Inner Self, Outer World (On the Silent Wings of Freedom)

Our experience of life on planet Earth is composed of these two major components, our internal world - composed of some sense of self some call the soul, our thoughts, feelings and intent; and an outer world, which can mean anything in terms of perils, opportunities, resources, communities, etc.

The outer world gets plenty of attention, both personally and socially. Personally, we neglect the outer world and things quickly turn to shit. We have to take care of our bodies, at least, or all that inner stuff goes away rather abruptly. Socially the outer world gets plenty of attention too, in the form of media. Unfortunately most of that attention is pretty low-grade, meaning that what we "consume" through media is mostly useless rubbish.

But let's go back inside a moment. Sense of self, thoughts, emotions and intentions. To me the sense of self is primary among these, the most essential part of who we are. It's our awareness, in the most base and enlightened sense. Thoughts, feeling and will are overlays on this sense of self.

Those this is what we have, and have control over. Thoughts, well, we all know about thoughts. We have them all the time. Same with emotions. It's true for intentions, though that may seem less obvious since we don't notice them as we might.

Another thing about this inner world. It is always in the present. This moment is all there is, regardless of where our thoughts, feelings or intentions may be focused.

So our inner and outer worlds are always in collusion. Field and background, yang and yin, they do not exist without each other. And yet the relationship seems too little explored. Here's what I mean.

Shit Happens

There are two principle ideas about how inner and outer worlds react together. The one in vogue in our culture is that of the passive observer. The assumption is that the world inside and the one outside are separate, and that outside world just sort of comes at us, and we react to it. One might say "shit happens."

The other concept is that of co-creation. Generally, it means that we and our environments are intricately involved with each other, and our inner world effects the outer as much as vice versa. "What ye so, ye reap" is a good metaphor.

So we have one of the world's great teachers on one hand, and a ton of personal experience on the other - tough spot. I'm personally more inclined to trust the words of Jesus at this stage, but that wasn't always the case.

Regardless, this is a most intriguing question, with immanently practical consequences. How do we (inner self) deal with the outer world most effectively when we don't know how the relationship works?

Here's what I've got. Since we can't prove either, let's hedge our bets and presume some of both. Let's say 50% of our experience is "shit happens" stuff, and the other half is "waht we so, we reap." If you doubt the latter has any merit, consider how dramatically the response changes if you are courteous or contentious in a trying situation. Especially one-on-one, what you put out certainly impacts what you get back.

Using this 50/50 model (or 80/20 if you like), that still means we can consciously impact the quality and pleasure of our personal experience of life. We control our reactions to "shit happens" events, and we control our moment by moment experience. Many believe its much easier to be happy if we don't have financial anxieties, emotional stresses, relationship traumas, etc. But those are impressions, they're conditions with your auto-response reaction already overlaid. Poverty is a condition, but financial anxiety is a state of mind. Even if we can't get past our fears completely, we can say, hey 50% of this situation is within my power to impact the kind of experieice I want. (More on that in The Center of Truth.) This is still a tremendous amount of power we have, and applying influence here can have great effect on the quality of our experience.

The Grand Illusion

Now for the surprise ending. This inner self outer world thing is an illusion. Pure and simple, a long-standing illusion that is the result of our hyper-active brains. Other animal species have no such illusion, and even so called "primitives," folks of indigenous cultures around the world recognize their oneness with their surroundings and others.

We've become so transfixed with the gift of thinking that our thoughts control the "programming" that maintains the inner outer illusion in each of us. More ideally, the thinking part of us is something to be drawn upon as a tool for finding solutions to life's issues. It was never intended to run constantly. Because what happens when it's running with nothing to solve? It focuses on uncertainties and issues it cannot affect. In effect, a waste of time.

Worse, the rapid fire of thoughts caught in our heads engenders fear. The constant rehashing of past or future situations does not bring clarity. It brings anxiety. Clarity comes from recognizing that our inner self and outer world are intrinsically connected - one doesn't exist without the other.

And if we none the less feel disconnected from our outer world, that is because that constant stream of thoughts has created an illusory self, some version of self that you think is better, or more acceptable to the world, than you are. But that's for another time.

The truth is that inner self, outer world is very much like a coin. We tend to see only one side at a time, but heads and tails are of the same coin. The way to see the coin, instead of heads or tails, is through mental quiet.

One trick I've heard, based on the yin yang, is to consider them as The Flame and The Void. When we wish to quiet ourselves, we get as comfortable as we can, and imagine a flame, surrounded by a great void of emptiness. To this flame our thoughts are drawn. We send them willingly. As our thoughts go into the flame, sooner or later we begin to notice the flame is surrounded by the void.

Parlor tricks, and there are a million of them. If you truly want to find a quiet mind, you will. I guess the real point is that we need to make connections, with our selves, with our neighbors and with our planet. And some of those connections need to be made where words can't go. If that's the case, we better go there too. On the silent wings of freedom.

Please join us.