
01:57in ourselves and wonder why depression, anxiety, burnout, stress, personality disorders, dysfunction,
02:05dis-ease and lack of opportunities caused by a lack of meaning in our lives affects
02:13us so much.
02:16We need to be infatuated with the self of growing and nurturing it and loving it, not
02:22thinking that it's a dirty word, that it is blasphemous, that it is ridiculous.
02:28Love begets love.
02:31Love becomes love.
02:34So we must know what love is, which is an intense deep affection for the self, for God
02:39Father.
02:40And that's it.
02:41And we've got to go in and check, we've got to go in and see, is love inside me?
02:48Is it intense?
02:51Is it a strong feeling that I have or is it dulled out and lost?
02:55So we can use our senses and we can use love as both a verb and a noun.
03:02Love really is that power of love that is inside us and allows us to really deeply and
03:09intimately connect and enmesh and join with others in our journey to transcending fear,
03:18which ends up as our personality's masks, our egoic self-interests.
03:25That is part of our nature, it is our lower nature and it's okay.
03:31It is our shadow self to have an ego that is selfish, garrulous and demanding.
03:37Every war, every act of cruelty, every act of me thinking I'm better than you, whether
03:47it's Nazi to Jew or Jew to Gentile or black to white or left to right, whatever it's going
03:54to be, you see, it's a journey of love.
03:58The more self-aware we are, the greater our capacity to love God, self and other.
04:05This is the nature of God.
04:07The nature of God is love and anything that is not in that nature is separation.
04:15Right, so we can move forward with that now.
04:21So loving inquiry is introspection, it's finding out where my love is and the emotions of love.
04:30Are they guiding me?
04:31Are they my inner compass?
04:36Emotions of love and thoughts become things and if you can hold it in your head, you can
04:41hold it in your hands.
04:42So understand that love is gratitude, it is trust, patience, kindness.
04:53Come on, it's all of these things, you know, are they inside generosity?
04:58Make sure it's not just an idea that you have in your head and you haven't been generous
05:02for a decade or two.
05:05It happens, it happens to the best of us.
05:08Vulnerability, courage, reverence for life, all of these things are symptoms of love that
05:18keep us creating.
05:21Anything less is separation from our authenticity.
05:26God's nature is love, our nature is love.
05:29So where does fear come from?
05:31I always say that all fear is separation anxiety, all anxiety is based in separation anxiety.
05:41You see, fear is the idea that you are separate from love, which is your nature, which is
05:47God's nature, which is the nature of the universe, but fear creates emotional states that do
05:54not exist.
05:55And in turn, these create pain and suffering that we experience in our lives.
06:00So fear is where it starts to go wrong.
06:03Separation, when you come out of your mother's womb, it happens.
06:09You're not really separate from your mother, of course, but there's a physical appearance
06:14that appears real, F-E-A-R, false evidence appearing real.
06:18It's real, but not true, as Tara Brach would say.
06:24It's real, you're seeing a separation, but are you separate from your mother?
06:28Not when you hug, not when you connect, even emotionally, and so on and so forth, but we'll
06:33get into that a little bit later.
06:36So fear, this non-existent emotion that becomes so real and actually drives us, we can call
06:44a dream state rather than reality.
06:47It's a state created by your frightened personality to keep you safe from all the monsters that
06:52lurk in your closet and under your bed at night.
06:56So it's a necessary evil?
06:58I mean, you've got to get closer to a definition of fear than that.
07:05Jed McKenna talked about this dream state, a dream state that we forget.
07:10So when we were separate from our mother, someone came to us with a book and a rhyme
07:16and said, row, row, row your boat, gently downstream, merrily, merrily, merrily, what?
07:24Life is but a dream.
07:27So these dream states where fear lives are real, but not true.
07:32And Jed McKenna said, all attachments to the dream state are made of energy.
07:38That energy is called emotion.
07:40All emotions, whether positive or negative, are attachments.
07:44And you see where I'm getting to separation anxiety.
