If we have an inner searching attitude then I’m sure a growing number of higher thoughts will come alive in daily life. In practical terms, you might help this happen by:
- Talking about ethical issues with people you know.
- Reading spiritual books including sacred writings
- Joining discussion groups concerned with important matters
- Watching relevant videos
- Attending conferences and workshops concerning deeper matters
- Engaging in a regular spiritual practice.
What we find from inner searching
Deeper insights a person gains lift the mind above the mundane. A spark of inspiring information that leads us to reflect deeply and gain an understanding of what is good and true and thus new values, ideals, and meaningful purpose in life.
The intuitions and spiritual knowledge in the higher mind can provide meaning and facilitate dealing with fundamental existential issues such as death, suffering, and injustice and help foster personal control and social cohesion.
For the spiritual philosopher Emanuel Swedenborg, the higher mind consists of divine principles. This gives meaning to one’s life in terms of aligning oneself to a mindset that is characterized by non-attachment. Attachments that hinder spiritual progress include prioritising worldly possessions and achievement as well as attitudes of conceit, greed, lust, etc.
The crucial importance of a deeper meaning in one’s life was seen in some survivors of the death camps during the Second World War. The psychiatrist Victor Frankl, said that the will to find meaning accounts for their capability to suffer and to endure life’s negative experiences. Inner searching pays off when you find something valuable within yourself.
Inner searching using self-observation
The transpersonal psychologist Steve Taylor points out that the mind is full of a large number of different thoughts with strange twists and turns. He says it is a voice in our heads all the time, a noise and image-producing machine. It constantly recalls our experience, replaying bits of information with imagined scenarios.
I know that when people begin to practice self-observation during meditation, they try to focus their concentration on just one thing. At first, they find this is very difficult. This is because these fleeting thoughts and other contents of consciousness come and go uninvited, having a life of their own. All sorts of sensations, thoughts, images, memories, fantasies, and impulses intrude themselves. We need to acknowledge them but don’t need to entertain them. It takes regular practice before one can learn to stop paying these interlopers the attention they demand and then we no longer behave automatically in line with them.
Inner searching using meditation
When I was a boy, I was playing in the back garden of my home when another boy tried to enter the garden by the back gate from a public alleyway. When I told him to leave, he swore at me using the ‘F’ word. The thought came into my head that he had no right to trespass on my territory nor to act in a hostile way towards me. I made an automatic response and angrily shouted back at him using the same swear word and he soon left. But my mother had heard me from the house and she came out to chastise me for my bad language.
Had I been trained in mindfulness meditation I would have been more attentive to what was going on inside my head. I might have learned not to react automatically. I might have even become aware that I was being overheard!
Mindfulness
Mindfulness meditation is a worldwide practice that has grown in popularity in the West. It is a coming together of modern psychology and the contemplative traditions. It trains individuals to step back and observe and become familiar with their reactive tendencies before automatically acting on them. In the state of mindfulness, one is likely to be more aware of thought processes. One neither impatiently jumps to conclusions nor feels overwhelmed by what’s going on around. We are more likely to be able to let go of what would otherwise be negatively affecting us. As a result, we feel calm and at peace.
People mindful of their natural emotional reactions have learned to observe and then neglect the impulses that enter consciousness.
You can’t stop the waves, but you can learn to surf. (Jon Kabat-Zinn) 6
Likewise:
You can’t prevent birds of sorrow flying overhead but you can prevent them nesting in your head. (Chinese proverb)
This means emotionally distancing oneself from them. Meditation is like inner searching. Those who practise meditation do this by gently refocusing their attention on some pre-planned fixed object of concentration rather than on intrusive thoughts. Then meditators discover the distractions gradually go away revealing something valuable within.
Effort needed for inner searching
So part of finding out what needs to inwardly change in us comes from careful self-observation. But who takes the trouble to do this? I certainly hadn’t all those years ago when confronting that boy. Mind you, we wouldn’t expect myself as a child to be that aware.
You may have had the experience of driving somewhere and being surprised when reaching the destination, not having been aware of the journey. It is as if we are airplanes on automatic pilot. Sometimes we may pause to reflect on what was going on inside our heads but often we don’t. If not, then negative contents of consciousness include envious, irritable, or mean thoughts easily take over.
As an adult without self-reflecting, I can still mindlessly react to the indignant thoughts in my head. I did this for example when a pedestrian started shouting at me outside my home for parking my car in his way partly on the footpath, I spoke loudly and then with irritation to excuse myself. When his companion joined in the rant however I couldn’t get a word in edgewise.
Don’t most people have a knee-jerk reflex to whatever happens to them? They don’t engage their heads properly on what is going on. Their natural reactions take over without their conscious awareness.
On the other hand, in so far as we engage in introspective self-observation, we will then develop what has been called ‘the observing self’. It requires an attitude of openness and curiosity about inner experience. Inner searching for this new selfhood is needed if we wish to pursue inner change.
Seek and you will find (Gospel of Matthew)
Copyright 2023 Stephen Russell-Lacy
Author of Heart, Head & Hands Swedenborg’s perspective on emotional problems
