Inner Work

For the week of: December 1, 2003

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Unification: Inner Wholeness

A fragmented and contentious collection of parts pervades our life. Competing desires pummel us. We want more money, but not a second job. We want more cake, but not more weight. We want to practice piano, but not lose TV time. We want time with our family, but also time to earn money.

Conflicting emotions confuse us. We get angry at someone we love. We fear heights but enjoy the views. We envy another's good fortune, but admire them nevertheless. We want love and friendship, but fear rejection.

Our thoughts and opinions lack consistency. We agree with the latest Op-Ed column, even though it directly contradicts what we believed yesterday. Two well-reasoned but opposing arguments leave us befuddled. We believe, and yet are skeptical.

A deeper layer of conflict emerges in our opinions about ourselves. We hate certain aspects of ourselves: our shortcomings and weaknesses, our lacks and fears, our bodily imperfections, our naiveté, ignorance, and slowness, our distractedness, selfishness, and more.

Can we heal these inner divisions? Self-unification requires first that we work to extend the range and subtlety of our awareness to see the mass of inner contradictions that populates our psyche. This includes work at sensing our body, awareness of difficult emotions as emotions, and seeing our thoughts as thoughts. It includes becoming aware of both our negative and our inflated views of ourselves.

Self-unification also requires self-acceptance. We gradually let go of all those dislikes we have about ourselves. We come to love ourselves as we are. We drop our reservations about accepting every aspect of our makeup.

Extending the range of our awareness and accepting ourselves prepare the ground for self-unification, for extending the domain of our will, our I, to our whole body and being. We learn to own our body, our mind, our heart, and everything within us. But this ownership, this integrated wholeness of who we are, comes not through domination but through love. This is not, as sometimes depicted in spiritual teachings, a matter of our will mastering our body, mind, and heart. Rather, our will, our I becomes the glue which holds it all together, which unifies us. Our I becomes the core which touches everything within us. Absent this core, we have no center, our disparate and unruly parts vying for dominance. But inhabiting our center, through our unified will, we inspire and relate all our parts.

Further unification comes in how we relate to ourselves, to others, to all life, and ultimately to God. At each stage, who we are, the domain of our will expands, joins with, and serves a higher will.

For this week, work at unifying your own nature.

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