Positive Energy Guide

“Being positive” or acting “loving” can be driven by narcissism. Denying wounds drives them deeper and makes them inaccessible to healing or forgiveness.

I am going to say some things about narcissism. Please understand that this discussion is less about the disorder itself than a further commentary on the importance of owning our wounds.

Narcissism, in my estimation, is a kind of a turning point. One common expression of narcissism represents an extreme of social adaptation. It’s like social conditioning on steroids. Appearances have turned the corner from being socially useful and are now headed down the road to pathology.

Narcissists do exist whose adaptation is focused on professional attainment, who do not care how they appear to others. They are perceived as jerks. This post focuses on those whose world revolves around being liked.

Society generally envies narcissists. And why not? They have mastered the art of social appearances and seem so enviably well-adjusted and well liked. External appearances are maintained without functional introspection or sensitive awareness of other people’s feelings. Narcissism is a personality disorder. Something is not working correctly.

Recognizing the disorder is essential self-care. A sensitive and loving person can get drained and dispirited relating to a narcissist. Staying in the relationship too long is likely to become something for which the sensitive person needs to forgive him or herself.

Narcissists are motivated by how they appear to others. They may seem very normal. A crucial difference between someone with a bad case of “nice” with an intense need for approval and a narcissist is that the latter is incapable of putting themselves in another person’s shoes. If you feel distress about something a narcissist has done they blame you for making them look bad–if only to themselves.

Someone who lives in their image of themselves CANNOT understand or value in you what they push away in themselves. The wounds. It’s not personal. That makes it more confusing.

The most confusing interactions I have ever had were with people who excelled at appearing positive, confident, and caring as a way to avoid their wounds. Sensing what was actually going on was like being lost in a fun house with a distorted hall of mirrors.

Narcissists can be consummate actors. Some narcissists can be generous with material things, attention, and loving words, and may even have scores of adoring friends. (Think: “Iron Man.) A narcissist may even run a charitable organization, become a doctor, or set themselves up as a spiritual leader. It’s easy to believe the narcissist’s act–because they do. Seeing what is going on can be shocking. You just don’t want to think someone who ACTS like they care so much could be so cruel without even noticing. They have no clue.

Trying to explain backfires. If you express distress or give them feedback, they may praise themselves as loving, generous, and skillful with people, telling you with apparent sincerity that you are way off base. Meanwhile they systematically ignore anything that does not support their glowing image. Attempts to communicate your own experience are interpreted as something positive or negative—about them.

If you become angry or hurt this only seems to prove that the problems are all yours. He or she maintains the illusion of being wonderful while you “carry” the difficult emotions for you both. Superiority is a powerful defense.

When we show compassion to someone with this character disorder they have no compunctions about using that—and the rest of our energy—for themselves.

Narcissism is extremely difficult to treat. Those who need treatment cannot recognize it. They are extremely successfully defended. Narcissists don’t seek help; they do not admit to having any issues. They are likely to put down people who appreciate or suggest therapy.

My heart totally goes out to anyone living with a narcissist. It can make you feel crazy. Even intuitive people can be taken in. I hope this post will increase awareness. If you’re partnered with someone who everyone seems to love, who is super-friendly with others and casually callous to you, this is a warning sign. Forgive yourself with great tenderness if you are in this situation. You can forgive the narcissist too—but remember that you are dealing with a personality disorder. Mind your boundaries and don’t let yourself be used.

A knowledgeable friend said, “They can be so charming and persuasive. And one can be fooled at first, then be ensnared by the time the damage is done.”

(The psychiatrist and Intuitive Judith Orloff has online resources for dealing with narcissists.)

Here are a few links for technical information in case you need it:

Symptoms of Narcissism
Diagnosis and Treatment of Narcissism

The rest of this post applies generally, not just to narcissists.

If the need to look good or nice or loving or even spiritual makes us deaf and blind to the distress of others, hidden wounds are blocking the ability to see out. We need to be able to see IN in order to see OUT clearly.

