Inner work is hard. It takes lots of practice, and time to become good at it. It is not for the faint of heart, not for the “quick fix” searchers, nor it is something you can pick up and leave behind. Inner work takes dedication, commitment, and MOST IMPORTANTLY the killing of your ego. It is not an easy path, but it is a path worth living. A path to help you realize the root of all of your suffering, and a path that will put an end to it so that you can live better, and create new experiences and memories for yourself.
WHAT IS INNER WORK?
What is inner work? Inner work is the psychological and spiritual practice of diving deep into your inner self: your subconscious mind for self-understanding, healing, and spiritual transformation. Inner work is the act of confronting your sub conscious mind and effectively taking your past & current traumas head on. Observing them and acknowledging that they exist, and acknowledging where they came from, or how they came to be.
I’m not going to lie to you. Inner work is hard. Inner work allows you to take a deep dive into the many layers of your mind. The conscious, the subconscious, and the unconscious mind. By taking a look at these different layers of your mind, you will expose each trauma, their origin, and why they continue to linger within you. You will begin to peel these trauma’s off of you like you’re peeling an onion. Of course, peeling an onion isn’t easy. As you peel back the layers of an onion, you will cry. Inner work is the same in the sense that the more you peel back years of trauma stored from within your subconscious and unconscious mind, you expose yourself to memories of trauma, feelings, places, beliefs, shadows, prejudices etc… By exposing yourself to these parts, you allow yourself closure and a way to move past it.It is only then, when we find the root cause of our problems that we can truly heal. If you want the weeds to stop growing, you pull them out by the roots.
WHY INNER WORK?
Inner work will make you realize the deepest, darkest versions of yourself. It will make you admit things about yourself that you never knew. But inner work is also forgiving that it will make you realize that all these things you’ve done so far in your life, all the things that has happened to you so far [good and bad] are contributors that have made the character that you are now. All characteristics that you possess: personalities, likes, dislikes, fears, and things you find joy in are products of your past. This realization has allowed me to look at myself in the past without judgement, but simply acknowledging the past mistakes I’ve made or past traumas I’ve been through and taking them head on.
WHAT IS THE GOAL OF INNER WORK?
The goal of inner work is to fix yourself. The goal is to create mental toughness, understanding, and acceptance of of yourself.
Your main goal is remembering and confronting all of your past traumas [loss, traumatic events, etc…] and bringing them into the light so that you may work through them, so that you may ask yourself how those traumas originated.
HOW IS INNER WORK DONE?
Inner work is similarly simple as it is hard because it takes time. It takes time in the sense that you cannot heal of of your traumas overnight. It takes your whole life to realize all of your past traumas and work through them.
One MAJOR thing you need to understand with inner work and working with the subconscious mind is that when you ask something of it, you will receive this answer. Only, do not go looking for a voice in your head, or physical answers. The subconscious mind speaks only in the language of symbolism. This symbolism is different for everybody. These symbols that your subconscious mind will present to you were forged in your lifetime from your experiences. For example, in your childhood a gloomy rainy day may have been a day you got to stay in with your family and spend the day eating snacks, and watching movies then you will have a good, happy association with a gloomy day. For somebody who spent their childhood by themselves, feeling lonely in a rainy gloomy day, it may have a negative association. A serpent to a Christian may represent the serpent that tempted Adam and Eve. This will leave the Christian with a negative connotation of snakes in symbolism. For a Hindu,serpents represent the kundalini energy. Serpents represent awakening of your energy. This will leave the Hindu a positive connotation of snakes in symbolism.
These symbols will appear in your dreams, your daily thoughts, and physically manifest themselves even in the physical world. It is your job to look for this symbolism in your daily life (asleep or awake) in order to put meaning to them
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The most basic form of inner work is realizing yourself. This can be done by simply observing your behavior and acknowledging it. For example, a “people pleaser.”This attribute can be found from those neglected as children. Neglect does not have to mean that your parents left you at home at the age of 5 with food in the pantry. Neglect can simply mean that your parents didn’t pay as much attention to you. This leads to you always looking for something to please your parents with so that you can get their attention. This cycle repeats itself, and shows itself in you later on in life. You go above and beyond, and even at your expense in order to please somebody. You may no longer be doing this to get somebodies attention, but subconscious you’re doing it for the reaction. That reactions your parents used to give you when you did something good.
The trick with realizations of yourself is to not judge them, or to not judge yourself but to simply realize it. When you realize that you’re a people pleaser, you do not judge yourself for it you merely acknowledge that it is something you do. Something you’re accustomed to. Once you’ve done this, you can begin to ask yourself questions such as “How did this trauma come to be?” “What is the root cause of this trauma?”and your subconscious mind will begin to present you with the reasons.
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Another form of inner work is dream work. Dream work consists of writing your dream and conducting a break down of the symbolism which consist of it. This breakdown and understanding what each symbol within the dream allows you to act on that part of your life in order to change it.
We will do a more in depth break down of dream work in our coming blogs. Dream work is vast and a topic on its own. If you’re looking for reading material regarding it, a good place to start is “Robert A. Johnson - Inner Work: Using Dreams and Active Imagination for Personal Growth”You may find yourself wanting more information. For that you can read forums on dream work. Specifically Carl Jung’s work who is a renowned psychologist and the one responsible for dream work.
SIMPLE SIGNS YOU SHOULD BE LOOKING FOR FOR INNER WORK
- Sense of hopelessness
- Depression
- Lack of sleep (depending on why you cant sleep)
- Addiction
- Feeling of being lost
- Low confidence
- Lack of trust
- The feeling that the world is against you
- Constant battles with yourself
- Constant battles with other people
Of course this is not a full guide, but merely a brief one to show you what type of attributes you should be looking for to determine if this is something you should be doing.
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