07:48Humans are emotion-based creatures and all emotions derive their energy from one core
07:53emotion, which is fear.
07:56Fear, he says, cannot be confronted or slain because it is fear of nothing, of no self.
08:02The desire to slay fear is itself a fear-based emotion.
08:08So what do we do with fear?
08:10Fear can only be surrendered to the thing feared.
08:14You can spend your life hacking away at the million-headed hydra of attachment and never
08:20make any progress.
08:21Or you can follow emotional energy back to its source, its lair, and see Levithian enemy
08:30of light for what it really is, your heart.
08:37So this heart-centeredness, this nature of love, emotional energy going back to source
08:44is the spiritual solution that you're possibly looking for, that will change everything around
08:50for you today.
08:55All anxiety is separation anxiety and our need for love and belonging or going without
09:01it is at the heart of all our fears.
09:05So how do we heal from fear?
09:07In order to heal from fear we need to move from separation to integration.
09:14In this way we no longer fragment and project, but rather face our fears, and in doing so
09:19we dissolve them.
09:21Fear is by nature false evidence appearing real as we've just said, so fear can appear
09:25real and it can look and feel and taste real, but it's not necessarily true.
09:33This is where the process of loving inquiry becomes useful.
09:37What is true is what we need to find out.
09:41We need to question what we think, feel and believe, which is the practice of contemplation.
09:47This is how we heal.
09:49We heal by allowing the truth to set us free.
09:56But now before I go on any further I want you to understand the power of contemplation,
10:01the purpose of contemplation, and we've really laid it out in the book, The Power of Contemplative
10:09Intelligence, which is your awareness that you're not your IQ, you're not your mind,
10:16you're not your analytics, you're not your calculating self that you grew up with that
10:22had that intense need to survive and then people please and be codependent and play
10:28the victim when we had to and so on and so forth.
10:30When we realize we're not the animal, the anima, we start to need to be able to check
10:38what is real and what is true and we can do so with contemplation, contemplative practice.
10:45And contemplation simply is how we penetrate illusion, the false, the appearing real, and
10:57how we then touch reality as the truth sets us free.
11:05Contemplative practice is something that I recommend to everybody.
11:08It's the zero that where meditation is the one, contemplation is the zero.
11:14It's really going beyond your thoughts.
11:20And what is beyond your thoughts?
11:23Pure consciousness.
11:25Imagine what we're capable of when we're operating from a place of pure consciousness
11:30rather than egoic defense.
11:33This is really the difference that makes all the difference in the world.
11:40I want you to remember that some of the greatest minds in the world, in our history, have thought
11:47by killing millions of people, thousands and hundreds and millions of people, depending
11:52on who you're talking about.
11:54And it's going on today in Palestine and Israel.
11:59I'm not saying either one is good or bad, they're just not using any intelligence, never
12:04mind contemplative intelligence.
12:06War ends badly and they think they're doing a good thing and that is the mind and it's
12:13a collective consciousness that needs to end.
12:17The good news is that it is ending.
12:19So to understand how to work your contemplative intelligence is really something that you
12:25should go into, because it's a way we can really penetrate all illusion.
12:31And there's so much illusion around us.
12:36Reality is far, far bigger than what we normally see at first, because those who have eyes
12:41let them see, it's not the physical eyes.
12:45Those who have ears let them hear, it's the contemplative practice that allows you to
12:52ask, is it true?
12:55Is this person actually my enemy?
12:57And it's thoughts of enemy that appear real but are not true.
13:02The only enemy is within.
13:06Your only enemy is your ego, pride and discord.
13:10No one else is your enemy but yourself.
13:13So you need to love your enemy.
13:18So just get a basic idea of what contemplation is.
13:20It teaches you to think about thinking, metta-thoughte.
13:27It might be just the highest form of intelligence that we have.
13:31It is a dance with the physical, the psychological, the spiritual and emotional, and it really
13:36has a tendency to heal people and then transform them.
