The Inner Journey

This is a long piece, like the journey of life - if we are fortunate - and I have recommended places to take a break in reading!

As the decades of my life have rolled on (I am about sixty now), I've noticed that I don’t get to stay the same. Life has been transforming me, from moment to moment and year to year.  Most of the time I don't notice it happening - but when I look back even five years, I realise how much has changed, and how far I've come.

This ongoing process of inner transformation is what I call the inner journey, which I imagine as having a spiral shape, so that we return over and over again to the 'same place', and yet see things differently this time around.

Song:  Never Been Here Before

Two Directions

Since I can't just stay the same - in the same state of mind, I mean - throughout my life, this means I must be making choices, consciously or unconsciously. I am on a path, and the choices I make decide what direction I am travelling in, and what kind of 'place' (i.e. state of mind and heart) I will get to.

here?

or here?

I would describe the two main directions I can choose between in life as 'towards' or 'away from'. 

By 'towards' I mean trying to accept what life keeps showing me about my errors, fears and blind spots, so that with practice I can become less and less embarrassed (and resistant) when I get into an uncomfortable situation. I can begin to appreciate the humour of my own obliviousness, and the way it belongs to the blundering, largely lovable dance of humanity.

By 'away from' I mean running away from difficult situations, trying to fend off unwelcome, inconvenient or uncomfortable self-knowledge, or trying to avoid my disquieting feelings.  It means clapping my hands to my ears and gabbing loudly from an old familiar script, to drown out anything that might be new and that therefore threatens to upset my coping strategies.  Or it may mean subsiding into depression - putting my life on hold.

I have travelled in both of these directions, and - on the 'away from' trail - tried out all the above avoidance strategies.  I have tried to run away from my own inner chasms, I have sunk into a kind of inner stupor and disaffection, and I have allowed busy social activity and mental scripts to make a loud, distracting noise.

The inner journey is - or can be - a lifelong love story - a coming back together of aspects myself which have been held apart.  (See Carol Anthony, Guide) As this process goes on, I find life becoming easier, less strenuous, more free-feeling, rewarding and amusing, and less scary.

My inner journey, I feel, is bringing about the restoration of unity to something sensitive and intact that had been split apart by pain and fear.  This journey is a necessary one to me, not an optional, self-indulgent extra.

My daily journeys, from what is said and done on the surface, to the inner truth of how I feel in the present moment, bring me insights or show me connections, each of which is a step on the way in my lifelong journey. I walk my own path by negotiating – by savouring, acknowledging, addressing, and by not avoiding - each day’s experiences.

Travelling day by day, learning to stay on track, and be less easily diverted, asking for help and letting myself be helped, staying open, enjoying the moments – all this is done step by step.

Facing and overcoming (and learning not to fall into) the same old pitfalls (my old misguided, fear-tinged reactions) - moving on, alert and attentive, feeling my way – this is how I am learning to proceed.

Experience shows me what feelings to trust and follow, and what feelings to resist and stand firm against – the ego-sponsored emotions, which all have fear as a main ingredient.

Good place for a break.

Human Space Oddities

Almost as decisive as my ‘destination’ in life – my direction of travel, my values, is my starting point – that is, what or where I am travelling from, and away from.

Casting around for a word to balance ‘destination’, a word to evoke the decisiveness - and impact - of the starting point, the precise dynamics of the beginning of life's journey, I hit on ‘launch pad’. Though it lacks the gravitas of ‘destination’, I like it - for it has plenty of force, or lift-off.

Given the involuntary, automatic trajectory of rockets, and their loaded relationship to Ground Control, the term ‘launch pad’ contains (like the word ‘destination’) a suggestion of ‘destiny’ - an idea that has fascinated, confused and scared human beings for millennia.

I do not believe that our destiny in life is pre-written or fixed, particularly not by other people’s actions or attitudes. I write my own destiny day by day, by the way I live, moment to moment - and the way I live proceeds from how I am, at heart.

In some sense, it may be true to say that how I am is not so different from who I am.

w h o     h o w     h o w    w h o  ?

My own biographical starting point put a particular spin on who/how I am, and so it is bound  to have a huge influence on my trajectory through life.

To a great extent, who we are is an expression of who (how) we have learned to be, in our early years and relationships – what roles we have become used to playing, for example.

Who/how we are is also a biological expression of who/how our parents, and all their forebears have been - in ways we are constantly learning more about.

Human beings are cultural animals, herd animals, as well as capable of being independent (at least in some ways) and solitary (to some extent). Our psyches are hugely influenced by our experience of infancy and childhood.

To continue the launch pad / trajectory image, each of us is like a living rocket fired into space with a fuel tank full of other people’s stories.

On this flight which I did not choose to board (and did not press the ignition switch for), if I wish to travel towards somewhere I want to be going, I need to find my way to the cockpit, sit in the pilot’s seat, and work out how to fly the thing. 

In other words, I need to become responsible for my own actions, aware of my own feelings, and self-directing, rather than propelled by my unconscious impulses – my hidden cargo - the stuff I haven’t wanted to know about (my undisclosed, un-discharged payload).

Another break here?

What was That?

As I've been blundering along on my inner path, situations that have seemed fine at the time have often turned out later to have been not so fine after all. I have got used to these delayed 'duh' reactions, as I have got to know myself a bit better, and slowly, the degree of ‘offness’ I tend to tolerate, before noticing something's wrong and withdrawing, has become less and less.

In a cheering corollary to this negative hindsight, events that have pained and inconvenienced me and others, as they occurred, often turn out to have been exactly what was required to wake us up, and to get us out of some mess we barely realised we were in at the time!

There is a Buddhist saying that if we want to see our future, we should look deeply into our present, since it contains all the seeds of what is to come.