Acknowledging our own wounds is a genuine kindness to others.

Part 14 consists of tips and suggestions that support forgiveness, in each of the four modes from Part 1.

How do YOU feel around people who do not acknowledge any shortcomings or issues?
What happens inside you when you extend kindness to yourself?

Please pass this post along to those who need it.

Day-to-day social life can convey the impression that there is something wrong with us when we hurt inside. Understanding why enhances forgiveness and healing. The next three posts explore social impediments to emotional health, and support integrating self-awareness with life in the world.

Remember that social life is our external life. Emotional health is balance between our internal and external lives. Society sees to it that we learn social norms. Instruction and modeling for our internal lives is sadly uncommon.

Social personas or images seem to work in the outer world but often retard or prevent inner healing. Those who do not process their wounds often hold an attitude of superiority toward those who are in pain. There is nothing superior in being out of touch. Despite posturing and pretense, lack of compassion and insight is not social or moral high ground.

AVOIDING wounds strains social life and creates a need for pretense. HAVING wounds is not necessarily a problem. How we MANAGE them often is. Noticing wounds with the intent to HEAL them is healthy. Once we have healed our wounds we become infinitely more socially functional—authentically. No pretense necessary.

Motivation to heal is less likely to be strong in people skilled at social adaptations. Is this good or bad? That depends whether you want to stay in adaptations or heal deeply and become fully authentic. In some ways being unable to hide wounds can be an advantage over being able to bury them so well you can get by without working on them.

We get socially conditioned to shut down the feelings that others are uncomfortable feeling themselves. We get social messages to turn away from our wounds. The only necessary change is to be careful to discuss the wounds only with persons who have developed compassion already, can make a caring response. If we talk about them with someone who cannot manage or see their own wounds they must reject us in exactly the same way they reject that part of themselves. They cannot do otherwise.

Awareness of wounds indicates being healthier, not more messed up. Those who appear really together without processing their wounds have just as many problems. They are simply less apparent—until they do something obvious. How many times do we hear about someone in a public office or position of service, or religious power like a priest, whose wounds overwhelm his or her ability to stay balanced in the role of public service or sanctity?

Here are some of the societal reasons why we get the impression there is something wrong with us when we are wounded:

• People ask, “What is wrong?” instead of “Can I do anything for you.”
• Our pain scares people who are not able to embrace their own.
• We live in a culture who “medicates” with drugs, alcohol, and diversions instead of bonding in ways that connect and involve people in healthy ways
• We may have been scolded when we cried or had a tantrum
• People who do not know how to express compassion pull away when we express our pain
• We send people to professionals to deal with “their problems” instead of supporting them appropriately before this becomes necessary

In the movie “The King’s Speech,” Bertie was imprisoned in his royal persona. He lacked the positive vulnerability (see post #7 in this series) essential to effective therapy. He wanted the speech therapist to fix his problem on the surface, without approaching its causes. The therapist was blocked from access to Bertie’s inner world of feeling.

Bertie lived in the emotional isolation common when worldly roles are of greater importance than personal feeling. He was unable to fulfill his role of King until he confronted his depths by allowing his therapist, Lionel, into his inner world. Through the mirror of both therapy and genuine friendship Bertie learned to allow his inner life its central place in his own world. Then he could be King.

Social life may require images from time to time. Authenticity does not require full and complete disclosure at all times or with all people. We pick and choose appropriate expression for this moment. I am suggesting that the motivation for what we pick can be based on comprehensive values, not unconscious compulsions or social conditioning.

Social life, in balance, is our exterior life. Its healthy function does not take the place of your inner life or cripple your personal life. The horror movie in which the mask becomes stuck on someone’s face depicts this malady. In real life this issue is more of a problem the less we are aware that it is occurring. Wounds wake us up to our humanity, needs, personal emotions, goals, dreams, and capacity for genuine intimacy.

How is YOUR balance between your social life and your inner life?
Does one take over the other, or can you move back and forth between them with ease?
What makes this balance easier or more difficult?

