By watching my day and seeing how life unfolds, I notice the inner and outer world are exactly the same. Vernon Howard speaks on this in Esoteric Encyclopedia of Eternal Knowledge:
Inner and Outer
‘There is a teaching I wish to grasp more fully,’ stated Alan.
‘The inner and the outer are the same. What does that mean?’
‘Start by examining your relationship with yourself. What is it like? Do you have inner quarrels? Are you torn back and forth? This is your self-relationship. Now look outward. You will see that your relations with people and events are exactly the same. They must be. A wolf is a wolf, indoors or out. Dressing him in a wool coat does not make him a lamb. Now see the cheery side. As you change inwardly through self-insight, you change outwardly also. You have no quarrel with anything, for you have no quarrel with yourself. Is that worth finding?’
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Inner Life Exercise
Take notice of your inner arguments, and let this expand into an examination of your conversations with others. Notice everything, in all honesty, but do not judge or feel bad in any way. Again, self-insight is the key to change.
Good fun, with a lofty purpose.
My favorite thing about these teachings is that they hit home the point my life is my responsibility, and I have control over how I feel and go through my day. If I want to be free of all the anxiety and negativity of the outer world, I can be! How freeing is that!
I quarrel inwardly by insisting to be something I am not. I quarrel outwardly by insisting everything outside me be something it is not. When did I pick up this idea that I must insist on what ‘should be’ and hurt myself if ‘what is’ is not that? When I really think about it, this is crazy! Thank goodness for a grain of truth in my day.
Beautifully said Leo! Who am I to make ‘right’ God’s world… When there is a Watcher, there is no me to ‘get it’ … It is gotten by the pure observation of it. We were given the ability to choose, not to create or judge, but to choose whether we observe reality, or live in denial of it. Thank heaven for this ‘grain of Truth’ as you said!
I can recall the first time I started reading Vernon’s booklet Freedom from Harmful Voices. I did not relate to it at all. I didn’t even relate to the title. I never felt like I was attacked by harmful voices. I never felt that way because I was not aware of them even while thinking them.
When driving down the freeway, we know our hands make automatic adjustments to the road all the time, but the movements are happening automatically, mechanically. There is not any higher awareness or consciousness of them. Those mechanical movements while driving a car have their natural place, but is that true in our inner psychological life?
When a self-critical voice arises mechanically out of our conditioning from past experiences, am I aware of it as a harmful thought that recreates itself over and over and causes me to think and feel from it? Or do I always take it as “my” intelligent, sane and rational thought so it is never questioned? In other words, I “become” and act from that thought that was never seen consciously, but was just accepted because it was there and is familiar.
Am I even aware that I have repetitious thoughts that always say the same thing no matter what the circumstance? Could it be they always say the same thing because that is the only thing they can say?
The inner world is pretty much the unseen and invisible world because the mind is always looking through an inner thought at the outer world and taking the outer world at face value as the cause of my action, and so the action and source of the inner thought remains unseen.
The more this is studied, the more it is seen that my thoughts of the outer world are a reflection of my inner states, and nothing is looking at those inner states so they remain in dark control of me. Only the higher can reveal the lower.
Witness, watch listen. Let everything within you and without reveal itself without resistance, without struggle. If you will do this, higher insight will guide you every moment of your life.
Scot, I really liked, “Am I even aware that I have repetitious thoughts that always say the same thing no matter what the circumstance? Could it be they always say the same thing because that is the only thing they can say?” To think I once lived entirely from that! No wonder I had so many troubles.