Developing An Inquiry Mindset: Episode 3

This is the third podcast of Kyle Mercer’s “Life at Altitude” series. In this podcast, Kyle enumerates many aspects of developing an Inquiry Mindset. He touches on the importance of our communication with others, the definition of Inquiry itself, and how to be ‘present’ in our every day lives.

Transcript

Welcome to Life at Altitude with Kyle Mercer,

A podcast about upgrading the way we participate in life through changing our behaviors and raising our consciousness.

Hello,

This is Kyle Mercer again,

And we have another installation of the podcast.

On this podcast,

I have my first guest,

And this is Manal joining us,

And we thought we'd have a little dialogue and share a little dialogue with you.

So she's going to start out with a question,

And then we'll jump right into some conversation.

Thank you,

Kyle,

For that introduction.

It's actually a pleasure to be on your new podcast.

Last week,

You actually formulated a wonderful quote,

And I thought it would be really insightful for us to discuss and sort of get some more insight into it.

Your quote was,

There is no way to become good at inquiry,

Thinking you are already good at it.

Yeah,

That's part of it is that inquiry comes from this quality of not knowing.

So as soon as I think I know or I've mastered something,

I start to drop more into an egoic engagement.

I start to think I can master it.

Like a lot of people come to me,

Well,

You ask such good questions.

I want to ask that good a question.

Well,

From my perspective,

It's not so much asking a good question.

It's about engaging my ignorance and acknowledging my ignorance.

So the mastery comes from non-mastery,

From not knowing and just being really open and curious about what's going on in another person.

Personally,

I can see that I'm always trying to find the answer.

And I know that you've suggested in the past that my questions sound a bit more like advocacy rather than inquiry.

So I think that's what you're teasing at.

Yeah.

And well,

Let's make that distinction too for the listeners is that there's a difference between advocacy and inquiry.

Advocacy is when I have an idea,

A thought,

A perspective I want to advance.

And inquiry is when I'm so clear about what I don't know that I'm curious.

I'm not trying to get movement in the other person.

I'm just trying to understand.

And that's the hard part.

We've all been taught that we're supposed to be smart.

We're supposed to know the answers.

And it's just such a challenge for people to get and reveal their ignorance.

And I mean,

It sounds silly,

But it may be my best skill is my willingness to be ignorant.

And so I'm not asking or using the tools to try to get somebody to shift or change.

I'm just wanting to understand it.

And there's something about that that helps them understand it because they don't necessarily know either.

We're doing the shared exploration of what's going on between it.

And we also want to be really careful because people at the beginning of learning inquiry method,

When we think it's a skill,

May approach it mixing it with advocacy.

So they'll make a statement and then ask somebody a question about it.

And it's really about showing up with our total ignorance about what's happening within another person.

I can relate because I can see how I have developed or realigned the way my questions are formed when I'm talking to people,

When I'm truly trying to be curious.

Help me understand what type of shift it requires mentally and where a person has to come to.

And I know that you hinted at it and just your willingness to be ignorant,

But help me a bit more.

Yeah.

I think it goes beyond just a willingness to be ignorant.

It's like engaging in a real curiosity.

I always loved Sherlock Holmes,

Those stories,

Because he was discovering the mystery and he was using his mind to explore it.

But if you notice,

Sherlock Holmes was always just looking and paying attention and asking questions.

It wasn't Eureka or whatever came at the end of the story.

It didn't come as we went along.

It was really like,

Oh,

I noticed that.

I wonder what that means.

So there's this quality of asking questions and being curious,

But also a sense of wonder.

There's a loving quality to it,

Just really wanting to understand and honoring the person that you're talking to that they're bringing whatever's occurring is appropriate.

So you drop the judgment about what's happening with the other person and just really get into the curiosity about what's going on with the person.

I can start to feel what I'm hearing is more of an openness.

Yeah.

I mean,

That openness,

But it really is a surrender of my ego that I'm setting myself apart.

That's why we talk about that inquiry is at altitude across the I,

We barrier,

Because there's a dissolving of self.

What I found for myself as I discovered inquiry method was I came into this coaching work with ego and identity and ideas I believed in.

When I'd push them at people,

They would push back.

When I just asked them questions,

They would step in.

So over time,

Every time I felt that pushback,

I would go back.

I call it eating crow.

I would go back to the starting place and start again at zero.

Even if,

I don't know,

We're playing the game of life where it says,

Go back to the beginning.

I would go back to the beginning.

I'd say something like,

And why did you want to talk to me today?

