In our course on the seven effectiveness habits, I’ve used the terms “inner” and “outer” without defining what I mean. The outer world is delimited by the five senses: seeing, hearing, touching, tasting, smelling. The inner world is delimited by the mind.
The mind is like a large, deep pond of water. The pond can be experienced as meditative levels, which most people —in their infrequent quiet moments—fail to explore. One reason for this failure is the seemingly impenetrable first level, which I call distraction. It’s characterized by the monkey mind, and it acts as a barrier to going deeper.
Unless you know there are deeper levels, there isn’t much to like about distraction. So, we prefer to occupy our mind with the outer sensory world and thereby fail to take advantage of the inner spiritual world. Thus, the sixth habit asks us to value our inner world as much as our outer world. In the process, we enable the inner world to form a synergistic relationship with the outer world. Synergy means both inner and outer worlds, working in concert through meditation, create advantages neither could create by themselves.
Without inner world advantages, the self gets sucked into the senses, finding constant pleasure in our modern world with its myriad sensory distractions. And that says nothing of screens. The ultimate distraction is the story in which we play the star actor, the director, screenwriter, costume designer, mood-setter, etc. The fascination with our story is fundamentally narcissistic. We identify with our roles as if they were real. But they are, instead, an unreal reflection of our thoughts in a sensory world we mistakenly take for real.
“Acting with inner world advantages, the real you remembers commitments, finds constant direction, and derives incredible spiritual power.”
Acting with inner world advantages, the real you remembers commitments, finds constant direction, and derives incredible spiritual power. The inner world is where the higher power resides as an innate mind of clear light. The deeper one goes employing the meditative process, the closer we get to the clear light at the fundamental level of being. Manifestations of this inner light can be accessed as conscience, insight, inspiration, empathy, compassion, equanimity, and peace of mind. But these manifestations are not given without diligent effort on our part. Indeed, nobody accesses the deepest levels without personal effort. Nobody can do it for us, just as no one can face death for us.
Death is the ultimate arbiter of our way of life. When I was young, my death seemed remote. I wasn’t willing or able to appreciate how close it really was. Now, I realize I’m in the last major phase of life. Or should I say my body’s life. For although I now know my body will certainly die within, say, twenty years, my meditative experience leads me to believe the light within lives on in some form, which will become apparent after my death.
So, I’m no longer afraid of death. Nor do I feel as anxious as I used to feel when my meditative practice was helter-skelter. I bend my will to the will of a higher power, acting in the flow of a caring power that’s way beyond my ability to control, yet taking responsibility for myself by living freely, unattached to the temptations of an unreal sensory world.