The Inner Poise

Consciousness

Feb 28

I want to begin this message by asking you a question. Why did you take birth?

For those with a Christian background, the Bible states, “So God created mankind in his own image, in the image of God he created them; male and female he created them.” Now, it’s the same question with a twist. Why did God do that?

In Soloman 2:23, it states, “For God created man to be immortal, and made him to be an image of his own eternity. The righteous, because they are made in the image of God, can rest in the full hope of eternal life.” But then the line is followed by, “Nevertheless through envy of the devil came death into the world: and they that do hold of his side do find it.”

It’s not too far a stretch to do a little translation here that will provide a simple understanding. You’re made in the image of truth. Your existence is an immortal one. However, you can certainly choose not to accept this. You can choose otherwise but to do so will result in suffering. Then, your immortality is hidden from you through the veil of ignorance which is your choice. So, as you will learn, what you see in yourself, you will find.

The Isha Upanishad states,

“The face of truth is hidden by a golden lid; that remove, O Fostering Sun, for the law of Truth, for sight. O Sun, O sole Seer, marshal thy rays, gather them together, let me see of thee thy happiest form of all; that Conscious Being everywhere, He am I.”

The words are different but it echoes the same message. Ignorance, the lid, hides the truth that you are. It states, let me see the true you, the happiest you, yourself, the one that is me. Throughout all time, the truth has been known and has been taught. The thing that none of these words clarify is why. You have to be honest with yourself and realize that the transition from being unconscious to being conscious, is daunting! But notice that they are two different forms of being. The unhappy you and the happy you. From mind to Spirit or Spirit to mind, it’s quite a journey.

But the journey is veiled, is obscured, by the mind itself that can’t see its own stupidity. So, at the beginning of considering that, even just considering, not even realizing, that there is another reality, the only way you’re going to get out of the mess is by constructing bridges that are based on creating revelation, inspiration, realization, and change that allows you essentially cross-over.

But these bridges are not based upon what you think, what you believe because that’s the very reason you’re in the mess in the first place! The purpose of our work is to help you create those bridges. It is unlikely that if this reality of happiness and fulfillment is real, it is equally unlikely that you have available to you, any pathways into these higher levels of functioning. What you know is what you know. What you believe is what you believe.

Nonetheless, if you go back to some of the original statements in this message, you can see so easily that while you may not have these bridges at your disposal, you must first begin to understand that the thing you seek is the thing you are! If this is only an intellectual for you right now, that’s fine. But consider it. It’s a hide-and-go-seek process.

As Sufi Master; Pir Khan says,

‘The Divine (Self) cannot be the object of your knowledge because it is the subject who knows.

Sri Aurobindo backs up this foundation by saying,

"As one progresses on the spiritual path with faith, surrender, and equality, it is not a hope but a certitude that the transformation of the nature from human to divine will occur."

So, there’s a lot of evidence to confirm that there’s a greater life awaiting you if you would but be willing to consider it. To consider that there’s nothing wrong with you, that what you strive to acquire outside of you that you think will make you OK on the inside is already there…this is where it is so appropriate to start.

But let’s give this language and structure so that you can make progress today even as you read this. Let’s call this place inside of you the inner poise…it is a center that you maintain, that you regulate, guard, protect, and nurture. The inner poise is the universe inside of you that is built upon these greater truths of who you are, established at birth, in the seed of your being, that you are a divine being in a physical body.

It is the inner poise that is the image of God, of the divine that you carry within you, so, you can see immediately the difficulty that is involved in living in this manner. The barriers are so numerous that it would seem that that is where you have to place your attention, that you have to get the barriers resolved first before you make progress but this is not true.

You can investigate, profile, analyze your personal issues all you want but they are what they are. You did the best you could with what you had and what you understood. They are what they are. If anything, it would be an appropriate time to forgive yourself for the mistakes, for the lack of understanding, and prepare to move on.

The only thing that stands a chance of resolving and dissolving psychological barriers is truth and truth is not going to be found in your past or your belief systems that were based upon the past. This center has to be composed of a greater truth that lies beyond your experiences even if in the beginning you’re just making it up. This is what you did in the first place when you decided that something was wrong with you…it was something that you made up.

So, think of your center as the field that is running your universe, and everything in your universe orbits around this center…family, friends, your work, what you say, what you do, how you do it. The center is governing everything, including everything that happens to you. As I have said before, you live in two different worlds, the horizontal and the vertical. The horizontal is your daily life, it is the periphery of your life, the exterior of your life. It is the physical you.

Unconsciousness is the visible essence of your outer life. It is the seat of your doing.

Now, I want to speak a little bit more about this periphery, the outer you.

Heraclitus was a Greek philosopher who lived around 500 BC. He was a revolutionary thinker in the sense that he disagreed with most thinkers of his time and maintained a fairly clear position that most people were too stupid to understand his teachings. He focused much of his work on human affairs. He said, “It is necessary to understand that war is common, strife is customary, and all things happen because of strife and necessity.”