13:41That's the be still and know that I am God, is to contemplate, to actually question yourself,
13:48which the brain of course hates to do, it has no trust, it's defensive.
13:55So contemplation is simply being fully present in heart and mind to what is, and how you
14:01pause and then creatively respond to everything in your environment, which is everything physical
14:09that life throws at you or brings your way.
14:13It helps us to let go of our usual, self-focused, habitual ways of thinking and doing things
14:18that are so entrenched we don't even realize we're doing them.
14:23It does this so that we can reach deeper into the self and really get that compassionate,
14:29connected and creative side of ourselves.
14:33We let it emerge through contemplative practice.
14:37We develop the capacity to witness our egoic motivations, something that we just completely
14:45and utterly hide from ourselves, like the mind hides the nose from your face so that
14:51you can look around and not be bothered by it.
14:55All of these mental shortcuts create a good and bad, a dichotomous mind, you're wrong
15:02and I'm right, this black and white thinking that's plaguing the earth at the moment.
15:08Through contemplation though we can at least develop the capacity to witness this ego,
15:14the mask of your personality, you know, and from day to day using contemplative practice
15:20we can just increase our authenticity through deeper awareness of our self, God and others.
15:26Is it really true even though it appears real?
15:30So it will really move you from existential crisis to existential discovery, from certainty
15:36to uncertainty and from fear to love.
15:41How do we heal from fear?
15:42We must understand that there's separation and we must move from separation to integration.
15:47We must integrate the two sides of ourselves, the human and the spiritual self.
15:54The lower and higher self need to be integrated again.
15:57We can't just forget that we have an ego and we have all these character defects and we
16:03have these masks that hide our fears and we become selfish people.
16:09It's always someone else who's selfish, but no, that's not true.
16:16No matter how much work you've done, that's what happens to us, especially when we're
16:21squeezed.
16:22I want you to remember if you take an orange and you squeeze it, you're not going to
16:26get lemon juice out of there, you're going to get orange juice.
16:29Fear is inside and the sooner we know that, the better, so that we can apply the antidote,
16:37which is love.
16:40We need to heal through questioning what we believe.
16:44That's how we overcome depression, I mean, that's what you do.
16:47You go and you sit with a therapist and you talk and you feel and you sort out and iron
16:55out and get the truth to bubble to the surface.
16:59First it normally or rarely irritates you before it sets you free.
17:05So loving inquiry teaches us that fear can only be surrendered to.
17:09We need to find the EQ, the heart, the courage to surrender and accept it.
17:18It's like accepting the dragon and walking towards the dragon, putting down the sword
17:23and trying to give him a hug.
17:25The dragon who holds the princess captive, who has that pot of gold, which is your freedom
17:32and your sanity, that he is defending with his dragon breath.
17:38But we're not going to get the dragon to surrender to us, that's why he looks like he does and
17:43breathes fire.
17:45But we can overcome the dragon with love.
17:48We can befriend the dragon and teach the dragon how to love us back.
17:55And in so doing, he'll let the princess go and share the pot of gold.
17:58And that's how we all, metaphorically, stop what we're doing by bombing each other overseas.
18:05But we literally slay the dragon with the emotion of love by asking ourselves what we
18:10are thinking.
18:12We ask ourselves what we are believing.
18:16Belief is just what we think over and over again.
18:18And then we do the contemplative questioning work of examining your own belief systems,
18:24as terrifying as that may sound.
18:26You look for thinking errors.
18:29Your false associations, all men are bad, I had a bad father.
18:33I dislike all immigrants.
18:35Come on, this is hard work and of course you're not guilty.
18:38But other people are.
18:40Fear is inside all of us.
18:42This is something we need to start talking about.
18:44What else?
18:45Women are bad drivers.
18:47She died way too young.
18:50How do we know?
18:52How do we know?
18:53Are we playing God?
18:54He will never amount to anything is another favorite of ours.
18:58She never ever lets me get a word and she will never change.
19:02And on and on we can go.
