We can do inquiry on anything that’s stressful. Any memory. Any idea about what happened in the past, or is happening now, or may happen in the future. Any dream, whether it’s a night or daydream. Any nightmare, whether dreamt or lived. Any story that touches us or trigger something in us, whether it’s a movie, book, or song. Any cosmology. Any mythology. Any fairy tale. Any vision. Any hope or fear. Any basic assumption about life and ourselves.
It doesn’t matter what we tend to conventionally label the story. As long as it’s here, and there is a charge, we can do inquiry on it. And even if there isn’t a charge, we can still do inquiry and see what’s here.
What we are interested in is how our mind creates our experience of the world. Especially when that experience creates suffering. The label we conventionally put on those stories doesn’t matter so much in this context.
Of course, the label matters in a conventional and practical sense. It’s often helpful to know that my story of the coffee shop across the road is accurate in a conventional sense, so I can go there and have a cup of tea and read. It’s equally helpful to know that my dream last night was a dream, and not reality in a conventional sense. And that fairy tales often express universal psychological truths and are created from our shared imagination and intuitive wisdom.