What is the Inner Path?
All of the traditions studied and presented here essentially share one assumption—that while humans enjoy the free will to pursue their desires and avoid the things they don’t want as they wish—this exercise will ultimately end in a realization that no external person, item, or situation will deeply satisfy in a permanent way. The moment we gain one desire or rid ourselves of a grievance, our mind shifts to the next, and disatisfaction finds its way back in. This running from and running toward different external circumstances, ever bouncing between pleasure, pain, craving, and avoidance, will always result in disappointed exhaustion. This is amplified by our current time and culture centered on pleasure, greed, ignorance, and aggression.
While very unpleasant, this realization is simply part of the human education and maturity process. Individually, it often looks like a mid-life crisis, breakdown, a major depressive state, or irratic behavior. The global events of the past few years have also hastened this process en masse—a difficult but much-needed lesson to prepare us for the decade ahead of us.
“The Kingdom of Heaven is Within.”
Wise and authentic sages, saints, teachers, and inspired fellow travelers always point others to the “still, small voice” within, and offer instruction on how to more deeply listen, connect, align, and flow from within this space to beautify and enrich our human experience, and uplift humanity as a whole.
The red flag, of course, is when a spiritual leader points to themselves, or sells access to our innate human abilities for money. Yet, it is human nature over time to create rituals and traditions that focus more on “the hand pointing at the moon” rather than the moon itself. It is also the nature of most humans, once a little authority is gained, to fall prey to the temptation to abuse that power and turn the inner path into a money-making scheme, a power/control trip, or way to fill their own unresolved desires.
This is simply the reality we live in, yet it demonstrates the dire need for each of us to develop a strong connection to our own inner communication system—to directly experience “the moon” itself.
It’s important to remember that even when we place our trust in external people, things, circumstances, systems, organizations, beliefs, and ideas—including our ideas about the divine—we forget that the person placing that trust must also be investigated, clarified, and trusted first for that externally placed trust to have a solid foundation. Note that when we do directly meet and experience ourselves, the divine, even another person—that experience happens entirely within ourselves. There is no space beyond you where your connection or experience dwells. While it seems obvious and common sense, our cultural training is otherwise.
How to Talk About the Wordless
The inner path leads us to a new experience we can’t simply put into words. The inner experience of childbirth, a moment of deep connection with nature, music or art, a “unity experience” of sudden, divine contact, an NDE—these can very rarely be transmitted directly to another with words alone. We taste these experiences directly—just like we taste salt and know it is salty. This is an inner understanding that can’t be shared in its original form with anyone–only expressed symbolically in hope they can relate based on their own experiences.
This is the oil of the five wise virgins of the New Testament—gnosis—or inner direct knowing of who and what we truly are when our thinking, chattering mind is quiet. These were the ones who were ready at the darkest hour. We will need nothing less.
We discover in these moments something we can’t fully articulate to others, yet we are entirely changed by it and our future lives are fully informed by it. We may call it a lot of different names based on our traditions, but when experienced directly, we learn that it is actually wordless, deathless, nondenominational, indestructable, eternal. Somehow it is mind-bogglingly interconnected with all, intimately personal, yet universally accessible. In the end, we can’t explain the why or how of our deepest internal expriences in the language we currently have, or present it properly for external validation that it is “real.” This experience is more directly real to us than all our words, but it’s simply beyond our limited human constructs to effectively condense the most complex, rich human experiences into mouth noises or characters on a page.
This is why art is so essential in this process–it can convey experiences in ways conversation cannot.
Secret Sauce or Open to All?
If we have a direct experience connecting with our inner reality, we may then naturally assume our tradition was its source, that it validates the superiority or veracity of our tradition. Or, that access to such an experience is exclusive to our own tradition. However, the pointing hand did not make the moon.
Even a cursory study will reveal that this is a common human experience across all human traditions—both spiritual and secular. We can cultivate gratitude toward our tradition for laying the path that brought us forth. This gratitude can be extended and enjoyed even when it was our frustration or disenchantment with our tradition that drove the healing crisis.
