To „sink“ into „one’s“ „inner self“…. What does that mean? I know that this formulation is difficult. I know it from my own experience. For what does one associate when one now resolves to „immerse“ oneself in „one’s“ „inner being“? One sees the whole big world around oneself. One sees the border of one’s own body to this outer world. One sees what is under the own skin that delimits us to the outside. That is the physical inside. One then sees a core in there. Dark like a black lake or brightly shining like an exploding star. That is then „my“ „inside“. And that’s where I want to go now. I row and row and it is as if I am leading against a fast flowing stream. Or as if rubber bands were holding me. It’s darn. I have the impression that I’m not getting closer at all, but am moving further and further away from it with every effort. From „my“ „inside“. But I want to go there! Because there, I was promised, is peace, silence, clarity and knowledge. What a misery! I can’t. I knew it. It’s not in me, this „sinking“….
What’s the problem? Why does it somehow not work so well? It is because of the path we mistakenly take, because we „understand“ the formulation of sinking into our own inner self wrongly and thus „act“ wrongly.
„Inner“ means center. A single point. A space. Separated from the other. From the outside. „Mine“ means „mine“ in demarcation from „yours“ or even worse, from „yours“. It means demarcation from everything else. „Sinking“ means falling deep. Means no longer perceiving anything. Means sensual separation from everything else. Three times in these words lies separation. So three times in this phrase lies the concept of the material world and mind. And so we then try to reach the place of unity with the separating concept of the mind and its ideas. My – own – inside! MINE! All and everything else should go to the devil! Close the bulkheads.
The formulation of one’s inner self is not good.
If we want to hold on to it, then „my own“ can only be the impulse which is in me as a being existing now and here to „do it“ now and here. My own then only names place and time and leaves me as individual (or the idea of it) completely out of consideration.
The „inside“ does not name in another view the typical inside, as the mind interprets it for us: As somehow immaterial, but still at a certain place, separated from the other „insides“. – It does not then designate a point in „Us“. This inside is then the inside of everything. It is the inside of everything and everyone and stands therefore as an antipole to everything external (speak: material) what exists.
As far as the concept of „sinking“ is concerned, it can certainly remain. Only this dropping into the dark and soundless depths is not the separation from the others, but a common sinking into the common inside under temporary fading out of the common outside.
Thus, the image of this small my central point or space in my own small interior, which I fall toward or row toward, dissolves. I no longer see the whole enormously large other that I have to leave outside in order to reach my own small inner point that seems so hopelessly tiny in contrast.
Thus I enter into the community of everything and am secure in unity. „Mine“ is no longer of any importance. I have, while I walk, everything and everyone friendly at the hand and beside me. Together we set out on the path.
Here and now we all go to everything.
So I have gone over to not going „inside“ at all. I „sink“ myself, then this happens by extending myself. I perceive myself. Then the floor under my feet, the walls of the room. I expand myself. I feel the earth and the creatures beneath me. I feel the trees outside the door and the birds in the air above me. I am expanding. I feel my neighbors and everything far above, below and beside me. I am expanding. I feel the moon, the planets, the sun. I am expanding and I feel every star in the universe. I am expanding. I am so thin and translucent and almost dissolved. I am expanding. And I am one with the whole of creation….
What do I need „my“ little „own“ „inside“ there? The formulation simply suggests the wrong direction. They are favorite words of the mind and so we mistakenly succumb to the temptation to let it do this also with its methods of delimitation.