“Let despair and disillusionment ravish the garden of your heart. You will replenish it once again with the seedlings of self-sufficiency and contentment. Life never is, never was, and never will be anybody’s Beloved.” ~Meher Baba

If you feel disillusioned, seek and discover advantage in losing illusion. (See previous posts on Disillusionment.) Sharpen your sense of what is real for you right now.

Release resistance. This reduces pain. Accepting losses makes them more bearable.

Remember that simply having a body and a life is an opportunity. If you were plopped down in different country with nothing but the clothes on your back the days you have left would still be a gift.

Allow yourself plenty of time alone. If you need to, allow yourself to retreat from social life for a period of healing. Give yourself time to reorient, slowly and gently. Make loose plans down the line to do something you can look forward to when you think you will be ready.

Avoid making anything up–about yourself, about others, about your state. Stay with your process without labeling it as a negative state such as “depression.”

(I love this suggestion.) Let people know, “I’m a little IN right now,” rather than defining yourself as depressed, not wanting to connect, etc. This gives you room to feel, express, and grow.

Release your goals like an out-breath. You can pick them up in another season.

When you’re ready, set up short periods of simple interaction that doesn’t ask much of you, such as sitting with someone while they do a household task.

Keep to basics as much as possible: Sleep, walk, eat. Nourish, nurture, get light, get massage.

Focus on details in nature, like flowers, clouds, waves, the leaves of a tree responding to wind. Spend time in your garden or pick flowers if you like.

Release self-blame about being betrayed. You may have had cues or clues. You may have had inklings or premonitions. You may have ignored your guidance or felt shamed for doubting someone. You may have been clueless and feel stupid. Feeding these feelings distracts you from doing effective Inner Work and moving forward.

Ask not What caused this but What can I use it for.

Take breaks from thinking. If you cannot stop your brain, listen to audio books.

Find the sweet spot between avoiding feeling and indulging feeling. Allow feeling to surface into your awareness and run through your body. Giving sensation to feeling allows it to express through the body, completing its process. Do not dramatize it or keep it active by repeatedly reliving the past. Feel it fully and let it flow out as you feel it.

Acknowledge pain with compassion and use it to craft your inner world. Pain is a keen tool.

Use music or art to keep your expressive flow open.

Be compassionate to yourself in choosing with whom you discuss personal issues. Gently decline unsolicited advice.

Rearrange anything in your home or office that has become stagnant. Clean things out, throw things out, wear different colors, change your bedspread, cut your hair.

Practice forgiveness—but first accept your grief. Forgiveness is glorious. Premature forgiveness can be a spiritual bypass. Any spiritual practice used to avoid feeling is an agent of denial. Forgiving does not mean that you condone what someone has done. It means that you release claims and resentment to obtain peace.

Positive focuses for the mind:

• In what ways does this betrayal serve my best interests?
• What illusions am I releasing?
• How does my orientation change without them?
• What needs am I able to satisfy gracefully if I consider my resources?
• What positive qualities and values are important to me in relationships going forward?
• What new possibilities are opening for me?
• What am I newly free and able to do?

Be loyal to yourself. This will bring more happiness than trying to maintain relationships with people who have issues with loyalty.

Last time I was betrayed I actually had some positive feelings about the experience. I sensed that the betrayal was a real opportunity to support myself fully, and even to accept support from others, who noticed the betrayal and stepped forward on their own. I felt a breath of relief as I released a burden I had been carrying. The burden consisted of false hope that a close friend would allow himself to trust our connection.

Inside You
They say, We cannot go barefooted in that courtyard.
There is nothing but thorns through there.
Love answers, The thorns are inside you.
Be silent, and pull what hurts out of your loving’s foot.

Then you will see gardens and secluded rose bowers,
and they will all be inside you.

~Mevlana Rumi (Translation by Coleman Barks)

What are YOUR best tips for emotional renewal and recovery?

Please share this post with those who need support.

What can YOU do to make your holidays more peaceful and joyful?
Let’s look at ways to deepen positive feeling.

