Dogma and Inquiry
I was listening today to a clip of Rupert Sheldrake (a biologist responsible for the discovery of morphogenic fields) speaking about dogma in the scientific community. He has written a book exposing what he sees as the main 10 delusions upheld by scientists that inhibit western science deepening their inquiry into the nature of mind and matter. If you are interested in learning more about his work, you can look him up on You Tube. Interestingly, his TED talk was removed, seemingly because certain fundamentalist aspects of the scientific community felt threatened! Listening to him ignited an interesting internal discussion, and it set me thinking about these two terms ‘dogma’ and ‘inquiry,’ and how they relate to our relationship to ourselves and each other. According to the Oxford dictionary, dogma refers to: - “A principle or set of principles laid down by an authority as incontrovertibly true”. By its very nature, dogma therefore implies an external source of authority and inhibits openness and inquiry. Dogma blocks the road to truth. Dogma knows the truth and that’s that. Compared to this, inquiry is: -“an act of asking for information”. Inquiry, then, is the willingness to look within and to question: to release assumption, belief and cloying self-identity. Inquiry is a impulse to discover, to learn. This is comfortable and easy to see and relate to when we look at how this applies to our thinking around science, religion and our education system (which, by the way, trains us into dogma), politics etcetera. It is perhaps a lot less comfortable when we bring the discussion closer – to our emotional life and relationships.
Personally, the most painful episodes in my life have occurred because someone I care about has been unwilling to genuinely enter into inquiry. These have been individuals who profess to cultivate, to question, to desire depth. Those individuals, whom have outwardly expressed a willingness to relate with honesty, yet struggle to manifest this into difficult interactions. It seems rare to meet in another a penetrative desire to see the truth of a situation, when a disturbance or conflict has arisen…especially if it involves them! This trait puzzles me deeply, as it is so counter-productive. It seems to me inevitable that, if you allow intimacy into your life, people will do and/or say things that hurt you at some point in the course of that developing friendship or relationship. This may take 10 years of friendship or 15 years of marriage but it will come: the moment when you feel betrayed or hurt by their words or actions. There seems to be a number of reactions we can have at this junction, this moment of crucible between two people:
Ignore the problem; hoping time will make it go away. Which sometimes it does, great, that’s a win! More often than not it leads to subtle contractive behaviour where a certain quality of warmth and ‘free flow’ becomes withdrawn – freezes. One only needs to look at some long-term relationships where the joy and warmth sustained at the beginning, maybe for some years, gradually erodes. Perhaps not completely, but just so there are areas of the relationship both people avoid, refuse to examine and gradually even forget ever existed. The relationship may be fine on a superficial level, but becomes a little empty.
Full withdrawal from the friendship/relationship. Effectively the end of it, although of course sometimes people may stay together physically during this withdrawal.
Attempts to communicate to heal the problem. This is where you see if the previously stated and cultivated willingness to inquire is actually real. Are both parties able to inquire into their nature, or is it a one-sided situation? Or was the commitment to honesty only an idea that could not withstand a confrontation into ones strongly-help dogmas (oneself, others)? This last option is, I believe, the only way it’s possible for a friendship or relationship to deepen, particularly if the misunderstanding and hurt is strong enough to affect the availability of warmth and intimacy. When it is possible to forget about an incident, to laugh and be as free as before the upset occurred this is all well and good; the technique I am lauding is for when this is not possible. There seems to be certain essential ingredients for this type of inquiry. Ingredients that both must contribute equally. These are:
Honesty. The willingness to expose oneself and to accept that the other will be doing the same.
The willingness to accept the others viewpoint. Not as a denial of ones own experience, but because it is a given that no two people see the same situation in the same way. That the view, although different from your own, is genuine.
To fully take responsibility for the emotions stimulated – including the not so obvious emotional reactions such as coldness, checking out, superiority (‘well I can see the real truth’), boredom and hurt, anger etcetera.
The willingness for both parties to truly apologise. An apology being a heartfelt awareness that your behaviour (even if it was totally unintended) has hurt this person you care about and finding some way to communicate it. This goes beyond the word ‘sorry’, which can act as a defensive wall that is easy to hide behind. This is because it’s painful to be open to someone else’s upset. We have to have the strength to ‘bear’ their distress. If there is a conflict, both are involved as both have contributed; both therefore need to reach an acknowledgement of their part in the problem and reach out honestly with their apology, and manifest their desire to take responsibility for themselves. This is a fundamental aspect of honest communication, and yet it is often here one or both parties end the conversation.
The willingness to actively learn something about yourself, rather than affirm all your dogmatic, self-protective beliefs.
I know these types of conversations can be gold; I have experienced it many times. It can provide an opportunity to break apart a whole layer of ones gripping to the ‘self’. It takes a great deal of courage, vulnerability and trust. Trust of oneself, of ones commitment to truth, to the desire to liberate the love and care between you again. In our spiritual practice, we are ultimately cleaning ourselves. Removing delusions, letting go of falsities, shedding untruth. This is hard, and how much more complex this becomes when it involves our close relationships! Surely we are not all so fragile in our sense of self that we cannot be open and admit we were wrong? Perhaps I am a dreamer (but I’m not the only one!), and if it’s a delusion I am fond of it; but I think humans can relate to one another with greater kindness around conflict. Particularly those whom profess to cultivate; I expect more of them, as I do of myself.
If we have a good sense of who we are, what we have experienced and what we feel, we have no need to assert this on to anyone. This is essentially an important aspect of self-esteem. This has nothing to do with the need to be right in those feelings and experiences, and because of this it enables us to actually listen to someone else’s experience openly. When this is present it is always obvious in the interaction as the absence of a dogmatic, defensive approach. Insecurity is not driving the whole thing. Perhaps in this writing I am answering some of the questions I have about all of this. It is precisely the fragility of sense of self that prevents us from being open with one another. It takes a strong sense of oneself to be seen as imperfect, vulnerable or ‘messed up’ in some way, with an awareness that we all share various flaws. Perhaps it takes weighty insight (not intellectual understanding) into the emptiness of self to be willing to expose the layers lying on top of it. For if one sees clearly these emotions are of a certain irrelevance, these beliefs are just that: irrelevant. To then expose and relinquish them is no loss at all. It all lacks reality anyway. This moment has to be reached anew each time, rather than a ‘spiritualization” that gets plonked on top of the fact that distress/conflict exists. So no matter how many times we undertake this journey of inquiry when there is a problem, we meet this insight afresh, relinquish a little more of our self clinging…learn more. This moment only arises from residing in the open space with another, where the opinions, beliefs and hurts are heard and, like everything that is listened to deeply, and with skill: released. When we have had the courage to walk up that mountain – only after the individual journey of each conflict do we come to appreciate the expansive view, the space, and the fact that it’s great to share it with someone you love. The dusty glasses have come off, and the burdens seen and released to the wind. Our feet can curl, bare toed into the ground of spaciousness shared by all beings.
