In order to answer the question put to us in the previous blog, we are going to have to learn a few of the rules of travel. Traversing the inner terrain is all about learning first the distinctions between inner terrain and outer terrain and second, learning how to traverse. So, first things first. How do we know when we are walking the inner terrain as opposed to the outer? Typically, we tend to think that reactions are all we really need to know, because our reactions will tell us how to behave. And, very often, our reactions compel our behaviors, so that there is not much else going on between the emotional reaction and the action. But a reaction is an emotional response to an external circumstance. And while emotional responses are definitely part of the inner terrain, they rarely go deep enough to get us on a path we can walk into deeper territories. Unless, that is, we learn how to hold the tension between a reaction and an action long enough to ask some important questions of the reaction.
Inner terrain runs much deeper than the simple reactivity we feel to the outside world, because reactivity means that something else outside of us has acted first and we are re-acting. The inner terrain at its deepest level is not a re-anything. It is all original stuff. At its deepest level the inner terrain is the real essence of who we are. But reactions, if explored for the why's and wherefores can take us to this deeper inner terrain. Still, in order to begin to explore our reactions this way, we will need to be able to separate the internal aspects of the reaction from the external stimuli.
We can start sorting between what is inner and what is outer by recognizing that for which we can actually be held accountable. This means recognizing, for example, that I cannot be held accountable for someone else's responses and reactions to what I do. I can only be held accountable for what I do. For example, in therapy, I often work with individuals who stay in a bad relationship because they fear hurting their partners. This is an attempt to do outer work. In other words, these people are trying to do the work of their partners, instead of doing the inner work of learning about how they feel and think on the deeper more original levels and responding appropriately. If Jerry breaks up with his wife, he is not responsible for how his wife feels about that-that's his wife's job. He is, however, responsible for the veracity, passion and compassion of his own thoughts, feelings and actions. If Jerry wishes to do this thing authentically, he might need to attend to how he feels about the potential breakup and make a plan to honor his own feelings, his own compassion for his wife, his own passion to get out of the relationship and his own actions as he breaks up with her.
But in order to do that, he's probably going to need to learn about how to walk into himself and find out what is true and false there. And this is where the going gets a little tough. Very often in therapy, I will ask a client to name a particular feeling or express a particular internal reality and their answer is "I don't know, what I'm feeling." In these cases, these same clients are often quite susceptible to other people's suggestions and definitions of how they feel. So, if I were to say to them, "Here's how you feel," they might say something like "Yeah, you are probably right," without any further research into the truth of their inner feelings.
So, how do we know when a particular expression comes from something real inside of us? How do we know whether we are feeling this or that, in response to a given external reality? How do we learn the truth about what is going on inside of us? The answer to these questions is that we have an internal informant. A resonance. A peace. An internal certainty. "Yep. That's it," the informant says. And we know. And it is learning to hear from this informant that be will one of the most important aspects of beginning to traverse the inner terrain--for how will we learn who we are without something definite and resonant within us giving us direction?
