InnerView: The Path & Practice
The path and practice of InnerView is about tending to the care of souls, beginning with our own. The function of the soul is to guide our birth vision and life purpose with an inner compass that will never steer us wrong. It’s like the north star, always there, even when obscured by clouds of egoistic self-will and dark nights of disintegration. When you learn how to listen more closely to the still, small, inner voice that knows what matters most, you realize it’s your soul whispering directions going forward. When conscious awareness and intentionality are the main ‘tools of the trade’ for helping others, these are the goals of psychospiritual integration:
To remember who you are and where you are on your soul journey and engage with others authentically.
To claim your strengths and self-worth in order to better encourage and serve the well-being of others.
To know yourself as a whole person and view your life situation with the perspective of a wide-angle lens.
To embrace the inner and outer resources it takes to overcome obstacles on your path and inspire others.
To experience the calmness and confidence that comes with living your truth and staying true to your values.
To be able to expand rather than contract your emotional capacity when facing challenging life circumstances.
If only life didn’t get in the way with its distractions, deceptions and discouragements. Yet, from your soul’s point of view, your life situation is not stopping you. It’s not happening to you; it’s happening for you. It’s not what’s going against you; it’s what you’re finding within you. We can deal with difficulties more effectively when we see troubles as a form of psychospiritual training. It’s a way of living from the inside-out in the unfolding one’s own myth. When you trace back the radiance to the goodness, beauty and truth of what the soul wants, it’s like a light shining through the stained glass window of your unique personhood.
What does it mean to unfold your own myth? On one level it means sorting through the inheritance of family upbringing and social conditioning for what we want to keep. Yet it’s also about living in a bigger story; participating in the movie scenes of life without completely identifying with one’s role or getting lost in the drama. Psychospiritually conscious persons commit to self-transcending values, which harkens back to what previous generations have called character formation.
The genuinely religious imagination (from the Latin word ‘religare’ which means to tie, bind together) seeks to embrace the contradictions of life, with its order and chaos, comedies and tragedies, realities and revelations, rather than take polarized sides. In turn, it opens our limited personal perspective to transpersonal and archetypal realms. With that shift in self-knowledge, we then survey the inner landscape for the soul growth we want to nurture.