Relinquishing The Addiction to 'Figuring Out'

Description

Our friend Dave Smith recently phrased addictive disorders in a very interesting way. He said: “you can never get enough of something that almost works.”

If something clearly and obviously cannot work, it is unlikely to become a source of mental and emotional investment. There has to be a glimmer of hope, or the occasional meeting of a core need, for a compulsion or addictive pattern to really come alive as an entity. 

One general rule for all conditioned patterns is that they are trying to meet a genuine need with a misattuned strategy. 

In the case of the conditioned adaptive strategy of “trying to figure things out,” the underlying core need is one of the most powerful there is - the need to understand and feel secure in one’s decision-making and overall direction in life.  

In our work, the sense of feeling held by life - of having our way through the river revealed to us on a moment-by-moment basis - is what the satisfaction of this need feels like. Being held is a by-product of re-discovering and aligning to true nature (the inner parent).

Before this re-alignment happens, what we are going to be dealing with is some form of conditioned adaptive strategy that is attempting to do the work of true nature. Usually, it will be some form of strategy or compensation that we “leaned on” in our formative development years.

For many of us, that strategy is going to include a strong dose of “figuring it out” energy. What does that mean?

One thing it means is that there is going to be a sense that we are always ruminating on problems that seem insoluble, slippery, inconvenient, oppressive, and bigger than we are. 

As an example, maybe we are trying to plan a week for our in-laws. Maybe we are aware that these in-laws already judge and misunderstand us. Maybe we are also aware that they are quite picky and not shy about giving voice to what they do not like or approve of.

“Figuring out” gets a hold of this, and… well…. It starts trying to figure it out! 

As soon as that energy starts, if you have a self-observation practice, you will notice a somatic and energetic contraction. 

The conditioned mind has gotten hold of a problem that it basically can’t solve and doesn’t really know how to approach. This will register immediately in the body as some kind of stress response and in the mind as a kind of disorganized cascade of looping and repetitive thoughts and images.

There are many things that we can observe about this “figuring out” condition, but perhaps the most salient is the “quicksand” nature of any decisions or mental positions we adopt while in that state. Often these decisions arrive at the end of a cycle of exhaustion. We get sick of the rumination, call a few friends, get tired of talking about it, and just kind of “go with option A” to be done with the whole thing (this is the energetic collapse that follows all forms of misattuned activation).

Here, "quicksand" refers to the instability of the conclusions we reach in the conditioned state. Figuring out might tentatively conclude that we should take the in-laws to the taqueria because it’s walking distance and they don’t like driving, but then start second-guessing itself 15 minutes later when one of them makes some passive-aggressive comment that “all you ever do when we visit you is take us for tacos.”

Remember: whatever energy birthed and sponsored your original thinking in the situation will continue to “flavor” the unfolding of that situation. This is the inner meaning of the phrase “everyone lives in their own world.” This kind of thinking can be weaponized in dumb ways, but the truth that it is pointing at is not dumb: an afflictive state is more than “a few thoughts,” it is a world that we conjure. 

Thus, if “figuring out” - which is essentially a fear state - sponsored all the planning we did with the in-laws, the energy of scatteredness, uncertainty, overwhelm, and low-confidence is going to keep rhythmically cycling through the situation as it unfolds. In other words, “the fear-based struggle to figure things out” births actions and situations where we struggle with “more problems that need to be figured out.” 

As Paul Selig says, “the job of fear is to create more fear.”

At a deeper level, the busyness of “figuring out” is a defensive mask that hides the core truth of the conditioned mind: it doesn’t know what to do, it is not connected to the Whole, it does not feel supported, and it cannot fundamentally sense the rightness of any action. 

Only true nature can do these things! But to access true nature in a consistent way in our decision-making, we have to negotiate with and compassionately contact the “figuring out” part enough times that it is willing to risk surrendering the authority we have given it.

In the context of silent sitting and self-observation, we are doing two things to directly address this transfer of authority. 

The first thing we are doing is pausing the momentum of the conditioned state. For however much pausing is mentioned as a strategy in mindfulness and psychotherapy, its absolutely central role in the psychospiritual process is still easy to overlook.