Shared rituals build anticipation and allow us to focus together in meaningful ways. They develop intimacy.

What IS a ritual? Anything we repeat with the intention of developing special, meaningful energy is a ritual.

Living rituals differ significantly from rituals that have turned into automatic habits or empty actions. What is the difference? Living ritual is meaningful experience. Empty ritual may carry sentimentality or memory, but lacks the freshness, vivid clarity, and sense of immediacy that characterize living ritual.

How does living ritual occur? Focused intention and quality attention bring life to ritual, generating special energy ritual can contain. The ritual holds and carries this energy. Living ritual gathers meaning as energy builds up through repetition. If it feels automatic or meaningless, or empty, bring yourself to it fully, or set it aside.

What is it about the ritual that makes it important? Being in touch with our feelings and with this special energy built from intention evokes our sense of meaning. Whether we do something one time or repeat it countless times we can breathe life into our actions. How? By bringing ourselves fully into the moment, focusing on the meaning of our experience, and staying open to feel.

Even when we are not able to feel at the moment, willingness to experience meaning allows a ritual to serve as a doorway for possibility. A regularly repeated ritual can hold open a place and time for meaningful experience. Another time, when we are open to feeling and meaning, the ritual provides a time and place to turn our attention inward and feel it.

Re-Creating Family Rituals:
Some families sustain ritualized activities they once enjoyed long after they have ceased to take joy in them. Discuss with your family what activities feel meaningful or create ease and joy. Make it a point to discover what is meaningful and important to each person.

Plan time to gracefully allow for meaningful activity. When needs differ, allowing some time apart for important rituals can contribute to harmonious togetherness for the rest of the day. For example, if one person loves to watch football and hates religion and another loves to go to Mass and hates football, tape the game do these things during the same time frame, with those who enjoy it. Come together before and after this break and enjoy events that bond you through mutual meaning or pleasure.

When you agree on things you enjoy or find meaningful, pick times for them and designate these activities as holiday rituals. It’s okay to try new things and alter them over time. For example, I used to make bouillabaisse (fancy seafood soup) on Christmas Eve. Hey, it’s red. And I served it with a green salad. I got disappointed that there’s not much fresh seafood in the winter, and decided to leave that pleasure for summer. Gingerbread for breakfast is a favorite food ritual on Christmas morning. I’ve altered it to make it gluten free.

Single?:
If you are single, you can create rituals on your own. As a single person I have learned swap rituals according to my energy level and the availability of loved ones. Every year I ask myself which rituals feel most meaningful to me. I make it a point to allow for some quiet, reflective time. On Christmas I intentionally notice that it IS Christmas. Whether or not one believes is merely mental. Sacred energy is present owing to the focus of those who care. I sense into the quality of the day, and seek to sense the sacred.

I might go to midnight Mass at St. Mark’s Cathedral, or read spiritual texts. I may take a candle lit bath with fragrant oils, go for a long walk somewhere I usually don’t take time to go, or simply enjoy a break from my work ethic. I like to take my friend’s kids to see the best Christmas lights. One year I cooked a turkey dinner on my own, with wild rice, mushroom and ginger stuffing. It seemed odd but felt like the thing to do. The next few days were full of unplanned company, and we loved the leftovers!

Sharing what we appreciate in one another can make fine ritual, given a time and place.

Give yourself and your family peace and joy by focusing on what you find most meaningful.

What ARE YOUR best or favorite ways to make holidays special? Please share.

Besides inviting joy to roost nearby, one of the most positive things we can do is to learn use difficult experiences to develop compassion and to transform ourselves. This challenging and advanced topic can deepen all-purpose insight and also support those who struggle with betrayal. Please stay with me.

Betrayal is one of the most difficult–and rewarding–emotional experiences to process positively. This makes it important to effectively resolve. My heart goes out to those who are going through betrayal. Inner experience can get so intense that even dear friends feel out of their depths and pull away, isolating those who need support. I offer this series from love.

