Inside

There are no answers or clear guidance outside. It is all inside, within me. My most trustworthy understanding is inside me and arises from my own personal experience. All the rest is someone else’s way, someone else’s path. My path is inside the winding patterns of what I myself experiences. It is not within the patterns of others.

My life is shaped by my learning what I observe of the patterns within me. For me, it has been important not to be distracted or guided by fears and an imagined future. It has been most reliable to stay in touch with what I am experiencing right now, not what I might experience in the future. Even less reliable has it been to stay in touch with what others imagine or experience.

I rely on what I experience inside of me, not what others experiene inside them. My reactions, like my dreams, are messages of how I am to move through the world. The experiences and imaginatins of others form their own path. The paths of others may provide an environment for my own experiences, and I can learn from them. I observe the experiences of others, and then I notice how I react. I learn from the experience of others, I see more clearly toward where I may want to go or away from where I may want to steer. Theirs is not my path. My path is mine alone, but I can learn from what I see others do.

A great shortcoming of my life has been to live in the imagination of others expressed in dogma, in teachings of religion. Their path is not mine, but I can learn from their path. Even the teachings expressed in Buddhism are no more than the expression of what others have experienced. I pay attention to what resonates inside of me and I act accordingly. The formulas of religion expressed in practices are no more than examples of how others have found their way. I have to find the way that is forming inside of me. That is how I make choices specific to me. That is how I recommend guidance to others. Others have to find the path inside of them.

I can only say what works inside of me. That means first of all that I have to pay attention to what is inside of me. I must above all be aware how I am experiening the world around me. Perhaps that is why I approach the world around me with love. I fall in love so many times each day, and that is an invitation to the world to show its loving self to me. That is how I learn to experience the world, by loving all that I encounter. And that gives me the most reliable experience inside of me. When I am open to the outside in a loving way, my inside path is most reliably based on what is real, what most accurately present.

So when I reliy on the guidance that is within me, it is founded on my intent to see things and people just as they are. That may be how I learn to live in the world just as it is. It is not a learning based on the spoken or written teachings of others. It is based on what I experience inside of me when I am open to the world. I follow my own path. I follow what is most clear inside of me.