Thankfully, wise men and women over thousands of years from around the world have mapped out the general commonalities of this vast human inner landscape. Through them, we can discover that however perfectly personal these experiences are to us, they also generally fall within a universal framework of inner maturity and human progression, and actually fuel the collective progress of humanity. Bliss, waves of felt energy, altered states, divine visions, sleeping and waking dreams, hellscapes and dark nights of the soul—we learn are not in fact destinations in and of themselves at all. They too are natural, common milestones on our inner journey that must be thoroughly digested and then released—the same as any external desire.
This actually can be quite a relief to learn that we humans have collected a tremendous amount of researched data about the inner landscape for aeons, and live in a time where we can access and correlate all of it to find the integrated center. Especially if we are raised in a tradition that didn’t provide a context for such experiences, or if the original framework itself is blown away by the experience, we have vast resources to draw upon. I’m worried that too many are feeling isolated or fearing that they are going crazy, when really they are entering a new stage of their own development that is actually very well understood across many human traditions throughout history. While words, cultural imagery, and some aspects differ, the central picture is shockingly consistent.
So, why not benefit from thousands of years of painstaking human effort to preserve these tools for the sake of human harmony and actualization? Can we really tell ourselves that we’re at the pinnacle of human wisdom, even as we stand—disconnected and lost—on the brink of our own self-destruction?
Words are Not the Thing
Just as my telling you with words how deeply I love my children does not place within you that same, direct experience of activated, felt love for my children—we are all confined by the limits of our language and the window of our past experiences. It’s very hard to convey our inner world with each other, but remember, this was the origin and purpose of language itself—to be able to share our inner experience.
And strangely, our exchange of words and arguments over what various words mean in the outer world has now somehow begun to take top priority over our actual, direct experience—the reality of our inner human journey through the world. As a result, we are now raising entire generations who are operating entirely in the world of words and symbols, living primarily in reaction to the world presented on their rectangles. They are disconnected from the unconditionally sustaining forces that literally surround and support them. It is rare to feel our feet on the earth, to notice the air breathing our lungs, to actively receive the sun’s support of every aspect of our existence. We stand, actually experiencing the daily embrace of these higher powers—still trapped in words and ideas and beliefs.
I’m reminded of the Tower of Babel and wonder sometimes if this is what it looks like to have our language “confounded” to the point that we can’t understand each other anymore. It seems to be organically taking place in our world as we speak.
Does the Inner Path Require Belief?
A while ago one of my sons said he didn’t think he believed in God. I smiled and said, “What is there to believe in? You’re standing on her, she feeds you, and you’re literally made out of her. She doesn’t care what you believe.”
I took the liberty of speaking for her, because I’m an underappreciated mom, too. He actually raised his eyebrows thoughtfully and nodded a bit. Touché.
But in all seriousness, what is a “God” if not a higher power—a force beyond our own efforts—that unconditionally and daily provides for our existence?
Because we have become stuck in the world of our mental constructs, we are increasingly cut off from our own actual, direct experience of connection—connecting with our own aliveness and the wondrous ecosystem of which we are obviously a part. We have instead trapped ourselves instead inside ideas, thoughts and words about life—and as a result, most of us have become imprisoned in our own heads, and the talking doesn’t let up inside even if no one is talking outside. Talking IS our life.
It seems we are spinning in outdated assumptions of separateness with no foundation in our own actual, observable world beyond the rectangles.
As one of my dear teachers often says, “You cannot escape from a prison made of thoughts using thought.”
Strangely, this pervasive, disconnected view is often seen as rational and firmly non-theistic—yet it completely contradicts the evident interwoven systems and our growing understanding of observable biology, physics, how ecosystems work, or even common sense.
On the other side, many theistic traditions have also cut themselves off from the apparent physical creation they interact with daily—seeing it as dead, separate, or corrupt—rather than powerful forces which enable us to directly experience constant divine nurturing.
Even if we hold to the idea of an anthropomorphized, parental God—or divine parents, as with my tradition—how can we not see these powers as divinely sustained instruments?