What makes betrayal so hard to sort out?

Betrayal can be complex and confusing. Betrayal may involve spoken and unspoken issues of conduct, boundaries, belief, expectation, and entitlement.

Betrayal can be crushing and confusing. Disillusionment is usually part of the mix. (See Disillusionment as a Positive Process, Part 1 and 2) So is abandonment, literal or emotional.

Betrayal is a real opportunity to clean out our emotional closets and discover who we really are and how we really want to live.

Being betrayed increases your need for support while the doubts it breeds make you unbearably fragile. You may need help but fear advice and be too vulnerable to take it in. Advice may make you feel worse. You may have no idea who to trust, how to trust, and whether to trust. If you also wonder whether you are somehow to blame or feel shame you will be even more sensitive. Too much is triggered to sort it out alone, yet other people’s opinions can make you feel worse.

Betrayal can shake down deeply held beliefs, challenge our sense of self, and make us question our actions, principles, perception, values, relationships, and self-esteem. If we do the trench work of sorting ourselves out we can shed an old skin and come out renewed.

Sorting out betrayal requires that we distinguish between several different experiences. Betrayal can be:

• an incidental or accidental act someone takes due to lack of understanding or ethics
• a spiteful or vindictive act, intentionally unkind
• an unfortunate consequence of changing life paths when unexpressed needs have been handled without frankness and consideration

When you FEEL betrayed, what is happening? Allow your feelings to wash through you, feeling them in your body. Then aim to view the acts that occurred objectively, without allowing your emotions to color your interpretation. Alternate objective observation with pure feeling if you can.

These questions may be useful. (The answers can be “both”):

• Have you interpreted someone’s acts as betrayal, or are their acts betrayal by their origin, energy, and nature?
• Did you perceive the dark, shifty energy associated with betrayal, or do you feel betrayed due to unresolved issues?
• Was there any point in your circumstances when you might have known and stopped the betrayal before it happened? Without blame, ask yourself what was happening inside you when you did not or could not act.

The question, “Did I cause this,” can arise. Soul searching–stimulated by betrayal–can develop truthful self-observation and personal clarity. Self-blame is useless. Taking responsibility is not the same as blame.

Processing the complexities of betrayal can require a lot of thinking. Thinking too much can interfere with feeling and expressing the grief, shock, loss, sadness, anger and other feelings that betrayal evokes. Recovery takes time and compassion. Make room for both thought and feeling.

If you get stuck on “Did I cause this,” try substituting these more-useful questions:
“What role have I played that may have contributed to this situation?”
“Have I been loyal to myself in this relationship?”
“Is there something in my life that this experience can motivate me to change for the better?”

The last post will contain rubber-hits-the-road ways to get through serious and shattering betrayal. The next few explore what is going on inside that leads us to betray or be betrayed.

What have YOU discovered about betrayal? Have you been able to find any benefit in going through it?

Please share this text series with those who will find it useful.

The Sufi saint Hazrat Inayat Khan said,  “Shatter your ideals on the rock of Truth.”

Part of the beauty of this quote is the implication that we—after building our ideals with precious and sincere intention—can be active agents in removing our own illusions. I love this quote because it says so simply that we need not feel powerless and passive when disillusionment begins to arise. We can be idealistic without becoming rigid, by renewing our beliefs. We can take an active part in re-creating what we take to be true, sensing what is solid and using even the hardness of experience to orient ourselves once again.

Embracing disillusionment makes it more comfortable.

But how? When we resist the actualities of life we suffer. Resistance may be the only pain we can spare ourselves. Releasing ideas, opinions and beliefs that keep us from adjusting to life as it is now is the first step to releasing resistance. Disillusionment sheers away the ignorance that supports resistance. Realization is a lot less painful than having the same realization down the road, after you invest even more time, thought, energy, money and love.

Shedding an old belief is not about having “been wrong about life.” We cannot learn what life has to offer before it is in front of us. Like a new tooth, a more effective and mature state grows in to take the place of shattered beliefs—if we do our Inner Work instead of retreating from the pain. Unlike a tooth, we can shed beliefs many times in the course of a lifetime.