In short, it is a great definition of the periphery. War and strife and struggle and suffering are the cornerstones of the periphery. But what he also spoke and wrote so often about was the fact that that strife, that struggle, life, was not understood.

When addressing the two worlds to which I have referred, he says,

“Wisdom is to speak the truth and act in keeping with its nature.”

That’s the inner you running your outer you. This effort, this center, unites the two. Nevertheless, it’s important to affirm that the periphery, the outer world, is a journey through difficulty. The vertical is the inner life, the internal you. It is the spiritual you. Consciousness is the invisible essence of your center. It is the seat of your being, the truth of who you are. It is your inner poise that is not dependent upon anything on the periphery.

The periphery is completely focused on everything that your senses are picking up. You must understand, as your life experience has taught you, that each individual tries to fulfill themselves independent of all others, not in harmony with others, and in doing so, experiences a collision course with others. Through domination, battle, deceit, war, bribery, and other human deformities, the individual tries to win…but these actions are in denial of the one consciousness that seeks harmony, interdependence, and unity. Sooner or later the ax falls. Life in the fast lane is the same thing as ignorance in the fast lane.

Now, as I said, you live in two different worlds and as such, there are two of you, if not more.

When you begin to create an inner poise, you are always connected to this center…it’s an umbilical cord that the more you are aware of it, you more you practice living from that center, the more you are able to conduct yourself in your daily life from that center. The outer is slowly unnoticeably, becoming your inner. The gap is closing. The concentric circles of becoming are narrowing as the movement is now directed not outside of you but inside of you.

This umbilical cord, this consciousness, can observe the simplest discrepancy between the unconscious you and the conscious you. When you are on the periphery in your daily life and you say something awkward, maybe something you shouldn’t have said, or you said it poorly, the inner you can “ping” without judgment the outer you and remind you of what is more appropriate, what is more representative of the truth.

It can provide clarity in an emotionally charged situation which is invaluable. This connection establishes the true reality of who you are and that you are unthreatenable, held in balance and safety.

This center reminds you that nothing on the periphery can hurt you. It is an existence inside of you that they cannot destroy, a knowledge that they cannot imprison, a joy that they cannot bribe.

When you do blow it, when you misbehave, when you act unconsciously, you can return to your center to rectify, to straighten out the curves, to widen the narrow mind, and expand your ability to take responsibility and move forward. Remember the quote from Aurbindo that I have shared in other messages: “Fate is truth working its way out through ignorance.”

The more you practice being at center, you more you are willing to practice and do everything you can to maintain that inner poise, the more control you are able to exert on your surroundings but also in reverse, the more your surroundings adhere to your inner poise.

Life is filled with meaning, purpose, destiny, and every event is an essential part of the play whether you understand it or not.

And I don’t want to dampen your mood but until you do, until you consciously choose to begin to create an inward path, the outer isn’t going to work. There will, of course, be the days and years, when everything goes your way. But then, there will be the other days. I can’t express this strongly enough. It appears that life is filled with random events. Life is not. Life is filled with meaning, purpose, destiny, and every event is an essential part of the play whether you understand it or not. It is the movement inward that is the first necessary requirement. A simple practice of 10 minutes a day for 4 days a week of being still in a seated position, letting go, breathing deeply, is a great start. Notice I’m not trying to be too exact here in this message about the practice. Just practice…the rest will follow. I’m simply giving you an example.

So, let’s make several observations:

The world in which you live is a world that is born out of ignorance. Consciousness lies hidden in the unconsciousness. Existence lies hidden in non-existence, in the meaninglessness. Joy lies hidden in the suffering.
Consciousness, in the suffering, is presented as either truth or falsehood or using the commonly used term we hear so often today, fake news. Existence, in the ignorance, is viewed as either life or death, and Joy is viewed as either pleasure or pain. How strange it is that an individual in physical form in the ignorance who lives a pure life of existence, consciousness, and joy would be viewed as a threat to the ignorance.
However, each…consciousness, existence, and joy…each are the hidden forces supporting the unconsciousness, meaninglessness, and suffering and as such, just as a necessity, rise, become known and realized, bringing the realization of a greater life into reality.
Every step of your life has shown you that the movement, the evolutionary process, will not be satisfied with your stupidity but with your continued path to knowledge by creating events and circumstances that promote change, not satisfied with your meaninglessness but with your continued path to meaning and true fate by creating events and circumstances that promote change and not being satisfied with your suffering but with your continued path to joy by creating events and circumstances that promote change. In this manner, it is inevitable that one day, in one lifetime, you will fulfill those mandates that were established at your birth.

Becoming who you really are really is inevitable. It depends on how much pain and suffering you require to wake up. So, step #1.

