Living from the Inside Out

I’ve recently been learning a lot about the importance of living my life from the inside out.  It's very easy for me to look at the surface of a situation rather than plumb its’ depths; this may stem from cultural origins or may simply be a symptom of living in a physical world. However, the depths is where the juice is. It's easy to get caught up in the externals: how someone will react, the story around what's happening or anything else that isn’t myself. What I've found is I need to go deeper, beneath the surface.

Why do I have a tendency to look on the outside? Because it takes the focus off of myself and puts it on someone or something else. I will do whatever it takes to not look within. Looking within is uncomfortable and is a more challenging subject for my mind to work with. So I look outside myself instead. This has only so much value, because I cannot control these outside people or forces or events. I can only react to them. This makes it all the much easier to "play the victim" rather than take responsibility for my actions.

What's beneath the surface? Everything. We live in a world that is illusory. To the scientific minded, this assertion is impossible to prove. It has to be experienced. But, once you experience it, you get it and your mind is satisfied.

Our thoughts and intentions co-create our reality. Some see this as a naïve statement or as one that blames people if their reality is negative or undesirable. Of course, not everything negative in our lives is our fault. There’s an interplay here between external and internal. This is an empowering statement that serves to give us control over our lives. However, once again, this needs to be experienced to be understood.

When we are dealing with the externals of a situation rather than looking within, then we are operating at the symptom level rather than the level at which a cure can be found. We can only go so far towards improving an undesirable situation when simply treating symptoms. We have a far greater impact when we are working from within and getting to the root of the problem.

In an undesirable situation, we want to look within and see what our part is. We want to become centered and peaceful and resolve any afflictive emotions surrounding the situation first. We live life from the inside out. We want to deal with our inner state and make sure we are getting right with ourselves before looking outside of ourselves.

The truth is that our inner transformative work ripples outwards and actually changes the physical world. Many of these changes are subtle and difficult to verify or quantify. However, the situation is changed nonetheless. Some of these changes are in reaction to us. People see our attitude or can sense our energy or simply are affected in subconscious ways. Other changes are miraculous.

It is easy to give into the temptation of engaging our scientific brain to fix a situation by looking at the effect level rather than looking within. Our mind tells us “It's only practical!” It says “It’s the only method that makes sense." Remember, the mind prefers to work with the known rather than the unknown. Looking within does not make sense to the mind as this means that we give up our perceived control of the situation. The truth is we never had control in the first place. Looking within is surrendering to the unknown and changing the only thing we had control of in the first place: ourselves.

This is the secret that our minds cannot grasp and that we need to be reminded of. We need to live lives from the inside out. We need to deal with the cause rather than the effect. Remember, the mind will try and trick us, but there is no real good reason why we should work any other way. We need to stay strong, be courageous and face ourselves. Working from the inside out is the only way that we will experience real, lasting change and miraculous results where we are overjoyed and transformed in the process.