Confrontation vs. Avoidance · Inner Wilderness

18d ago in Self Inquiry and Understanding

Confrontation vs. Avoidance

Let's talk confrontation and avoidance.

Anyone brave enough to embark on a 'healing journey' or path of expansion, will have much of the following to confront (if your path includes Psychedelic Explorations these confrontations can be amplified in their intensity and presentation);

Emotions
Beliefs
Past Experiences/Memmories
Parts/Facets of Self
Wounds
Limitations
Vissions and dreams
Possibilities and potentials

When we break down the word confrontation you have Con-Latin for 'With' and Front-'To Face'. We are being asked on our path to freedom and expansion to COME TO FACE WITH these aspects of self.

What is the opposite of Confrontaion? Avoidance. What is avoidance (see image below)- the act or practice of withdrawing, keeping away from, preventing or refraining from something.

Anyone playing the game of Life is constantly being confronted with themselves through the mirror that Life is holding up for us. Most people are running a frantic sympathetic-charged race to 'avoid' what is being reflected back to them. While that frantic race can still produce surfacel levels of successes (the job, the car, the house, the relationship, the bank account etc) this avoidance pattern never resolves what we are being asked to face (see the innumberable people with the material checklist crossed off who still are in states of deep constant suffering). If we accept the invitation this mirror offers us, and choose to go inward, into the wilderness within us, then encountering the list above is inevitable. Whether we choose to avoid what we find or confront it however, is a CONSCIOUS CHOICE.

As it pertains to the Psychedelic Space, I know that I myself, along with a number of clients, friends and acquaintances have been confronted with aspects of themselves that they have chosen not to confront (or at least REALLY dive into). I've never seen a single case where this choice of avoidance leads to resolution. In fact I've often seen it lead to more chaos, turmoil and conflict. An example of this is when someone takes something thats presented to them, and instead of really peeling a part the various meanings and interpretations, they take it at 'face value' and simply leave a job, relationship or pursuit to chase something else, and feel that 'that's what they were asked to do'. Meanwhile the fallout from these decisions often lead to creating more of the very problem that was being asked to be resolved. But because the deeper meanings and interpretations were not expounded on, the avoidance pattern simply creates more of 'the thing'.

What we resist persists. and If nothing changes then nothing changes.

Many people, therapists, coaches, facilitators and shamans will get close to 'the thing' that's being asked to be faced and will indulge their own and their clients past pattern and natural desire to avoid 'the thing'. This does nothing, except create the illusion that because they are AWARE of 'the thing' that their awareness of it alone constitutes resolution. This unfortunately is not the case. As someone myself who as spun around the wheel of cognitive awareness, I can tell you personally that it is most definitely NOT RESOLUTION. This is a very sneaky and insidius way that Psychedelics can become tools of avoidance, they present the journeyer with the cognitive/conscious awareness of a problem, however if the journeyer does not move INTO and become and feel 'the thing' with the trust that doing so is only temporary and will allow the process to come to completion, after which they can take the learnings to reconstruct their beliefs and constructs and create a new version of themselves.

THIS IS RESOLUTION

The question then becomes: What are you avoiding that's asking to be faced?

Drop em in the comments and let me know, as well as any way I can support you on your path of confrontation!

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