In my view, the only belief needed is the belief that there is something here to explore—that perhaps our little 3 lb. meat bag brains maybe haven’t totally figured out the infinite and don’t have it all nailed down tidily. Believe in a little humility. Believe in curiousity. Believe in being aware and observing. Believe in wonder and appreciating what is, rather than declaring what we have concluded that it is.
Even when we have a rich tradition full of answers, there is so much more to learn! When we deeply listen inside and truly observe, when we learn to silence our inner and outer chatter—we learn. It may take a minute to resensitize ourselves, as long-term loudness and distraction takes a toll on our ability to be still and listen.
But as our elementary teachers told us, “You can’t hear when you’re talking.” So my advice is to set aside words for a moment—even the words of belief—and explore the power of silence.
Be still and know.
If It’s Universal, Why Does the Inner Path Require Training?
Unless children are being instructed in a specific religious tradition, rarely are western kids trained in looking inward, so they are left ever chasing the outward. If they are raised within a tradition, often they are taught to view the inner voice as suspect unless it aligns nicely with the tradition’s teachings about what the inner experience should look and feel like.
Quickly, entire generations can forget that words were only ever symbols of the actual direct human experience. Once again, even religious or spiritual training often leads them into a purely symbolic, virtual world of ideas about life. Ironically, the child’s actual, inner human experience eventually is discredited or dismissed as “unreal” by their own mind—simply because it cannot be conveyed through the words and ideas they’ve been provided.
Culturally, this leaves us cut off from our own inner experience entirely. We never develop the navigation skills to understand our inner landscape, and develop our sensitivity and self trust so we act wisely in the world. We just react and are acted upon.
This is a travesty, because the human instrument is in truth a Stradivarius, a Steinway—and rather than teaching children how to tune in, learn to play their instrument, and allow life to play through them—they come to spend their human life as a room ornament, appreciated for appearance only, never aware of the music they could make.
So, skilled inner teachers often “point” with parables, metaphors, stories, and through art simply because the subject matter is beyond our limited thought capacity. They will often avoid multiplying words which can get students stuck in their heads—analyzing, compartmentalizing, separating—which block our ability to directly experience the whole of which we are a part.
This is also why they often use the felt experience of the body (somatic experience) such as the more familiar body yogas, because they can help the student directly encounter these forces within themselves and circumvent the ever-commenting chatter of our minds.
Understanding the human as receiver and transmitter.
This point is self verifiable. We are equipped with five senses and a mind to receive and perceive. We are also equipped with the ability to emit vibration, thought, voice, and action to transmit outward.
When we don’t train our senses and mind, we receive basically whatever comes along, whatever we were trained to look at growing up, or our random desires.
When we don’t understand that we are literally changing our environment with what we are emitting, we can haphazardly transmit the same habits and patterns that reinforce whatever we already expected and were trained to transmit.
Either way, we are creating. If you’re alive, you’re transmitting and receiving, and there is no neutral. So why not be more mindful of what we send and receive? Be the change we want to see in the world? What if it really isn’t that hard?
Maturity, free will, consciousness—these words are just about becoming aware of what we are receiving and transmitting to ensure it truly aligns with our values.
What do we wish to be filled with and fueled by? What do we wish to send into the world?
In a world awash in chaos and negativity and powerlessness, avoiding our inner work simply makes us an accidental relay station that amplifies the chaos, negativity, and powerlessness we take in daily. We fill up with shock and horror at what we witness on the rectangles. We then call this “being informed” about the “real world,” even as we neglect to notice the actual real world of earth, sky, sun, moon, plants, humans and animals in our actual circle of influence, and, at the center of it all—our own inner landscape.
We can instead choose to be a conscious instrument—taking in and sending out wisely and lovingly—amplifying the most positive vision we can muster for humanity.
On the surface, this seems irrationally idealistic. In practice, you directly witness an evolution over time as you train in stillness, sensitivity and awareness.
This is the inner path.