19:03So we need to examine these beliefs with loving inquiry, with compassion, so that we can be
19:10sure we're not falling prey to these false beliefs that create our pain and suffering
19:15in the world, not just in ourselves.
19:18Paolo Chilo said, wherever your heart is, that is where you'll find your treasure.
19:23Just like the dragon and his treasure.
19:27So we're led to believe a lie and loving inquiry is a stillness practice.
19:33It's a real connection practice that we need to do with ourselves.
19:38A scientific journal just last year said that up to 50% of our memories are false and untrue.
19:46Yet we're convinced, we're convinced that they're bad, that this is wrong, that Trump
19:53is evil, that this one's good.
19:56Really?
19:58We need to question reality because it's perception that we will find in place of reality.
20:06Reality never changes.
20:08Perception always constantly changes.
20:10It's the Buddha law of change, the law of impermanence, that this mind is just never
20:17ever going to stop.
20:19When we practice loving inquiry, love is patience, it's nature.
20:25The nature of love is nothing like the mind.
20:30Consider that the Nazis thought the Jews were evil and inferior and they actually were fearful
20:36that the Jews would overtake their country.
20:38So they sat and turned a blind eye while 14 million people died.
20:44A mass extermination, real but not true.
20:49Palestinians and Israelis, this is not a new thing.
20:53They're taught from an early age to gear up and develop a deep hatred for the other.
21:00And they're taught this by parents, they're taught this by teachers, really?
21:07They're teaching deep hatred for the other.
21:10And everything lies in ruins when it starts with hatred.
21:15So loving inquiry is really, hold on a second, is my enemy my enemy?
21:21And you'll find that the answer is no.
21:24We've put these Palestinians and Israelis, the youngsters, together in experiments and
21:29we've had two groups of teens together and it's not even a matter of minutes until we
21:36see love dissipating fear.
21:39Just instantly, along with all the fear and the lies that they've led to believe all their
21:45lives from people they trusted, dissolve.
21:49And they sit and they converse and they said, I didn't think you'd be like that.
21:53I didn't realize that we were so alike.
21:57And isn't that amazing?
21:58That's what we can do in a matter of minutes.
22:00In South Africa we've got great examples of how ridiculous fear can be.
22:08How a religious mind and a closed heart can keep Nelson Mandela in prison for 27 years?
22:17Apartheid.
22:18All anxiety is apart, it's all separation, right?
22:22All the fake news today that we see on TV is built on fear.
22:26It's commonplace and we just accept it.
22:29Fear also breeds lies that make us gender biased, classist and racist and the list goes
22:35on and on.
22:37Yet none of this is our true nature.
22:39Love is our true nature and I really want you to get that today.
22:43You're going to learn that through loving inquiry.
22:49The reality doesn't change and if we've got fear inside, I mean the world wars that we've
22:55gone through, not one but two, possibly a third coming.
22:59World wars were Cain and Abel all over again.
23:04Brother jealous of brother.
23:06We cannot stop killing.
23:09The Cain and Abel story was because of lies, of separation, of anger, jealousy, superiority,
23:17inferiority, blaming and criticism, all the things that fear is made up of.
23:25All he needed to do was a little bit of loving inquiry before he took a stone and smashed
23:30his brother's skull in and the killing hasn't stopped since that day.
23:39And again the mind will tell you how awful people are in the East if you're in the West,
23:45in the South if you're in the North, but the truth is our children are playing video games
23:52killing the enemy.
23:55Fear led to celebrate our soldiers who are killing the enemy.
24:02Half of what we watch on TV is good guys killing bad guys.
24:07We've learned nothing from Cain and Abel.
24:09We practice it over and over again.
24:12What we really need is a return to love, a return to love which is coming, will save
24:18the world.
24:21When we remember who we are, the insanity stops.
24:29Let's move on and understand how we return to love to save ourselves, each other and
24:35the world.
24:37When we remember who we are, the insanity stops, the overthinking of survival mind stops
24:42and we stop acting like monkeys swinging through the trees.
