contemplativeinquiry

Early in 2003 I came across the phrase ‘life lived as inquiry’ in The Handbook of Action Research (1). It described a very engaged kind of work, which usually had a marginal standing within University systems. The chapters included:

Citizen Participation in Natural Resource Management

Learning with ‘The Natural Step’: Action Research to Promote Conversations for Sustainable Development

Transforming Lives: Towards Bicultural Competence

Participatory Research for Education for Social Change: Highlander Research and Education Center

The Sights and Sounds of Indigenous Knowledge

Creative Arts and Photography in Participatory Action Research in Guatemala.

As my own inquiry changes, I remember that my introduction to self-reflective practice, based on “robust, self-questioning disciplines” (2), came from this discursive world, and not from the forms of spiritual self-inquiry offered by Ramana Maharsi or Douglas Harding. Here it was assumed “any self-noticing is conducted by selves beyond the screen of my conscious appreciation” because “the conscious self sees an unconsciously edited version of the world, guided by purposes. Hence the whole of the mind cannot be reported in a part of the mind. For me this is an important inquiry lens, explicitly placing limits on ‘self-awareness’.

I’m aware of feeling a certain nostalgia for this way of thinking and feeling, and for that period in my life. From 2003-2006, after returning to England from eight years residence in New Zealand, I led a participatory inquiry into creative ageing. The participants were two groups of people in their 50’s and beginning to think forward to their later years. It became the basis of my PhD. but didn’t lead to anything fresh of relevance to my interests within the University context.

Yet doing this work was a big success for me and I haven’t forgotten its lessons. They remind me not to discard resources from earlier periods of my life, even under new conditions. From the perspective of Sophian inquiry, I see continuity. I can understand the ‘whole mind’/’part mind’ distinction as a materialist way of talking about Sophia and me. In this context ‘whole mind’ (Sophia) would need to include body, sensations, feelings and imagination – a whole that is greater than the sum of its parts, and with no sealed individual boundary. My conscious narrative identity and what it knowingly draws on make up the more limited and constructed ‘me’.

It’s an inexact translation, and reads rather oddly. But it’s just good enough to let me reach back to a past time in my life and find valuable continuities. Doing this, I can create a better inquiry and a richer relationship with the world.

(1) Handbook of Action Research: Participative Inquiry & Practice London: Sage, 2001 Edited by Peter Reason & Hilary Bradbury

(2) Judi Marshall Self-reflective Inquiry Practices, Chapter 44 in Handbook of Action Research: Participative Inquiry & Practice London: Sage, 2001 Edited by Peter Reason & Hilary Bradbury