Estrangement and Self-inquiry
Photo: Warrior-Dancer Forest Goddess Matangi by Barbie Robinson
One of our greatest fears is to be expelled from the familiar. When I meet people who are interested in my Individual Program, for many there is a lurking fear—what if my inquiry removes me from my familiar cosmos? Will it mean I have to leave friends and family? I do not suggest at any point that Self-inquiry is about removing oneself from anything. However, we appear to harbour a deep intuition that there is a mismatch between our Self or authenticity, and our everyday reality, therefore turning to Self may entail a transformation of our intimate reality.
Our ideals of spiritual life are often tropes of monastic renunciation. We admire people who retreat into caves and distant monasteries and emerge occasionally to address us lowly beings who must earn our living doing banal jobs. Even activities connected to spirituality are designed as retreats, a time away from everyday reality to “recover” so that we can return to our familiar activities somewhat rested and refreshed. Perhaps these models offer promise of freshness and new breath in our mechanistic lives and serve a kind of purpose.
The prevalence of the removal models of philosophical inquiry is a continuum from the more intense paradigm of the outcast mystic archetype. Ancient Goddesses were “fringe dwellers”, living outside villages in forests, cemeteries, and deserts. The Goddess chooses to leave the village. There is a back and forth between the village and Her domain of the forest. Of the ancient forest Goddess Matangi, it is said that She nourishes those who enter Her forest humbly for their own nourishment. Anyone who is exploitative is met with ferocious destruction.
One of the sensations of dance is called Pralaya or the Great Flood. In this archetypal invocation, the dance invites an allowing of the surge of the great waters. Intelligence is the surrender of resistance and muscular force to find the dance within the waters and to allow that to manifest in the Body. This is akin to surfing the big waves. There is an intimate and Body-led collaboration between the momentum of the waters and the movement of the Body. The dance that emerges is “other”, unencumbered by the weight of the known waters but without opposition or rejection. It is a reimagining of Reality as sensation.
Pralaya is dissolution or ending, like the ending of a phase of time by an apocalyptic event. It is a necessary sensation in Self-inquiry because some narratives of reality must be dissolved to make way for a flow that is resonant with the unfolding of Reality (Rta). We cannot stand against the big waves and hold what is known, we will simply be washed away. Dancing or surfing the waters is to manifest the flow.
Flow here is not a pastel coloured waft and float sensation. For our minds and our usual ways of living, it can be experienced as a shocking realization of how our lives have hitherto unfolded in ways that are distant from Self, authenticity or Reality (Rta). Like Matangi, we may suddenly find ourselves on the outer, perceiving the underbelly of life that most people willfully ignore to maintain facades of normalcy. This new vision is not just about activism and ideological issues far away from our intimate lives. Rather it is most intensely about our intimate lives—the architecture of family, friendship, purpose, and joy. And herein lies the terror.
My relationship with my parental family has been a dance of estrangement. Estrangement, as the researcher Kristina Scharp says, is not a one-off event. It is a process. It is voluntary on the side of the person choosing to distance themselves. It is undertaken because of the necessity to remove oneself from a situation of abuse or conflict. It ebbs and flows, especially when we live in a reality where family is sacrosanct, and estrangement is taboo.
Scharp says, “Just because people are biologically related does not guarantee a loving and supportive relationship.” We know this to be a fact, yet the myth of perfect families is pervasive. This is like many other myths we simply breathe in without critical reflection including myths about justice, selfless capitalism, and the trope that good will triumph evil.
Estrangement is not a romantic stance. As Stark says for most people it does not bring joy, or celebration. It is a necessity birthed from the need to feel grounded and healthy. While it is a challenging experience, it has also gifted me the intelligence of inquiry, and the strength to be critical about paradigms that are offered as conclusions. I attribute my life’s work in dance to the decision to walk into the forest to be with Matangi.
Does that mean one must be estranged to attend to Self-inquiry? No. Because there is no conditional template for Self-inquiry. But at the very least one must be free from the fear of change in our everyday lives. It is easier to speak of changing society and changing others. While social activism is important, change in the intimate circumstances of our lives, change in our perceptions and sensations, and the transformation of consciousness—these are often more radical and far less acknowledged.
Being in the forest with Matangi means life is never known or a philosophy of conclusions. Reality’s architecture is a garland of unfolding simplicity. This morning it was the wonder of birds waiting for me to change the water in the birdbath. They leapt in with much fanfare as soon as I turned my back. I felt more purposeful in that moment than at any other.
Family is Goddess Lakshmi’s plurality of all life, hand in hand, without hierarchy, serving each other through sacrificial offerings.
This is not easy and romantic. It is a moment by moment attending to my sensations rather than being washed away by the waters of unquestioned ideologies. It takes energy to be present and to catch the wave before it drowns us. But when we ride the crest of the wave, it is incomparable exhilaration.
Dancing in the Great Flood is both wide-eyed terror and explosive wonder, and so worth the vicissitudes of choosing to leave the village.