5. Inner and outer reality – what’s the difference?

A teacher once told me: ”We attract what we most need to learn.” If we are attentive, our surrounding world serves us chances to grow our capabilities, experiences and judgment.

And yesterday I listened to a person I follow who added another layer. ”Face what makes you most anxious.” It reminds me that all learning requires facing some sort of fear or anxiety. As if the fear itself represents the barrier between my inner image of what’s out there, and the reality.

But when I let the outer world in, I almost always learn something new. I spoke with a friend recently who decided to make himself more visible at work. He described the fear as he made  his point in the all-hands meeting. Intense heart beat, tunnel vision, pounding inner voices telling him that he had made a fool of himself. And then, after the deep discomfort of the moment had past: the realisation that his inner voices were proven wrong. Instead of being made a fool of, his connection to his colleagues was stronger. 

In hermetic philosophy, there is a saying:

As within, so without.

What we pay attention to without is a reflection of what we believe within. 

I often return to the hermetic way of seeking perspective on the questions of meaning, contribution, purpose. If the way I experience my outer world is related to the world I carry inside, then how I expand my inner world, how I grow my awareness of its shape and drivers, becomes essential also to what I can achieve.

Many people who have much more life experience than me have confirmed this perspective through the years. One of the most important ones for me is Viktor Frankl. His conclusion after enduring Auschwitz is that our attitude to life is our most precious core. It cannot be taked from us, and with our attitude, we can shape the world. Iain McGilchrist, author of The Master and his Emissary, puts it something like this: ”The choice we make of how we pay attention is the ultimate creative act: it renders the world what it is. It is, therefore, a moral act: it has consequences.”

As I set out to examine self-inquiry, I want to be clear that I am colored by the thinkers who have connected our inner and outer experiences in this way.

So back to my initial question then. What’s the difference between inner and outer reality? What is clearest to me is that they are related and that my attention to how they come together within me is a clue to my next development step. And while my mind’s assumptions can feed the illusion that I know something to be true, every interaction with the outer world keeps guiding me to the places where I have more yet to learn.