24:47We are not separate from our enemy and the anxiety dissipates.
24:51Can you see how this is almost too simple to teach?
24:55I've known people who loved their husband or wife and then became divorced and they
25:01were eaten from the inside out by disease, the disease of bitterness and resentment and
25:07hurt when they once loved each other.
25:11All they needed to practice was loving inquiry.
25:16Loving inquiry stops us dead in our tracks before thoughts become things, before we get
25:22eaten from the inside out.
25:24It allows us to stop, use that CQ, that contemplation and really question our thinking and see that
25:33we are believing a lie.
25:35The mind is biased to believe lies.
25:39We have defense mechanisms, cognitive distortions, false memories and we impulsively fall prey
25:46to projection, the other is bad.
25:50It protected us once, now it destroys us.
25:52So this we call taking a contemplative pause, this stopping and questioning what I believe.
26:01Take even three seconds before you answer or commit to something in between stimulus
26:08and response.
26:09Stimulus is experience three or five senses, sight, smell, touch, sound and taste and you
26:16need to take a pause before you respond.
26:20Really get down to the feelings, find gratitude, reverence, trust, appreciation.
26:29We have a dog die and or a family member and we stop seeing, appreciating, having reverence
26:37and gratitude and love and care from who's around us.
26:44We fall victim of allowing the projection and we fall prey to allowing the projection
26:52to really, really bring us down and that's fear's job.
26:56It wants us to, you know, think we're winning a war like Israel but it's going to bring
27:01us down.
27:02No doubt about it, it's maths and this universe is based on mathematical equation.
27:07One plus one, love plus love equals universal love.
27:12Fear and cruelty, what are they going to, I mean, we're expecting to drop bombs on the
27:18ground and have love and joy and happiness arise from it.
27:23I just emphasize this because it's so serious to see how it can affect an entire world,
27:29never mind our entire being.
27:32So the peace we experience on the inside becomes how we see the world on the outside and our
27:38harsh judgments of the other can begin to melt away with some loving inquiry like you
27:43won't believe.
27:45When you change the way you look at things, people and places, those things, people and
27:50places really do change.
27:53Enemies do become friends.
27:57So who I am requires me to ask who I am without the stories of the mind that I am believing.
28:05Jew, Christian, skeptic, scientist or doubter, we're all invited and it's really time to
28:10love the other, the different, the awkward, the imperfect, because even though your mind
28:16won't really allow it, it'll separate you from the truth because you're imperfect too.
28:22You're awkward, different, sometimes hard to love too.
28:27So love always leaves a mark.
28:30And from now on we don't want to play Cain and Abel, we're one.
28:35We love our enemy if we're contemplative because we are the enemy.
28:39To love God in any religion is to love your neighbor.
28:44You love your neighbor that you think is your enemy when you become conscious.
28:49What do you think they meant by born again, by spiritual awakening?
28:54I mean the separation.
28:56God is love.
28:58And could we just sit with that quietly and just exhale a sigh of relief?
29:03We have found that God is love.
29:06If we are making God war on any front, we've got a lot of contemplative work to do.
29:14That sigh of relief that the whole universe and every animal and mineral and star and
29:21angel and human being, present and future and past, the whole of creation is crying
29:29out for that sigh when we can finally wake up.
29:35Jehovah, Buddha, Krishna, Allah.
29:43The mind causes separation.
29:45All anxiety is separation anxiety.
29:48So we use loving inquiry to return.
29:51I want you to take some personal accountability right now as you become more and more conscious
29:56and understand that our thoughts and beliefs are maps that are not inherently true.
30:02And hang on to it because the mind hates uncertainty.
30:08It feels anxiety when it thinks it cannot trust itself.
30:12So it will lie to you.
30:14Your own mind will lie to you.
30:17And this is why love is based on things like trust, honesty, openness.
30:23All lies are becoming hell.
30:26They burn everything up.
30:27And if we believe lies, we create hell.
