Re-valueing oneself for the inner world
Jeroen
Luminous beings are we, not this crude matterNetherlands Veteran
I was considering my meditation the other day, and it seems to me that to arrange one’s inner world along the same lines as the outer would be moderately insane.
In meditation my mind sometimes runs away with me, and the week before last I had a session where I came across a band of energy inside my forehead that spoke and identified itself as “NATO”. Which seems silly, but if you think of it in terms of emotional value, it is a name that has a certain weight and respectability. I just carried on witnessing as usual and it passed.
But it set me to thinking, on and off. My normal way of being has been to consider myself equal to other humans, irrespective of money, status, power, all those things. My preferred way of governance has been the democracy. My focus in life has been self sufficiency, I have no children or wife. Now what if there really is an inner world? With other things in it that speak?
To assume equality might be dangerous to one’s mental health. It seems reasonable to assume, from a Buddhist perspective, that you are the sole proprietor, the suprememost sovereign of your internal space. One might also assume that the other things that speak can be purely temporary, that just witnessing them and letting them pass is the right response.
Anyway I found it really interesting how in an inner world one has to re-value oneself.
Comments
Interesting idea separating the inner and outer worlds like that. I don't really have an opinion, just that your post has given me a perspective I find compelling to consider.
You grow up in the outer world, you learn a whole range of behaviours, and then when you meditate and you start your journey to the inner world you find there is much to unlearn.
I’ve come across some information on the inner world in Osho’s lectures, and he says there is a periphery and a core to your being, that in the core all things are one. He also says that there are seven bodies which you find in the inner world...
It’s not a perspective that is often discussed in Buddhist circles, even in a practice-based tradition such as Zen the method seems to be to leave you to learn on your own.
Playing around with the analogy I suppose I do treat my inner world as a sort of benevolent dictatorship. Dharma is my divinely appointed sovereign, my emotions don't have democratic rights. Anger, craving and ignorance don't get a vote, they can petition the ruler but mostly it just ignores them. It isn't an oppressive kingdom, anger, craving and delusion are allowed to exist, they just aren't supported or encouraged. The Dharma dictator, in it's concern for the overall benefit of the kingdom, allows freer reign of the forces of wisdom and compassion so long as they're in the service of the Dharma's overall goals.
My Dharma sovereign also isn't so insular and self serving that it doesn't recognize the innate right of other kingdoms to exist and in it's wisdom understands that the welfare of the surrounding kingdoms affects it own welfare, so wants other kingdoms to also flourish.
Most of us know of no propetier, no sovereign soul. Just a passing through ... The 'witness' you mention, is a temporary construct and filter ... also just passing along ...
Personally I don't have such delineations:
This is the thing... if you’ve never experienced your inner world, then the issue doesn’t come up, and you can just relate in the outer world to your fellow humans as you like. But once you realise there is an inner world - and some Buddhist meditations do take you in that direction, such as visualising a Buddha or a famous master - then you could come in for a shock if you don’t value yourself correctly.
Even if you set the dharma up as your guiding light, then you avoid the central issue of your own place in your own world. You could still find yourself being faced in a vision with a talking book which says on its cover, the dharma... depending entirely on how imaginative or insane your inner self turns out to be.