Self-inquiry is not self-help

Photo: Geoffrey Dunn

Recently I had a conversation with someone in my program about why I do not apply the words healing, therapy, and self-help for the dance inquiry.

In my view Self-inquiry in analytical or verbal traditions is not possible as Self-inquiry asks that we relinquish the mind and its cosmos of word and thought. It is in non-verbal traditions such as dance that the radical nature of Self-inquiry emerges. Part of its radical nature is its absolute non-instrumentality. By this I mean that unless we approach it free from the lens of “what’s in it for me” it simply does not exist. We may still “learn” the dance and its information, but its seizing of our Body and Consciousness so that we become the dance (or Reality) does not eventuate.

In the west, and now increasingly even in the East from where some of the most popular philosophical and spiritual traditions of our times originate, spirituality has become conflated with self-help. And Self-inquiry, which is the avowed purpose of spiritual philosophies, has been harnessed to the wagon of self-improvement, well-being, therapy, and healing.

Self-help is very friendly to the marketplace because it is language in terms of benefits and gains. It services the essential query of self-interest which is “what is in it for me”. In a milieu of competition and comparison, the aspiration of the “better version of me” is an alluring one. And the marketplace is crowded with models of these “better versions of me” who appear to have the answers, are calm and controlled, and are celebrated and affirmed by the public.

So why should anyone take up dance inquiry or Self-inquiry? In truth there is no reason other than a calling, or perhaps a seizing. To speak from my personal experience, the dance dances me because I have no choice. It may appear as if I do in a rational and mind-led sense. An archetypal example is the story of the warrior Arjuna, in the epic Mahabharatha, when confronted with battling His own family. He initially thinks that He has the choice of not fighting only to realise that the choice was an illusion. Self-inquiry is the counter-cultural movement that is choiceless.

At times, I even baulk at the phrase “Self-inquiry” for it seems to reinforce the attention on the psychological “self”. Even when we clarify that the “self” here is the archetypal Self, or the primordial Consciousness that slots us into Nature and the elements, it is difficult to shake off the long history of psychological “selfhood”. And in popular spiritual traditions, Self-inquiry is aligned with concepts like “wholeness” and “unity”, which propose a state of calm and peaceful perfection where we are undisturbed by the churning of Reality. And we can see that the role models of spirituality exemplify these undisturbed and equanimous states.

Venturing into the caves of primordiality, which is the realm of spiritual Self-inquiry, is not a calm and peaceful dance. The caves are guarded by Deities who are ferocious, and who may trick and steal things from us including our Hubris and narratives of selfhood. They will likely defeat us most of the time. In the precious moments we manage to get to the door of the Goddess, we must attend for they are fleeting. We will be flung outside the cave as soon as Hubris or the mind kicks in, which is inevitable. And then we must reignite our dance again, and again, and again.

So, is spirituality all about suffering? Suffering has drama and theatre. In ancient Greece, the ritual dramatic tradition was the tragedy with its catharsis or purging of our emotions. In Indian Rasa philosophy of dance, the anguish of longing or yearning is a foundational sensation. Suffering, or the dark night of the soul, as an inevitable dimension of spirituality is an attractive proposition. It services our Hubris about overcoming the impossible to arrive at the destination of enlightenment.

In one of the documentaries about mountaineering, the difference in approach to task of climbing the mountain between the Sherpas, the natives of Nepal, and the western mountaineers, was highlighted. The Sherpas performed a ritual before their ascent seeking permission and blessings of the Goddess of the Mountain.

When they encountered barriers like dangerous weather conditions, their instinct was to retreat because they saw it as a signal from the Goddess that it was not the right time. The western mountaineers largely approached the ascent as “conquest”. They saw the same signs as challenges to be mastered, often risking their lives. I am not holding either approach right or wrong, simply setting them out as two different lenses on a task.

The ”suffering” such as it is, happens when Hubris confronts intractability. Suffering is heroic and is an essential element of the archetypal “hero’s journey”. However, dance inquiry is anything but a hero’s journey. It is about relinquishing the heroic narrative and discovering what the dance-cave reveals about Reality. It is not to affirm the conclusions and stories we already have about the Divine or Goddess or Reality. And it is not an ambition to be realised or a challenge to be mastered. Rather it is to be awed, sometimes shocked, mostly humbled, and always met by the unexpected. And we do this with a sense of play and enjoyment.

The reason why ancient ritual traditions of Self-inquiry were dance is because of the importance of play and enjoyment to hold Hubris at bay. Indeed, the archetype of the “seeker” is that of a young person, childlike, playful, curious, and open. Self-inquiry is the inquiry into Reality as the Goddess or the Divine. This Reality is always unfolding, never known and entirely awe-inspiring. We cannot be awed when we simply expect to find what we already know.

Suffering and benefits are two sides of the same self-help coin. The Goddess’s cave is about neither. It is about itself. While self-help is useful in milieus from where it emerges such as psychology and health, it can distort the dynamics of archetypal inquiries into Consciousness or Reality. These inquiries require the paradoxical confluence of intimacy and distance in equal measure. That is, one must be able to explore the archetypal cosmos without conflating it with personal narratives, and at the same time allow that experience to be unfolded in the intimacy of one’s own Body and sensation. Therefore, the dance leads us rather than being led by our narratives and goals.

We cannot limit the limitless with our known roadmaps and destinations.