30:32So we must investigate harmful beliefs by really, really investigating them and laying
30:37down new maps.
30:40And where do we get new maps from?
30:41Well, sometimes people who we thought were the enemy.
30:44Sometimes people think the church is the enemy.
30:47And you've got this revolution of people leaving the church.
30:53For every one person that joins the church today, six people leave.
30:58But it's a threshing out.
31:00And this can come across as fear that people are separating them.
31:03I think we're just broadening the church.
31:06We're getting back to, you know, nature was the first Bible.
31:10I'm being a staunch Christian and believer myself.
31:14It might not sound like it, but I'm very, very orthodox.
31:17It's love God.
31:19And what is the second commandment?
31:22Love your neighbor, but not the neighbor that you think is like you.
31:27The neighbor that you think is your enemy.
31:29So it's not only to love our neighbor, it's to love our enemy.
31:32And that's where consciousness took us.
31:35And when, of course, Christ said that he was murdered and butchered, and that's essentially
31:41what we need to do to our own minds, metaphorically speaking, is come back from the dead.
31:48It is, as St. Francis said, it is in dying to self that we are born to eternal life.
31:54This is what he meant.
31:55These two minds, the one dichotomous, egoic, fearful, needs to die.
32:02Then we can be born to eternal life, okay?
32:08We want to question our beliefs because we should not be conformed to the mind, okay?
32:15So the necessary evil is that you're going to believe lies, you're going to conform to
32:23the survival instincts of your mind, and it's going to defend itself.
32:28Ego defends mechanisms on necessary evils.
32:32So we become aware, usually, of these necessary evils through suffering depression, through
32:37suffering like stuckness, deep lostness, addictions, and so on.
32:42Then we can really, really understand what was spoken about in Romans 12.2.
32:49We were told, do not conform to the pattern of the world, but be transformed, how?
32:56By the renewing of your mind.
32:59Then you will be able to test and approved what God's will is, his good, pleasing, perfect
33:05will, which is loving.
33:08So we're all grinding and fighting, kicking and screaming, and edging our way out of fear
33:16and back to love.
33:18The monster in the closet is driving the killing and the brutality of every war on planet earth
33:24at the moment today, because we are conformed to the world, but we can't be and expect a
33:31good result.
33:32We must be transformed, transform meaning to go above form.
33:40And how do you do it?
33:41By the renewal of your mind, and this is loving inquiry.
33:45It will bring us to the perfect will of how things are meant to be, how God created them
33:50to be.
33:52And this is why so many people are waking up today.
33:56There might be one entering a church and six leaving, but there is a loving inquiry going
34:01on in these people.
34:03And we are coming together over the internet.
34:06We're coming together, religiously speaking.
34:09We're laying down our gender bias, our racism, and so many maps we're putting aside in the
34:17name of love.
34:20Now we can move on to how to practice loving inquiry, and one of the ways we practice loving
34:26inquiry is through writing it down.
34:28If we want to transcend the mind, we've got to work with it.
34:31We've got to understand that opening a loving inquiry and getting your true, sacred self
34:38unhindered by the personality to respond to your inquiry of, is this or that true, or
34:45am I trapped, or is life meaningless, or are they all bad?
34:49It's inquiry to make you compassionately aware that you need to be set free from something.
34:55So in other words, we're looking for a problem.
34:58When I'm not running a life that is dictated to me by the environment, which is everything
35:03on the outside, I'm truly, truly free.
35:06So if I don't want to run a life that is dictated to me by my environment, or do not be conformed
35:13to the world, where do I go?
35:16I go inside.
35:19So the practice of loving inquiry starts with self-awareness, and you can get pen and paper
35:26to do it, or you can use one of the loving inquiry meditations, whatever you're going
35:31to do, or just do it through silence.
35:35So self-awareness is the very first step.
35:37When you become mindful that you're stressed, anxious, fearful, you'll know.
35:43Life is a way of letting us know when we're in pain.
35:46When you see something, you become self-aware and know that it is there and there's work
35:51to do.
