Inner Work

For the week of April 28, 2008

Inner Body for Inner Life

If truth be told, our inner life of thoughts, emotions, and sensory perceptions often seems chaotic, random, disorganized, and haphazard. In comparison, our outer, physical life seems orderly and mostly predictable. A primary reason for this difference is that while we have a well-formed physical body, we do not have a well-formed inner body. Outwardly we have a stable place, our physical body, from which we can observe our outer world, make sense of it, and participate in it appropriately and effectively. Inwardly we have no such place to stand. We are at sea and rudderless in a cacophony of inner events.

The remedy begins in concerted and consistent efforts to develop our inner body. As a starting point we put our attention into our hands, sensing the life of our hands directly. After practicing that to the point of being able to become vividly aware of our hands at will, we extend the work of sensing to our feet. Then we sense arms, legs, torso, head, and eventually our whole body. This sensing builds our inner body, which is made of sensation, the sensitive energy that enables that direct perception of our body. So that when our physical body sits, we also sit inwardly, in contact with our inner body of sensation.

That inner work of sensation leads us toward moments of more stable presence than otherwise possible. Living in our inner body, we can notice our thoughts and emotions without being at their mercy, identified with them, careening through the highs and lows, believing we are those self-generating thoughts and emotions. Our inner body enables us to see more objectively what goes on inside us, without our usual entanglement with those goings-on.

At every stage of our spiritual path, the practice of sensing, of being in our inner body, yields important benefits. For this week, work on developing and living in your inner body.

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