For all our lives we are trained to direct our attention outward. We identify our world with the objects that we see, hear, sense and feel.
When I first heard the phrase “going inward”, it totally didn’t make any sense to me; inward? Where? Because for me I wasn’t even aware that my attention was “outward.” I wasn’t aware of the habitual tendency of reacting to all the ups and downs of the world around me, and the tendency of the mind to drift on thoughts about the past and the future.
The first time I allowed my awareness to rest back into itself, with my meditation techniques, I experienced the very subjective part of me as my awareness detached from all the objective movements. There was a huge, silent, eternal, unchanging place that’s infinitely aware of the world going and moving within itself. The subject that I am is silent and still, beyond any appearance.
As I started to touch this space of stillness within myself, Habitually my mind still tended to drift off and the attention went outward on thoughts, feelings, and objects. I thought, “Why is achieving inner peace so difficult?”
But it is never difficult. It’s just changing the habit of where we put our attention takes a little practice, and our mind tends not to enjoy the practice!
It really is just about changing that habit.
When we consciously stop training our attention to dwell on thoughts, it naturally rests back more and more into itself, because the nature of our awareness is to be aware of itself. All we have been doing in the past is making it not being itself.
“Going inward” isn’t to really go anywhere mentally or physically, it is simply allowing and letting the awareness rest back to the stillness of itself from jumping on thought after thought, object after object.
And it is the nature of our awareness to experience this world fully aware of itself, because this world is simply the content within the infinity of our awareness. It is our nature to experience this world the way it is from a space of silence, contentment, love and peace. It is natural for us to want that, and thus it is natural for us to live that.
We just need to find a way to change our current habit of where we put our attention, and stick to it until it is done.
It’s our nature. It’s meant to be easy. All we have to do is be willing, to allow it to be easy.