35:52So next time you're fearful, anxious, understand it's separation from the true self, and there's
36:00work to do.
36:01That's all.
36:02There's nowhere to run, fight, or freeze, there's work to do.
36:08The second step is self-discipline.
36:10No change can occur without self-discipline.
36:13This is what Tony Robbins and life coaches around the world are on about, is you cannot
36:18do anything with self-discipline.
36:20So they teach people self-discipline, and they get massive, massive results.
36:27But for us, self-discipline is really the contemplative pause.
36:31It's asking, is what I am believing true?
36:36The pen is mightier than the sword, so write it down.
36:40It really brings clarity and clears the mind, it makes things real in real time, reality.
36:49So my thought is, write it down.
36:51My feeling about my thought is, write it down.
36:55I want to do, or I'm convinced that I believe that, write it down.
37:03This is pretty much like the Tohono O'odham process of inquiry, of the five whys.
37:10Simply write down why five times, and each time go deeper through the layers of onion
37:16to get to the truth, so it's similar.
37:19So first, when practicing loving inquiry, we develop a self-awareness, become mindful
37:25that we're feeling trauma or stress or anxiety.
37:29We use self-discipline, practice a pause, don't act, write it down.
37:35Third, we practice self-inquiry, what will happen if I start to think that?
37:41See this is where we start to separate myth from reality.
37:46What will happen if I start to think that?
37:50If I start to feel that, what will I do?
37:53What would the real consequence be for me?
37:59Just remember that reality is always kind.
38:01You're going to write down simply to discover the truth.
38:07Step four is self-connection, remembering who you are.
38:11When you remember who you are, there's no separation.
38:13So list five values and five deeper emotions that you're feeling right now, and dig deep
38:18if you have to.
38:19Use the Emotions Wheel, it's on the internet, the worksheet of loving inquiries on the internet,
38:25and you practice self-connection by writing down your five values, your five deeper emotions
38:32that you're feeling right now.
38:34And that's how you remember who you are and start to practice self-connection.
38:40Step five is self-reflection, he, she, they are doing or have done or will do whatever
38:46to me because I judged them harshly.
38:50Let me say that again, self-reflection is writing down he, she, they, whatever the situation
38:56is in your life, what they are doing or have done or will do to me is, and write down all
39:02the things in your environment that are happening to you, through you, because of you, because
39:08of them, and then end with because I judged them harshly.
39:16Our nature is to judge them harshly, to protect ourselves, to defend ourselves, but defense
39:21is the first act of war.
39:27Now if we could teach Putin that, we would stop the war in Ukraine.
39:31If we could teach the Israeli government that, that they could be the first people to surrender,
39:36rather than win a war, they're not going to win the war.
39:42So if we could get them to understand that, that no one wins a war, they would be doing
39:47self-reflection, which is the point that I'm asking you to do right now, rather than waiting
39:53for the other to surrender, and I hope this is becoming more consciously real for you.
39:59So self-reflection is a really, really hard one to do, and writing down because I judged
40:05them harshly is such an admission, but it's a powerful, powerful act that brings ownership,
40:14accountability and authenticity that really brings good consequences for you.
40:23And finally self-love.
40:25So you write down, I am, and you, who are you?
40:29Who are you really?
40:30Put your best values in here.
40:32I am, and decide who you are.
40:36That's what life is about.
40:37That's why you have this brain with the right and the left, the two sides, the indecision,
40:43the lack of self-discipline, the lack of self-inquiry, the lack of connection.
40:47You have all of this, because suffering is getting us to self-love.
40:51So remember who you are.
40:53I am, dot dot dot, person who can choose compassion for the people, places, things, conversations
41:02or situations, because they have done their best, even though I don't like it.
41:08People are doing the best with the consciousness that they actually have.
41:14I don't want to feel this way, which is, and write it down, how is this person, this thing,
41:22and write it down, how has this situation made you feel?
41:26I don't want to feel this way, so I choose to feel, put it in there.