The equivalent saying from the Gospels would be Jesus’ explanation to the disciples: ‘by their fruits you shall know them’. This is how whatever wrongness we have overlooked is eventually unmasked in our lives – by its consequences, its after-effects.

Dismantling the Barricades/Supports

As I've been facing up to my fears, and gradually learning to see things more clearly, I've become able to do without some of the half-truths and self-images that supported my fragile young adult personality like scaffolding - or like the supports that hold the rocket upright on the launch pad. 

My excuses and rationales, and my strenuous efforts to ‘be good’ and earn approval were bracing me against a reality I believed to be hostile and on some level ‘out to get me’ - but also, seeking to compensate and mask my own self-dislike.

In fact, come to think of it, all that effort was really self-betrayal.

Dark Reflections, or How Life Helps Us

The major, decisive emotional events of my life have acted as mirror-magnets.

These events have reflected the way I have been at the moments they occurred - i.e. how/who I was on the inside, in my heart, where I can't look directly. These decisive events have also, gradually, drawn out some of the ‘shrapnel’ or poison-tipped arrows that had been lodged there.

As I understand it, this double action works through my natural, involuntary responses to real-life events in the present.  My feelings accurately reflect my experience.  When I attend to my feelings, remembering this about them, and allow them to affect me, they are released, their job is done. 

Reality attracts reality, truth heals itself.  Life returns to life.

So my everyday life in the here and now helps me to discover - and to honour - any feelings from the past which I have been denying (i.e. refusing to feel), by arousing these self-same feelings afresh – and giving me another go, another opportunity to let them in – and another, until I feel them and am thereby freed from their clamouring grip.

This is the work of the inner journey – the ongoing work – to reclaim life from fear, for love.

Time for a break?

Necessary Inner Housework

Day to day, my psyche takes in impressions and responds to these, whether or not I am aware of what's going on. Some of the processing is done by my dreams, some by the body – I don’t need to know the details, or try and supervise, as long as I remain steady and centred.

But if I become ruffled – irritated, angered, or unduly upset, or if I have a niggling uneasiness, a ‘mood’ that hangs around, I have learned to enquire into what sparked it off – what has unsettled me.

Sweeping such undefined feelings under the carpet, just ignoring them in the hope that they'll go away, or pretending there's 'nothing wrong' serves ego’s agenda on two counts, since (1) it can use the energy from my unexamined reactions to generate its own scripts and scenarios – accusatory, self-justifying, self-image-boosting, anxiety-increasing or whatever;

and (2) the energy I put into fending off my feelings goes straight into ego’s ‘mistrust fund’, to further strengthen its programme of denial.

I have gradually got better at recognising when something has ‘got to’ me, through practising awareness. Just noticing that something is going on stops ego in its tracks, and honestly scanning for what might have sparked off a reaction usually bears fruit within moments.

Inner Listening and Freedom

Learning to respond to my feelings in a friendly, interested way has helped to free my psyche from fear. Ego would have me shy away from my feelings, initially in shame (how dare I feel like that?), and thinking I ‘wouldn’t be able to cope’ - or, with bravado - ‘ just leave it to me’ – none of which is heard consciously, in so many words!

let's (e)GO!

I was well into my 40s beforeI began to spot the tell-tale ‘wheech’ moments, when ego swoops in like a bird of prey to grab a feeling, and turn it into food for its own parasitic existence - as a weapon or an argument, a rant or a dismissive quip. 

Once I was able to recognise these moments, it became easier to step away, take time, remember to breathe - and allow space.  Even if I couldn’t immediately stop my old established emotional reactions, I gained more self-control and freedom.

I was on my way towards my Heartland.

Practising this inner openness in daily life keeps me in tune with myself, and helps inner flexibility to grow.  My own spontaneous feelings have the capacity to keep me centred, and to protect me from ego agendas.

We Can All Learn - But Do We Want To?

I have long believed that everyone can learn – that life can transform us all, from relatively oblivious, unconsciously driven ‘automatons’ into more relaxed, awake, self-accepting and self-aware people. I am putting this baldly, but this is, more or less, what I have thought.

However, recently I have become more aware of how many people resist transformation as much as they can. They deal with things as they come up, according to the strategies they’ve always used, the attitudes they grew up with, the qualities and capacities they grew to regard as ‘normal’ in youth - or, as they might put it, according to their ‘character’.  ('It's just the way I am!')

Some of these 'resistant' people are warm-hearted and open minded in other respects, and reserve their harshness and intolerance mainly for themselves, in the form of self-criticism.

Others may be waspish and critical of others, deflecting the inner violence of their own egos onto the world around, externalising their inner aggression onto their favourite scapegoats.  Their harshness towards themselves can be displayed as self-indulgence.

They may well be vehement in their rubbishing of ‘therapy’ and other ‘alternative’ or holistic techniques, like meditation or homeopathy, suspecting a racket or a confidence trick.

Ironically, the greatest confidence trickster we have to deal with in our lives is the one in our own psyche called ego. Ego has a great investment in resisting any enquiries into its activities, or having its threats proved empty.

Common to all the above behaviours is an unwillingness - and consequent incapacity - to listen, to hear what others are saying, and sense what they are feeling.

But there are others, who go part way along the road to the Heartland – as counsellors, or clergy, or some other kind of ‘spiritual’ professional – and then set up camp, equipped with the vocabulary of awareness.  While they may have skills to help others deal with and learn from their problems, these people's own egos remain intact and in play, their defensive strategies undismantled.

Such ego-ruled people can wreak havoc, and cause confusion and disappointment, which feeds into more general, collective, ego-approved scepticism about the paths and disciplines they represent.

The best thing, as usual, is to consult and trust our own feelings about people, as we experience them in the moment. Everyone moves in and out of harmony all the time, nobody is perfect – and yet we sense whom we can trust.