Mindfulness practice will naturally lead to increased insight in all aspects of your life. To begin with you see that many of your thoughts and behaviours are automatic and habitual.
With non judgemental self observation you may also discover how these thoughts and behaviours came about.
You may then see that many of your most deeply held beliefs, ideas, hopes, aspirations, and fears have been ‘added’ from outside – parents, teachers, peers, the media, government. Some of your beliefs may even only be as a result of wanting to do the opposite of what others were telling you to do.
Eventually you may wonder which beliefs or ideas – if any – are truly yours.
This is when the practice of ‘Self Enquiry’ can be very useful.
The most traditional method for Self Enquiry is to contemplate the question
“WHO AM I?”
As you ask yourself this question it is easier at first to contemplate who (or what) you are ‘not’. The key is to remember that the question is more important than the answer. You won’t necessarily find an answer that you can write down, you may just get an ‘intuitive’ sense of who you ‘are’ that deepens the more you contemplate the question.