When this sensory mind of ours perceives life, it mistakenly sees things as happening to it from the outside in. How does this error in perception affect us? It means that we perceive life as a series of things coming at us. Everything about us is oriented outwardly, and it appears to us that our lives are being determined from the outside in. We don't see the importance of our inner states -- the ways in which the content of our thoughts and feelings actually determines how we interpret what we see. We believe that the things we see coming at us are either good or bad in and of themselves. Then we believe we must make choices based on what we see coming at us, not realizing that our very interpretation of what we see is a choice we have already made without knowing it.
So, in the mistaken belief that we're at the mercy of these external events, we then define strength in terms of our ability to meet and handle them. This is why our wars never end. They can't. When both sides of the battle are in one person, the only peace he or she knows is the temporary silence that falls between thinking that everything's handled and then finding out it's not.
But what if we viewed things in a completely different way, and what if that different way were the correct way? Everything would change. Let's see how.
Life does not come at us from the outside in, even though that is the way we've always seen it. Once we understand this, we'll see the mistake we've been making all along about the true meaning of strength. Currently, we have a list of things we want to overcome: our past; our failure to acquire what we believe we need; a pressing world that has it in for us. We've identified these challenges as something that comes at us from outside. Naturally enough, our behavior is based on what our mind identifies as the cause of the problem. We keep fighting the exterior challenge as a means of healing ourselves, but we keep getting hurt. A wound that is covered over too soon fails to heal from the inside. In the same way, as we try to fix the psychological wound from the outside, we interfere with the natural healing process, which must be an internal one. Because we don't understand the nature of the wound, we rend it again.
Like all living things, each of us is in the process of unfolding, living, being, from the inside out. The way our minds work, our expectations -- our personalities -- determine the way we experience, interpret, and react to the events we meet. The same event -- let's say, an eclipse of the sun -- can mean entirely different things to different people. That's because for each of them, life is unfolding from the inside out. Thus, a learned astronomer sees the eclipse as an exciting event that can be mined for golden nuggets of new scientific information. An artist sees the event as one of mystery and wonder and makes note of the unusual lighting effects that can be used in future paintings. An uneducated individual living on an isolated South Seas island might see the event as a frightening ordeal, perhaps portending the end of the world!
Many different interpretations of the same event also occur on a less cosmic scale. Rising interest rates mean one thing if you're a banker, and quite another if you are in the market for a new home. Putting on a few pounds means one thing to a woman who is confident about her self-worth, and quite another to a woman who fears that the passing of her youthful beauty means the loss of her real value.
Over time, there come to be formed in our minds and hearts certain incorrect ideas and mistaken beliefs about ourselves and our needs. These conditioned mental and emotional pictures are not who we really are, but they seem so real to us that they become the platform from which we view and interpret the events we meet. When events occur that disagree with or fail to confirm those ideas, we see them as threats. Now our attention moves outward. Instead of understanding that the event only appears threatening because that's the way a self-picture interpreted it, we believe that it is an objective threat -- an enemy. Now we find ourselves in a constant battle to control external circumstances in order to protect the images. Events that are truly neutral in nature are interpreted to be a real threat, and so we go to war. And the whole thing was the result of an erroneous inner reaction, not the external event.
The fear we feel at the possible exposure of our shaky images is a form of pain. This pain is caused by an undetected inner activity, but we project this disturbance outward and blame the event. Meanwhile, the genuine you, waiting to unfold from within, lies forgotten. Instead of learning from events, we take them as our enemy. Through neglect, the voice of the True You grows fainter until it no longer guides your life, while you go off fighting meaningless battles. The quiet power of your true inner nature is silenced, while the outer life stumbles forward, unable to find the rest in resolution that it seeks.
Have you ever seen a rosebud that failed to bloom properly from within? The outer leaves whither as the inner growth stops. The flower fails to unfold. For many people who enjoy the false excitement of these never-ending life-battles, life is like that thwarted rosebud. It gradually withers from without because it fails to fulfill its true purpose: to unfold into its full flower from within.
However, things can be different for the person who grows tired of fighting wars that have no meaning and that never reach a conclusion. One day your greatest desire will be to watch your life unfold fully according to its own higher plan. You will grow weary with your own idea of strength with its accompanying false excitement. You will gladly sacrifice it so that you may experience a Higher wisdom that will be strong for you. What relief you will feel in coming into the real self-command of realizing you never had to be strong at all in the way you always thought you did.
In a way, it's as though we have built psychological bunkers from which we peer out at the world, wondering from where the next attack will come. Whenever we find ourselves hunkering down in those bunkers, building our defenses and planning our attacks, it would be an excellent time to remember this new view of our lives: that we are actually unfolding from the inside out, regardless of the perception we have that the problems lie in threatening enemies that charge us from outside. This means that instead of putting our attention on what others have done or said, or what the news of the day is, we turn our attention inward. When we see the "attack" coming, we turn our attention around to see that it is only our false view that perceives an attack; and when we see that the "threat" we're about to battle is really just a shadow -- cast off from a false idea we hold about ourselves -- then we meet the event from our True Self; our own awakened nature whose higher understanding realizes that the perceived "attack" upon us has no power of itself. It is only our reaction to it, our belief in the insulted or hurt self it gives rise to, that gives it any power over us. In the past, we accepted the cruel remark of a thoughtless person as being something real, with the power to hurt us. Our wrong thinking created the problem, and therefore could never solve it. It was not separate from the problem. Now, as our new and higher awareness refuses to give our life energy to perpetuating the wrong thinking, the problem must fall away of itself.
To achieve this state, we must first become tired of fighting all these battles and trying to be strong from our own present idea of strength. We can be that rare person who says, "I won't try to be strong anymore. I'll just watch. I'll start to participate in my life in a whole new way." This means working to see that our life is created from the inside out. When our tricked perception sees something as threatening, we are tricked into another battle. When our conscious awareness sees that there are only passing events and does not get involved, there are no battles. The only critical issue is what unfolds inside of us. We cannot change, control, or be stronger than anything our mind says is outside of us. But we can be inwardly awake, conscious of the fact that we don't need to be stronger than what we see because we aren't really separate from what we see. We just need to start seeing more accurately. Then, we will understand that there is another kind of strength altogether -- a Higher strength -- of which we can partake. Resting in that strength means we don't have to try to win anything outside at all.