We may not know exactly where we are coming from, or what part of our thought process is deluded, or what aspects of the situation we are not seeing, but anyone who has done even a little bit of practice can somatically sense that contraction that comes when something is off. The issue is that we are in the habit of bypassing that crucial piece of information because it is subtle and easy for the mind to ignore.

This is the first habit we need to address. If we are confused, pause. If we are in doubt about a course of action, pause. 

Stop what you are doing. Do not pick up your phone. Do not distract yourself. Really pause.

Normalize the fact that confusion is a valid energetic state that simply requires time to process and digest. Stop trying to get out of it or pretend that it shouldn’t be happening.

From the pause, many tools and techniques can unfold, but as a general rule, we are going to be moving from homogenized beliefs to living questions.

The conditioned mind tells. The healed mind inquires and receives. 

The healed mind is a conduit that translates the energy of true nature into thought (inner image and inner voice) so that it can eventually manifest as right action in the world.

So we pause with the discomfort of the statement: “all we ever do with you is eat tacos. Can’t we do something else for once?” 

Of course the “figuring it out” part wants to immediately run away with this one. Maybe it’s merged with a people-pleasing part that wants to finally prove to the in-laws that we are interesting and sophisticated. This makes us think about how we could quickly pivot our plans for the evening and try to go to some new, exotic and hard-to-get-into restaurant that is beyond our budget.

But there is a commitment to pausing. 

So we watch the mind, and then we watch the body and our energy. And immediately what becomes visible is feelings of stress and fatigue. The energy is manic, but also exhausted. We are overreaching, and we risk being honest about that internally. We note it three times if we have to.

And then more pausing, and more inquiry. 

We gently ask “what is true right now in this situation?” three times, slowly. 

We arouse our devotion for the Truth. We really want to know! We don’t want to live our life mindlessly carrying out sequences of deluded motivations, one after another! This lifetime is too precious, too short.

We want the truth as it is manifesting right now, and we want to act on what it says!

We wait in the energy of that prayer-intention. We allow every cell in the body, the nervous system, and the sense doors to be open, vibrant, sensitive and receptive. The mind is still busy, but we are stabilizing more and more in the intention, which makes sensing the energies of fear and the desire to please easier. We also bring a kind of forgiveness for that aspect of the mind. It’s doing the best it can, and it is clearly in over its head.

We keep sitting, and our energy gets quieter still. And then a simple phrase comes through the inner voice: 

“You are tired. Take them to tacos. Allow them to see you as boring.”

This voice lands differently than the manic “figuring out” voice. It settles cleanly into the body with no charge. The inner voice speaking is not making an argument, or manipulating you into a mental position. There is, in fact, no trace of any form of subtle or gross coercion. The energetic signature is “take it or leave it.” It carries the signature of “things as they are.” It is blunt and straightforward but not uncaring.

Like all wisdom-expressions, it also evokes some fear. The personality structure initially cannot fathom that the situation could be navigated with that level of simplicity. But the body and the energy system are now starting to really settle around it. The simplicity feels outrageous and slightly anarchistic but totally delicious and freeing at the same time!

So we go ahead and risk following. We’ve observed what “figuring out” does enough times with enough different people in enough different situations for that risk to feel not even that risky. The pattern is a closed loop. Nothing new ever happens there, and we are coming into deeper and deeper conviction about that.

In Retreat

In the detailed example above, you can sense the dance between pausing, presence, self-observation, inquiry, and reception. This is the fundamental dance of a spiritually embodied life, and retreat is one of the main places where we can slow down, settle in, and practice the basic components of the dance. 

Ideally, retreat is a stripped down container where we are working with these components in mostly mundane activities with little interpersonal charge. There is very, very important groundwork to be laid in more controlled containers! While we may not be in an interaction that brings up our most charged material, the mechanisms that are revealed in the mind when we are watching it closely will be the same. Knowing (vs. “figuring out”) whether to take a nap, or eat oatmeal is the same mechanism as Knowing that it’s okay just to take the in-laws for tacos because their opinion of us is not our problem. There are not two kinds of Knowing! There is one taste to Truth! There is one signature or resonance to Knowing, whether it is oatmeal or risking allowing someone to think badly of you. 

In retreat, through the development of stability, observation, and insight, we become clearer and clearer about how Knowing feels, and how conditioning feels, and what the difference is in our specific system.