Disillusionment is like yoga for your identity, allowing you to stretch. The more you do it the better it feels. Flexibility of belief turns so-called mistakes into stepping-stones.

When expectation or fantasy do not bear out, step carefully. Relax fury. Sink deeper than despair and refuse to become jaded. Insisting that life “should be” different is like saying the way a universe spins should be based on whether or not we personally approve. Life– from the perspective of ego–does not play fair.

Fairness is a human concept and Life is not constrained by it. Find the part of yourself that is bigger than what you wanted.

Disillusionment can feel like a death. It is the death of a state of ego, a form we adopted—borrowed from life. In the world of energy, pain does not always mean something is wrong. Pain can mean something is right. Opening and awakening the heart center farther or faster than you ever have before can feel like floating shards of broken glass.

Disillusionment, embraced, is a spacious feeling. It offers a poignant freedom. We are no longer chained to a view that does not truly serve us anymore. Losing an illusion is cause for celebrating significant success after confronting and rethinking an old point of view.

In a very real sense, beliefs in the early stages of spiritual growth are like training wheels. Periods of disillusionment are like essay exams, when multiple-choice answers we have been given are no longer enough. It is a time to demonstrate understanding from within. Disillusionment is a time to shed points of view that are no longer large enough to longer contain our wisdom.

At first this may feel like losing the path. In practical life we seek to arrive at a destination. In spiritual life the parameters of progress cannot be measured by the same set of standards. What seems to be a sidetrack may be the main road. A receptive seeker gradually learns to sense the direction, attunement, or quality of energy that feels ‘right’ in any given moment. Disillusionment helps us learn to sense this direction instead of making assumptions.

Unshakable acceptance and peace come from being in touch with life as it actually is. Disillusionment is progress to those who aspire to a greater truth.

What have YOU discovered about life that surprised you? What belief did you need to release to be able to discover it?

Intensifying inner conflict–intentionally as a technique–can be used to stimulate awareness and transformation. Try this:

Pit an old way of life you’re addicted to against a new way of life you long for but are scared of. Instead of trying to get rid of your fear and anxiety with some other technique, come into the diamond center of self-observation and VIEW your conflict in detail. View it with the understanding that you are bigger than the parts that are in conflict. View it with curiosity and wonder.

If you are not on the verge of a big life change you can still benefit from inner conflict:

Craft some creative tension by focusing on both sides of an inner conflict, however small. If you can generate stronger conflict your Inner Work will be more potent. Bring hidden conflict into the light of your awareness, without letting your stories about it interfere with neutral observation.

Do not waste your conflict and dissipate its energy. Use it for transformation.

Conflict Intensification Exercise (broken down more explicitly):

• Pick a conflict.
• Bring your conflict under the microscope of focused attention.
• Track the sensations that occur in your body when you focus first on one side or part of the conflict and then the other/s. Sensations speak volumes. Attend to their messages. Which thoughts or feelings cause certain parts of your body to get tense, tight, or painful, or change your breath or posture?
• Stay in impartial observation with at least a third of your attention. Do not turn away from or shut down conflicting parts. Give them each a voice. Listen to what they say when you allow them to speak, and write it down if this helps.
• Ask yourself questions that clarify who you are and what you are trying to become, observing your sensations as you explore.
• Let each inner voice express through your body, one at a time, as if it had your body to itself.
• Attend to and memorize what it feels like when one side or part of your conflict is running your body. Sensation will assist you to recognize what is going on later, when conflict occurs on its own.
• Live in the questions that come up. You are not trying to solve anything, but exploring who you are and what you do.

Resolution is not the aim here, but will arise on its own at some point. The aims of this exercise are self-awareness, learning to sense, release of resistance, and learning to recognize feeling states. Intensifying inner conflict helps to strengthen your capacity for impartial observation, building your core strength, clarity, and integrity.

