Research--Or is it stalling?

For the last couple of days (apart from jotting down several story ideas and writing the first paragraphs of three of them) I've been doing research on two of the themes of my novel. This is the novel that I've been working on forever, that in the past year has undergone mitosis (?) to become two novels, the second of which I haven't done much with yet. But recently the importance of these two themes--I hesitate to say what they are, but both are in a sense spiritual--has become clear to me and I wanted to familiarize myself with them before launching into the next round of revisions.

Or have I merely been delaying the inevitable pain of once again going over these sentences I've seen and modified hundreds of times? But I can't wait much longer. I believe I know what I have to do, and I undertake to post occasional snippets from the novel here as I progress through the 300 or so pages of the manuscript, polishing, refining, lacing these themes into the pattern I've visualized. No more stalling.