The Trap of Using Inquiry to Avoid
The Trap of Using Inquiry to Avoid
“Who are you without your story?” “Can you feel the sense of ok-ness that is here in this moment?” “We are all One.”
Profound inquiries, profound realizations that can easily be co-opted by the ego to justify, avoid, stay comfortable, and to stay stuck in patterns of suffering. When this process of co-opting arises, there can be a sense of disconnect, vacancy, loss of presence that is palpable. Something moves away from direct contact, and there may be a momentary sense of relief, but there is also a missed opportunity for true shift of consciousness.
What does this look like – using inquiry to avoid?
1. Using the absolute Truth of Oneness to avoid the relative truth of racial injustice. This can be an easy tendency in predominantly white spiritual circles. When faced with circumstances of racial tension, violence and inequity in our country, they can be avoided by dropping beyond the duality of race and recognize that we are all One. Such a comfortable place to rest – in this place of absolute Truth – we are all One beyond form and circumstance. Love and light.
And what is avoided? Any uncomfortable feelings associated with being in a white identified body-mind, connected to a lineage of oppression in a country founded on systemic racism. Deeper understanding is avoided - of the ways, in relative Truth, one may be unintentionally causing harm to Black, Brown, Indigenous, People of Color, perpetuating the suffering of others and oneself. By avoiding the relative truth that exists within the absolute Truth we avoid taking responsibility for what blocks the love and light. We avoid really connecting as one.
2. Knowing the outcome of a line of inquiry and jumping to the endpoint while skipping the steps in between. If in the past you inquired into the emotions of fear and anger, opened and dropped through underlying hopelessness and despair to open into peace, the next time you feel fear or anger you may tell yourself to just feel the peace – you know that is what is there somewhere. You know that's where the inquiry will probably end up. (but it might not, so don't take the chance)
What is avoided? Actually meeting the feelings of fear and anger, hopelessness and despair – not indulging or avoiding, but meeting. Allowing them life in the body, in the system to be just as they are – to house their vibration and discover how that transforms. To surrender. This is very different from knowing how feelings should transform and going there with a sense of effort and control. In taking the short-cut relief may come temporarily, or not, but the cost is perpetuating the pattern of self-abandonment.
3. Using the practice of orienting to ok-ness as a way to justify circumstances that are not ok. This is a practice in which awareness drops in beyond thoughts, emotions and circumstances to discover what is untouched, what is whole, what is ok in the midst of challenging circumstances. It is resting as the eye of the storm. Deep experience of stillness, silence, peace.
This practice can easily be co-opted by codependent tendencies, conflict-avoiding tendencies, and self-care avoiding tendencies. If, instead of feeling through the layers of thought, emotion, and circumstance into the felt sense of stillness that naturally reveals itself, one conceptualizes the experience, it can be used as justification to stay in an unhealthy relationship. It turns into a way of telling yourself that the circumstances are ok when they are really not. It can be a way of avoiding right action. If instead, through inquiry, there is fresh discovery of what is ok even though the circumstances are not, there can be the greater capacity feel what is uncomfortable and to take necessary action. This is what is possible.
Finally what happens when the avoiding stops? When inquiry is allowed to break open all egoic hold – all attempts to stay safe, comfortable, held? When every strategy is given up is this present moment? What is here? What is left?
I am curious to hear your experiences – of using inquiry to avoid and what happened when the avoiding stops.
Deep love and gratitude.