You must begin an inward movement.

You must begin to create an inner poise and this is going to take practice.

Consciousness creates energy…the energy being comprised of the creating consciousness…the energy creates form…the form being comprised of the level of energy that created it. So, the outcomes of your life are dependent upon the level of consciousness that created the energy, the energy that created the form, the form that is the outcome of your life.

To become more conscious, you must begin to create an inner poise that allows you to move from the drama and the periphery of your life to the center of your being or as Noreilli-Bachelet describes it, “a poise that casts no shadow.”

Now, I want to speak directly about establishing an inner poise, a practice, yoga and it is here that I can sometimes be rightly accused of being a purist. The inner poise is most often developed by some form of stillness, the most prevalent being meditation. Meditation is practiced by very few people in the US because meditation is difficult work. I recommend meditation only to those who are serious and who almost ambitiously are looking for a way forward. Nonetheless, meditation is the most well-known form of developing stillness.

There are, of course, hundreds of forms of meditation and hundreds of teachers who prescribe hundreds of different techniques and training.

Having been down many of those paths, I learned through experience that they neither provided the knowledge I was seeking nor did they provide the meaning behind the experience other than escaping the confines of my mind. While I think that’s great, the problem is that even if you get really good at mediation which I did, when you’re finished, you come right back in your mind, ending up right back where you started.

So, let me be clear. The purpose of the inner poise is not to get lost in out-of-body experiences, of getting lost in Jesus and speaking in tongues because no one knows what you’re saying anyway, or get lost in the escape from daily life.

The goal of the inner poise is to continue building a practice and a vessel by which you allow the Divine, to allow consciousness, to penetrate into your being and transform your being.

This is not a static process like so many meditation practices are but a dynamic process, an unfolding, of seeking knowledge and allowing this knowledge to come down inside of your mind, your body, your emotions, to teach your mind to become subservient to that knowledge, to teach your mind that it is this inner poise that it must serve and not the mind’s ego, personality, and cravings.

In that stillness, open your mind, open your heart upward to that descending knowledge.

I am willing to see myself differently.

I am willing to see the world differently.

But I need help.

Simply open your mind, open your heart and allow the Divine to penetrate your being. Be willing. Inspire and aspire to know. Be quiet. Be calm. Be at peace. Be silent. Surrender.

The knowledge that you seek is the knowledge that you are. The truth that you seek is the truth that you are. The Divine that you seek is the Divine that you are but strategy and practice can be of considerable value to you.

Don’t delude yourself or think of this in a sequential, linear way. This is hard work and it is going to take time but you must begin at some point.

Be willing. Inspire and aspire to know. Be quiet. Be calm. Be at peace. Be silent. Surrender.

I wish that I could share with you that I have mastered my own inner poise. I have not and I have been at this for many years. I can say that it is when I am in posture and am practicing that I have known the greatest peace, the greatest knowledge, the most wonderful letting go that has deeply affected me. I have experienced the perfection of life, of the role that time and events play in its urge to move me to greater understanding and consciousness. I have learned to be happy with myself and accepting of my own journey, and in the process of these events, I have experienced a different reality that I know to be more true than the physical reality.

Because I have no trouble stating my shortcomings, I know what the intent of these blogs must be and that intent is about creating bridges to that other reality because it is only that reality can answer all of your questions, resolve all of your confusion, and reveal to you the purpose and meaning of your life that has already been established.

If you expect to transform your horizontal life, it can only be transformed through a greater consciousness that is found in the vertical. It is not, as you have been taught, a mystery. I wish only to serve that calling in the best way that I know how but hold myself fully accountable for anything that I say and share with you. I want to inspire you to reach a little further, to become more disciplined in developing a spiritual practice, and to realize if but for a second that you are not who you think you are. You are the Divine in a physical body in a physical world. And so are they!

While the establishment of an inner poise is an invisible process, I am also going to recommend a very visible, tangible, and concrete process for you to consider. Before I do, I want to provide a footnote.

In an extensive interview with Bill Moyers, Joseph Campbell, an American professor of literature at Sarah Lawrence College who worked in comparative mythology and comparative religion would coin one of his most famous lines named, “Follow Your Bliss.”

So, there’s a concrete strategy.

Follow your bliss.

Do what you love and you will love who you be.

Follow your bliss and start being kind to yourself, allowing your Self to live the way you yearn to live.

Stop doing the things you hate doing and start doing the things you love.

For those of you who are willing and brave, step over the line of non-existence and pursue your dream.

Be willing to go through the struggle and the fear.

In doing this, you ignite and set into motion a greater unification of the outer you and the inner you. The invisible footprints of life have no choice but to follow you.

The inner poise is a lifework but will eventually and inevitability has to take place in order for you to rise above the confines and imprisonment of your mind. It is the stairwell that rises from despair and confusion into joy and knowledge.