Re: Inquiry?
Posted by Perk Clark on 08/06/2009 13:01:01
In reply to Re: Inquiry? posted by Scot G. on 08/06/2009 10:59:59
"....ahhhh!...." as dear John might say -- I too have been thinking of him and you all during
this second anniversary of his Return to Sender, of his Leaving with the One Who Brought
Him, etc. (I miss you Eddie!) There is some news... One of my university students from 2000
requested permission to study the site: he's doing a thesis on mindfulness and is curious to
explore the kinds of interactions that were available when John was present. I have
encouraged him to do so and hope he shares whatever he might find. One of my current
psychotherapy clients is actively "metabolizing" (c.f. Almaas) the Kindergarten part of the site
now and finding John's translations illuminating and instrumental in getting more of a handle
on her .. situations... So all your efforts live on quite actively people, and i am again
reminded of how much you all sourced/are sourcing this project, and all others like it. It's
gratitude that i feel right here now, and I urge you to keep the fires burning and the practices
moving and the wheels turning. As to "Inquiry," I've only read a few of Almass' (Hameed Ali)
books, but the story that Scot offers here is a classic psychodynamic formulation, an attempt
to create a map (albeit after one has arrived somewhere) that describes how i got here, and
from where I came. I dimly recall that Inquiry was part of the process of "metabolizing"
experience, which to me always meant this kind of accessing the cognitive version of the
history of it, along with the present experience of it (the craving; the sense of deprivation;
the fullness; the urge to help [to eat]; the relief that comes from helping; the tension that
arises when the helper abstains from helping [eating]; the decreasing sense of the tension
that seems to demanding 'helping,' the guilt for having eaten, etc. I think of the Diamond
approach as sort of radical witnessing which speeds up the passage of mechanical behavior
through one's body-mind while helping one be dis-identified enough from it to not dance
the behavior out....