What was it that you wanted to get out of this conversation?

And I'd annihilate that.

In that process of practicing inquiry method,

What I found is that my ego around being a coach or a teacher continued to fall apart.

And there was a certain kind of turning point where I no longer really believed that I had anything to offer except just an open curiosity.

And something else came in at that point that's been such a gift.

And it's some connection with something deeper than my thoughts or beliefs or ideas that I can tap into.

It's more like being tapped into universal truth.

And through that,

It allows me to stream consciousness or share ideas and come up with new discoveries.

But I don't take it personally anymore because that process of inquiry has really helped me dissolve those layers of ego where my mind or my identity or my personality thinks it's doing it.

So as we develop in this really practice inquiry,

It's one of the beauties of using inquiry with our children,

Other people,

Becoming a coach and really committing to the discipline of inquiry method of just stopping thinking I'm doing anything and invoking this curiosity and this openness to really understand somebody else.

And that's whether it's in your relationship or not,

It's just instead of wanting to advance anything or get any particular result,

It's just really wanting to understand another person.

The more I hear you describe it,

The more I realize that it does take a higher level of altitude and it's a skill that you develop.

So the concept of curiosity and inquiry seems very simple,

But I even find it difficult for me to ask the right questions during this podcast,

For example,

That disassociates me from my ego and just really comes in.

Can you speak to that?

Yeah,

Well,

Again,

This is an appropriate place because you're in the learning situation.

So you're asking questions from that level where you're wanting to discover and understand.

So you're really operating right now at this level of contribution and opening yourself to learning and understanding and receiving so that you can apply it.

So there's nothing wrong with that and it's appropriate.

If you were to go to inquiry or the level,

That would be even being more curious about the underpinnings,

But you still have that desire to learn and incorporate and that's fine.

But we have to put each layer in place before we can get to the next one.

We can't bypass a layer and so often we want to do it.

We have to acknowledge the level we're at and participate in the level we're at.

So as soon as you say asking the right questions,

Your mind,

Your ego or your personality is trying to figure it out.

The more we release that,

The more we're coming across that I-we barrier.

We're not taking it personal anymore.

It's just we're really open to what we don't know or we don't understand.

And it can be so simple.

I mean,

Great question can be what's behind that or what's meaningful about that to you or what bothers you about that.

And it's revealing our ignorance about it.

So it's as simple as that.

And during this podcast,

I could see how easily we could get past that by talking to my children or my husband where everything does feel personal.

Just looks like it would be a bigger challenge.

It is.

And there's going to be certain relationships where we take it more personally,

Particularly our children where we feel like they're a reflection of us or our parenting or that side.

So we take it personally.

Whereas,

You know,

A stranger at a bar,

Just met at the airport or whatever,

Sometimes it's easier with them because we're not taking anything they do or say personally and we hold it differently.

So you're right.

It's almost easier to practice with people that we're not directly associated with.

And is there any type of work that I can do for myself so I can communicate more effectively with those that might trigger me?

Yeah.

Well,

Before you have the conversation,

You can put yourself in an inquiry mindset.

And what happens is like if you're talking with one of your children,

Before you go into the conversation,

You just get really clear that anything emotion,

Tension that arises,

You're just going to set that aside.

That you're setting a boundary with yourself not to engage in your reaction.

And then you're going to come back no matter what you feel,

No matter how triggered you experience,

You're just going to push and set that all aside and come back to really wanting to hear and interest them.

It is a discipline and a practice to be able to do that.

I still have to do it.

You know,

I'll have conversations where I get triggered and,

You know,

Particularly you know,

Like in business or personally where I get triggered.

But I can feel this wall come down and this intention is just to set my reaction aside and I come back to inquiry to understand.

And there's something that happens through the inquiry.

The more I understand,

The less that reaction even wants to come in because it gets dissolved.

It's no longer there.

So it really is a practice and a huge challenge.

This inquiry method is a life practice that not only applies to communication,

But even a sense of wonder in the world where I lose my judgment about what's happening in traffic right now.

You know,

I get my personality taking traffic personally and I can just be present with what's happening now.

What are my options?

What are my possibilities?

It can happen at a sunset.

It can happen,

You know,

When you're eating your breakfast,

When you're going to sleep.

It's just,

It's such an all-encompassing life practice as we get into inquiry method because it's really approaching life and the world and our experience with a sense of wonder.

And really working with our reactions,

Recognizing that our reactions,

Egoic reactions,

Personality reactions,

Emotional reactions,

Are really not part of what's really going on here and really approaching life with a sense of wonder.

