Joseph Campbell said, “We are so engaged in doing things to achieve purposes of outer value that we forget that the inner value, the rapture that is associated with being alive, is what it’s all about.”
For many of us, we’ve never been taught to identify with an inner journey; how to self explore. So we seek continuously outwardly. Partly this is due to our living in a culture that only measures results by the things we achieve, the amount of money we make, how things can be categorized into price-points and sales.
The problem with an externally-referenced (i.e., outward) journey only – is that we can continue to achieve results on an outer scale, but we eventually find that we’re unfulfilled but can’t understand why. So we keep trying to acquire more stuff or do different things or get new boyfriends or girlfriends or a better car or more designer clothes and again feel anesthetized within.
The journey we’re all on – which you might be now realizing after 44 weeks! – is a journey of discovering the inner self. The inner world offers us everything that we think the outer world provides.
You gain access to imagination and discover hidden meaning and deeper feeling. You tap into resources of potential and possibility you never knew you possessed. You realize you’re much smarter and stronger and talented than the outer world either confirms or denies. You begin to take outer experiences less personally because the inner can’t ever be affected by the outer. It’s impervious.
The outer (whether we like it or not) is always temporary. Always transitory. Things don’t last. You grow tired of something. You become bored. You want something bigger or brighter or prettier or younger or flashier.
The inner is your cornerstone. It’s changeless. It’s with you always. It actually is you.
The inner is the clay. It’s the filling in the cherry pie. It’s the grist to the mill. It’s the part we mistake for the outer – which sadly often then distracts us with its window dressings – that we never even discover we have an inner.
Let the inner inform the outer. Not the other way around. And as you do, you’ll start experiencing your outer life becoming more free, more fun, more abundant, more exciting, more fulfilling.
In short, all the things that you wanted to have happen in the first place.
“Everyone who wills can hear the inner voice. It is within everyone.” – Gandhi