Example: Suppose you have some conflict between your desire for approval or acknowledgment and a part of you that needs authentic expression. These parts hold different values. Bring each part into sharp focus, one by one. Get to know them without allowing the other part to interfere. When you feel a sense of clarity about exactly how these parts work within you, relax the conflict by embracing both parts within your comprehensive Whole.

Example Questions: Who will I be and what will I be doing over time if I allow my need for approval to guide my life direction?
Who will I be and what will I be doing in life if I allow authenticity and inner knowing to direct my actions?
What do I desire and what am I resisting?

The struggle between your urge to remain unaware and your urge to wake up is fundamental. It is not useful to judge your parts by seeing some as good and others as bad. Learn to embrace and accept each part as a gift of awareness.

Note: If you tend to get stuck in either/or dilemmas, seek to discover and observe more than two sets of values and voices. Seek multiple options.

Using conflict for Inner Work goes a long way toward building an unshakable habit of self-observation.

What have you found valuable in going through inner conflict?

How have you used conflict to create awareness or transformation?

What is the difference between Psychological Work and Inner Work?

Aim is the primary difference. Psychological Work generally aims at functional social adaptation. Inner Work aims at awakening; enlightenment. Gradually-increasing self-knowledge and Presence in the moment are more immediate goals that contribute greatly to a meaningful life. Psychological Work and Inner Work both aim to integrate Self by bringing the parts into relation with the Whole.

From the perspective of Inner Work, our psychology is a limitation. Our human possibilities far exceed complexes, history, and patterns that can be explained. Building coping skills makes you more socially functional, but this doesn’t necessarily wake you up. Inner Work includes our pasts as part of our entirety. It is not an aim of Inner Work to explain the mystery of the present with the past or to package you in socially acceptable behaviors. Inner Work rests on self discovery in the moment, opening potential in real time, not theory.

Sometimes our past is actively informing the present moment. At these times we operate on automatic, asleep to the real possibilities latent in the moment. Focusing on a particular scenario from the past as it plays out in the present moment can provide useful insight. Much of the time looking to the past is a distraction or an avoidance of exactly what is going on in the moment. Using the past to explain away the present may stop self-observation with theory or memory. Inner Work is about experience in the present, not theory. It evokes different type of insight than does Psychological Work.

As we covered in Part 2, Inner Work is not about knowing. Knowing your patterns and what you think you should do or analyzing and judging your behaviors can keep you stuck in your head like a hamster in a cage. Intellectualization or even emotional expression can become subtle ways to avoid deeper self-observation.

Mental and emotional work are useful, but until you take your observation down into the body and quit struggling to change yourself before you know who you are, you are not doing authentic Inner Work.

The most effective Psychological Work can and does include at least some degree of Inner Work. “Sub-personalities”–Jung’s word for the different parts of you—can become integrated around your central hub of awareness. These parts of you have different values, agendas and ways of expressing themselves. Self-sabotage, for example, shows that the agendas of different parts of you are in conflict. Effective Psychological Work combined with Inner Work make it possible to directly experience each of your parts, contributing to your ability to be awake, aware, and whole in the present moment.

Deeper Inner Work takes integration a step farther by focusing less on fixing or eliminating issues and more on using them as focal points for self-observation. Try this: In circumstances where you tend to ‘check out’ or become automatic, stick around and watch yourself. Use the issue that prompts you to dissociate as a tool for awakening.

What does it mean to YOU to use one of your issues as a focal point of self-observation? Comments about Psychology and Inner Work welcome!

You may think you are doing Inner Work already. Are you?

We naturally jump to what we know already when reaching for a new concept. Assumptions based on previous knowledge can undermine understanding and insight.

First hearing about Inner Work, you may assume that the techniques you are already doing are Inner Work–especially when you practice methods that involve “observational skills;” noticing your inner processes, energy, or body sensations. Qi gong, martial arts, meditation and yoga are several techniques that develop observational skills.

So what is the difference between doing Inner Work and developing observational techniques?