41:30That's how you make a decision for something better.
41:34How do you really choose to feel?
41:35This is where you take your power back.
41:38Because without the story in my body, heart, mind, I am, and free.
41:47What other people do no longer imprisons me.
41:52Okay, so that's the process of loving inquiry, and another way to practice loving inquiry
41:58is just by stopping.
42:00Stop first.
42:03Develop your contemplative intelligence, your contemplative mind.
42:06Whenever you become self-aware, just practice stopping.
42:11It halts the behavior chain of events that keeps us getting the same poor results time
42:17and time again.
42:20Take a deep breath, a contemplative pause, and don't act.
42:26Don't take anything or anyone in your environment personally, because once that is done, it
42:32will make you feel powerless.
42:35They don't have that much power over you.
42:37You are not your environment, and how you feel does not need to be dictated by your
42:43environment.
42:44That's how powerful we are.
42:46This is the power of love.
42:51So we don't imprison other people.
42:53We put the judge-insurgent down, because when they stay free, the enemy, the person
43:00over there, the whatever situation, I stay free.
43:03When they stay free, I stay free.
43:07Staying fearless in my believing is to experience profound freedom.
43:14Expectations are always on their way to becoming resentment, so don't judge or expect anything
43:20from anyone, because we will start to believe lies through projection, and our loving inquiry
43:28is to smash projection down like we would a mask, and go through the veil of ignorance
43:37as we use consciousness to make us more loving.
43:41Remember, that's the way the environment is.
43:46God is love.
43:47The universe is love.
43:51As the paradigm process teaches us, learn to let go of your need to control, and return
43:59to self-love through loving inquiry.
44:02So the other people, and what they're thinking, and how we're dictating to them why they're
44:07doing this, and what they're doing that for, we've got to let go of it all.
44:14So stay in your business, and imagine what a beautiful world it would be if we all stayed
44:18in our business.
44:21Loving inquiry is my business from today.
44:24I get hit with a stimulus, a thought, a feeling, an action, the consequence becomes mine to
44:31choose when I practice loving inquiry, when I stay in my business.
44:36So a beautiful way of expressing what your business is, is God's business is the environment,
44:44which you were trying to control, that was causing you pain and suffering and stuckness,
44:48and powerlessness especially.
44:51God's business is the environment, circumstances, the weather, external events, other people.
44:57Not your business.
45:00What is your business?
45:01Is yourself.
45:02Your thoughts, your feelings, your behaviors, those are your business.
45:08And then ask yourself, what is my business?
45:11Other people?
45:13Other people's thoughts, feelings, and behaviors are not your business, and this is where you're
45:18going to have to be consciously wide awake, avoiding the projection, avoiding the trap
45:24of the dichotomous, judgmental mind.
45:30That's the practice of loving inquiry in a nutshell, and anyone can start it, it's just
45:35remarkable how it can set us free, and in so doing, set the world free.
45:44The practice of loving inquiry for healing and life transformation is one of the practices
45:47we teach in the Paradigm Process, which is the 10 steps.
45:54It's a process out of the prison of your personality, which is formulated on fear.
46:01It is personality presenting itself as reality.
46:07When we get over those masks, through this practice, we can overcome depression, any
46:14form of anxiety, all things based in fear.
46:19And then our victim positions, our codependence, our people-pleasing tendencies, and the way
46:24we judge, the way we control, the way we try and be perfect, that's the paradigm shift.
46:31And then when we drop those masks, we recover connection, self-love, certainty, wisdom,
46:40courage, and so on.
46:43Now I want you to remember control kills self-love, perfectionism kills gratitude, neuroticism
46:52kills surrender, codependence kills connection, anxiety kills courage, but now look at it
47:02from the other side of your brain.
47:04Now read or repeat that from right to left.
47:09Courage kills anxiety, connection kills codependence, surrender kills neuroticism, gratitude kills
47:17perfection, and self-love kills control.
47:21So you can turn it around and the truth will set you free.