Inner Work
The journey inward is the foundation of personal transformation. Through understanding and working with our inner reality, we develop the tools to shape our experience and create lasting change.
Turning Attention Inward
Meditation
Learn the foundational practice of turning attention inward.
Mapping the Inner Space
Inner Entities
Explore and understand the various elements that make up your inner world.
Dealing With Inner Forces
Detachment
Learn the art of detachment to gain clarity and freedom in your inner work.
The first step to learning how to use this framework to evolve our personal experience is understanding how to see, understand, and actively work with our inner life. This begins with knowing how to look inward.
Meditation: Inward Looking
Meditation is simply the act of looking inward. When many hear this word, they think of specific techniques or practices - sitting cross-legged, breathing exercises, or mantras. But at its core, meditation is about developing our capacity to be present with our inner experience.
This inward looking requires making space for it. Just as we would need to spend time in a foreign country to understand its culture and customs, we need to dedicate time to our inner world if we want to become familiar with its landscape and learn to navigate it properly. This might mean setting aside specific times - evenings, mornings, or lunch breaks - or simply maintaining awareness of our inner space throughout the day.
A common misconception is that meditation is purely about the mind or thinking. This stems from a broader confusion in our culture that equates consciousness with mind. However, consciousness is a bigger, more encompassing reality within which mind and thought occur. When we meditate, we're not just observing our thoughts - we're connecting with the full spectrum of our inner experience, including our feelings, body sensations, and the very sense of being itself.
Through meditation, we develop the basic ability to witness what's happening within us. This witnessing creates the foundation for all inner work, as it allows us to become aware of the various forces and entities that make up our inner life. Without this fundamental capacity to look inward with presence and awareness, any attempt at inner work would be like trying to navigate a landscape with our eyes closed.
The Inner Landscape
Like entering a foreign country for the first time, the sheer quantity of different forces at work in our inner world can feel overwhelming, and it can be difficult to discern one thing from another. Having a map of this territory helps us navigate more effectively. Let's explore some of the essential entities we encounter in our inward space.
Thoughts
Thoughts are perhaps the most familiar aspect of our inner landscape, yet they come in many forms. While we often experience them as inner dialogue or words, thoughts can also manifest as visual images, sounds, colors, or memories. These are called "thoughtforms" - ideas and concepts taking shape in our mental space.
It's crucial to understand that thoughts are primarily mental entities, associated with the part of us we call "mind." However, this leads to a common confusion in discussions about meditation and inner work - the equation of consciousness with thinking. Mind is an entity that exists within consciousness, but consciousness itself is a bigger, more encompassing reality within which mind and thought occur.
Feelings
Feelings are fundamentally different from thoughts in that they are primarily sensorial. Rather than being formed and discrete like thoughts, feelings are more like waves and vibrations - movements that we sense inwardly. Importantly, these sensory experiences don't require physical stimuli; we can "feel" something happening on an inner level, like remembering the smell of a rose or the sound of a favorite song, even without external input.
Feelings manifest across a spectrum - from chaotic emotions like anger, guilt, fear, or sadness, to more balanced forms like quiet knowing or intuition. Learning to recognize and work with this language of feelings is essential to navigating our inner landscape effectively.
The Ego
The ego or human personality might seem inseparable from who we are, but when we make the journey inward, we discover it as a distinct entity with its own character, behaviors, qualities, needs, and voice. It is a culmination of all the different aspects of ourselves we have associated with our identity - formed by ideas like "I am a teacher," "I am a survivor," "I had a hard life," and the stories we tell about ourselves.
This entity has developed its own nature based on everything we've fed it over the years about "who we are." It is a more instinctual part of ourselves, deeply related to the inner child. As we learn to observe it, we can begin to recognize its distinct voice and patterns, which is essential for conscious growth and transformation.
The Body
While the physical body might seem purely "outer," we actually access it inwardly as well. This dual nature becomes clear when we close our eyes and move our awareness to different parts of the body - feeling the soles of our feet, sensing our abdomen, or experiencing the center of our head.
This inner access to our physical form is crucial for working with energy, as there's a direct correlation between our inner experiences and physical manifestation. For instance, long-held emotional tensions can manifest as physical contractions, while meditation and spaciousness can allow our cells to open up and breathe more freely.
Understanding these different aspects of our inner landscape helps us work more effectively with our inner reality. Each has its own nature and requires its own approach, yet all are interconnected parts of our complete inner experience.
Detachment
Detachment is often misunderstood. When many people hear this word, they think immediately of dissociation or disconnection - to turn away from or reject something. But this is not detachment. Detachment is primarily a process of disidentification—to make ourselves independent of an inner force, recognizing that what we truly are is bigger than any single aspect of our consciousness.
The Observer and the Observed
Consider a simple but profound question: If you can listen to your thoughts, who is it that's doing the thinking and who is doing the listening? Moreover, if both are "you," which one exists at a higher level? The one doing the listening - the observer - must be primary, because they can be conscious of what they're hearing while also remaining independent of it. The observer can be two things - both aware and separate - while the thinker can only be one.
Understanding True Detachment
Detachment has to do with a certain neutrality - a freedom from bias, prejudice, and partiality. This doesn't mean becoming aloof or uncaring. Being independent and neutral doesn't mean you don't care; it means you don't allow your preference for one reality over another to distort your perception.
Disidentification and Disentanglement
- "I have a body, but I am not my body"
- "I have thoughts, but I am not my thoughts"
- "I have feelings, but I am not my feelings"
- "I have a personality, but I am not my personality"
The Power of Distance
The importance of detachment lies in its ability to help us see clearly. As long as we are identified with an inner force or entity - whether it's our anger, our thoughts, or our ego - we cannot see it from the outside. We become that entity. Detachment gives us the space we need to work with all the entities of our inner life from a free and independent space.
This distance creates the opportunity for objectivity and clarity. There are essentially two parts to our being: one that is objective and the other subjective. The subjective side is involved and personal; the objective side is uninvolved and impersonal. We need both to live a healthy life. Detachment is the tool that allows us to cultivate the objective side with regard to our inner reality.
When we can maintain this neutral, observant stance, we connect more deeply with a part of ourselves that is bigger than any specific form - a part that cannot truly be contained. This freedom is peace, allowing us to work consciously with the forces of our inner lives while maintaining the perspective needed for true transformation.
Conclusion: A Complete Approach to Inner Work
These three elements - meditation, understanding the inner landscape, and detachment - form an integrated approach to inner work. Each supports and enhances the others: meditation provides the basic capacity to look inward, knowledge of the inner landscape gives us a map of what we'll find there, and detachment offers the tool we need to work effectively with what we discover.