Life Lived as Inquiry | contemplativeinquiry

A DIRECTION FOR 2023

I am writing on the last day of 2022. My very best wishes for 2023 to all readers. Many blessings for the year ahead!

The picture above was taken on 26 December (in England called Boxing Day/St. Stephen’s Day) – this year a chilly day of bright blue sky. The truncated spire* of St. Nicholas Church, Gloucester, reaches up towards the vivid sky, despite its history of damage. For me, this image of spire against sky is one of clarity, definition and spaciousness. It is a breath of fresh air.

I don’t know what 2023 will bring. I do want to bring clarity, definition and spaciousness to whatever unfolds. As my contemplative inquiry continues, I find that it subtly modifies its purpose. Discovering and re-discovering the purpose involves an element of divination, since my thinking personality is not exactly in charge.

It is as if authentic clarity and definition come out of the spaciousness itself, not out of cognitive review or ‘brain-storming’. These may be aids, but I have also to wait for signs. When I began this blog, I surprised myself by calling it ‘contemplative inquiry’ rather the ‘contemplative Druidry’. I see now that contemplative inquiry is the root description for my path.

For me, contemplation is a yin quality, an open and receptive engagement with experiences – most especially, with forms of relationship. Inquiry is a yang quality, actively deepening knowledge, refining understanding and seeking meaning. Together they support my path. Druidry is a vehicle that supports spiritual self-direction, and also challenges disastrous social norms concerning both nature and culture. Today I have revised the ABOUT section of this blog, on the eve of 2023, and my key statements are below:

“My contemplative inquiry began in 2012. It is grounded in modern Druidry, though not wholly defined by it. I acknowledge the influence of other sources, especially the wider turn towards an eco-spirituality that meets our historical moment. The inquiry process itself is my core practice, from which others radiate out.

“Over my inquiry years, I have found an underlying peace and at-homeness at the heart of experience. Here, it is as if I am resourced by a timeless, unboundaried dimension from which I am not separate. I find myself guided towards a spirit of openness, an ethic of interdependence and a life of abundant simplicity.”

*NOTE ON ST. NICHOLAS’ SPIRE: the church was first built in 1190 and added to over the centuries. A 200 ft. spire was built in the fifteenth century, but received a direct hit from cannon fire in 1643, during the English Civil War. The final repair waited until 1783, when the spire was reduced in height and capped.

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October 23, 2022

FALLING: 2022

Vivid autumn colour signals a fall. Where I live, we are early in the process as yet. These leaves seem poignantly glorious to me. I respond to a beauty that I know will be short-lived. The tree is immersed in a cycle of dying and regeneration that furthers its larger life. Any sense of poignancy, glory and beauty is about me, being human.

I think of the last thirty years, and my own small deaths and regenerations over this period as I journeyed from my early forties to my early seventies. At the beginning I sensed a pull towards new priorities, which roughly fitted the Jungian notion of the second half of life as having different goals from the first. I experienced a nudge towards an inward, psycho-spiritual turn. I developed interests in experiential inquiry, Druidry/Western Mysteries, and contemplative spirituality, as part of this mid-life nudge.

This reduced my interest in career, acquisition and influence – though such interest had always been limited. In the nineties and noughties, I didn’t need a lot of money both to live well, if modestly, and accrue a reasonable retirement income. It would be much harder now. I am grateful to have experienced (relatively) favourable times, though of course the seeds of our current crises were already being sown.

Now I am ready for a new chapter, as my wife Elaine and I get ready to move to a new place of our own in Gloucester. The next move is into a smaller, more manageable space, and will involve elements of de-cluttering. I am the same tree but I will be shedding leaves and waiting for new ones to grow next year. In the moment I feel fragile, though my unknowing about the future also has an edge of wonder about the magic that may unfold. Falling is an oddly potent process at a special time of year.

December 17, 2019

INQUIRING

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

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December 31, 2022