Observational techniques focus on different parts and layers of yourself. Inner Work focuses on bringing ALL parts into awareness. Skills in sensing and awareness form a platform for and contribute greatly TO inner work. But they are not Inner Work itself. They are great tools. Inner Work is the toolbox. It IS none of those skills yet can contain them all.

I am all for observational skills. They develop attention, focus, and intention–prerequisites for Presence. I have, however, seen many nearly master meditation, yoga, spiritual disciplines, or qi gong without becoming self-aware in daily life. I was initially shocked to see people with staggering development in one or more of these skills whose blind spots could swallow Texas.

Observational skills can be used to turn away from parts of ourselves we dislike or do not wish to recognize. Intense focus on the skills themselves can substitute for broader, integrative self-awareness.

Unless you develop the central hub of self-observation—your core inner diamond that develops from effective Inner Work—key issues remain hidden from yourself. Inner Work brings whatever we practice and develop into relationship with authentic expression. This differs from grafting a shiny set of tools over a morass of seething denial.

Effective Inner Work addresses blind spots in the interests of wholeness and integrated self-awareness. I will discuss the relationship between Inner Work and Blind Spots in my next post.

What have YOU noticed in yourself or observed in others about practicing techniques? Have you seen techniques or belief systems used as a shield against life instead of a way to interface more deeply with life?

A consistent habit of Inner Work develops within you a central hub of self-observation. This capacity becomes a part of your core–central to you. It is like an inner diamond with facets that face each aspect of your personality equally, or like the center of a wheel. Each aspect of you is a spoke. The diamond image implies clarity and value. The spoke image implies direct connection between your core and the rim—expression and behavior.

Developing a central hub of awareness through effective Inner Work offers the following benefits:

• Inner strength
• Greater emotional balance
• Impartial observation
• Discernment
• A more compassionate perspective
• Extended capacity for real Choice
• Evenness, from being less reactive
• Greater ease in managing criticism from others
• Reduced need for approval
• Increased ability to remain consistent with your values
• Capacity for true commitment
• Personal agency/power
• Ability to be true to yourself
• Clarity regarding what is authentic and what is not
• Greater capacity for honesty
• Increased understanding of self and others
• Increased capacity for authentic intimacy

Inner Work is the process of coming to know exactly who you really are, beneath all masks and behind all blind spots. As you become established in your sense of self you will be less afraid that you can lose this self to another.

The fruits of Inner Work take time to ripen and become sweeter as they do. Initial exercises in self-observation can “taste” like unripe fruit. Yet for self-observation to serve us we need to be able to do it at the times when it is difficult. As long as we check out during the moments when we are strangers to ourselves we have no real will or personal authority when we need it most.

The nature of unconsciousness is that when we are uncomfortable, scared, bored or hostile we tend to look out instead of looking in. This is like missing some of the footage on a film. We lack continuity of perception. Inner work is learning to stick around and watch ourselves as this is going on.

Continuity in self-observation is a huge challenge. If you take it on, it may be the most important thing you will ever do in your life.

Every time you remember to notice that you are breathing, and bring your awareness fully to the moment is like putting a penny in a piggy bank. Each fully aware breath is a reward in the moment. Each breath builds equity in your capacity to string moments together and stay with yourself, Awake.

Your life cannot be transformed without changing the quality and focus of your moments. Consistently collecting a lucid moment here and a moment of awareness there transforms your entire life. If you are waiting for the coconut of enlightenment to fall upon your sleeping head, you may be sleeping under the tree when the angel of death comes along to claim you. Wake up one moment at a time.

Many different techniques lend themselves to waking up in the moment. Are these techniques Inner Work? It depends on whether or not you are working on that core diamond. I discuss the difference between Inner Work and various techniques in my next post: Inner Work Part 4: Inner Work and Self Development Techniques

Remember: Picking roses can be another chore to cross off your list or a lovely experience, depending on the quality of attention you bring to it.

Have you had a moment of lucid awareness that has inspired you or changed your life? It would be great to see your story or other comment on this post.