That's so beautiful.

I think what I'm starting to hear from you is there's some sort of element that dissociates from yourself?

It's not exactly accurate.

It's altitude.

We don't really understand ourself.

There's an emotional pain self that thinks it's the self.

There's an egoic self that thinks it's the self.

There's a wantiness that thinks it's,

You know,

A part of ourselves that wants stealth esteem and self.

So you have to be accomplished and all these things and that's kind of like personality level self.

And we think those as ourself but as we practice inquiry method and altitude,

At every altitude there's a new self to be worked with.

And so once we cross the I-way,

We barrier,

We recognize there's a self that's more of a witnessing self that doesn't get embroiled in kind of these personal things that bring us down to another level.

So every time we go to another level,

We actually recognize a new self at a higher level.

And with practice,

We can identify more with that self than the lower order self.

And that's the beauty of this work.

Each altitude,

We discover an extra level of self that's at a higher altitude level of self which is actually more purely ourself.

It's not less purely ourself but more purely ourself because our pain body self is such a limited self that really has little to do with who we really are.

So that's again part of the wonder and amazement of this journey is we start,

The more we practice,

The more we recognize a more and more beautiful self who is who we truly are.

So how do you know when you've gotten there?

There's no arrival.

Again,

It's just we get to experience a new unfolding and what we do is we sense and feel a little freedom from the lower order self.

So if we're in the pain body self,

We're stuck in pain or emotional reaction,

When we recognize more the ability to not engage that,

We get more into our egoic self which has a little more perspective than that.

When we transcend our egoic self,

We start to recognize the personality self which is not about whether I win or lose.

And then when we let go of that self,

We start to see ourselves as more in the cosmic or universal flow,

More a part of all things and ultimately that we're non-separate from things.

And I'm far from the first person to describe this.

I mean this has been described in every religion,

Every philosophical arrangement.

This is more in the order of fundamental truth than anything any of us can own.

It is something that each of us can discover.

I've discovered layers of it in my own way.

You'll discover it layers in your own way.

Then other people have discovered and describe it in different ways.

But we're all describing a fundamental truth that we can connect with.

And that's again part of the inquiry method as I erase my opinions,

Views,

All that,

I can start to discover the underlying primal truth that underlies all of our experience that we can all come back to and share this experience.

By erasing these personality levels,

We start to discover the real fundamental truth that underlies everything.

And this is getting pretty spiritual level,

But this is the spiritual aspect of inquiry method that we discover the more work we do.

It's a natural progression.

We can't skip right to that.

A lot of people try to skip to that.

You know,

In New Age philosophy,

Oh,

We're all one.

That makes no difference if we haven't discovered the layers in because we're not really experiencing all one.

It's just an idea.

And that's more religious.

But when we really discover all one or have that experience,

It's no longer a theory.

It's a direct experience.

But the only way to do that is to develop ourselves at each one of the levels to recognize the level we're at,

Transcend that experience to the next level,

Transcend that experience to the next level,

Maybe in peak experiences have that experience.

But then we know it.

It's no longer theoretical.

This has been great.

Thank you so much,

Benalen.

I really love your questions.

And it's great to be here with you.

It's really a joy.

So this is another episode of the podcast.

Hope you enjoyed it.

Invite you to share it with others.

If you think they'd be inspired,

You know,

Please give us your comments.

And again,

If you'd like to be on the show sometime or have an interview,

We can even do it remotely.

We'd love to talk to you some of you out there online.

So have a great evening.

Good night.

To pursue inquiry method further,

We have a number of resources available to you.

Please join us at our website,

Www.

Inquirymethod.

Com,

Where you can sign up for our weekly blogs via email.

On the website,

You'll see various opportunities such as experiences,

One-on-one coaching,

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ECourses,

Leadership development,

Retreats for couples,

And many more.

Also,

If you'd like to appear or get coached by Kyle directly on this podcast,

Please contact us at info at inquiry method.

Com.

Again,

Info at inquiry method.

Com.

You can also stay connected with us through Facebook or Instagram at inquiry method.

If you have any further questions,

Comments,

Or feedback,

Please also email us or call our office at 541-201-8096.

Once again,

This is Life at Altitude with Kyle Mercer,

Inviting you to enlighten itself.

Reviews

Beautiful. I would only add that the lower levels of self are not lesser! They are integral, instructive, necessary, foundational. We don’t need to get beyond them, but to learn from them ❤️😍👍