Inner Work: Your Key to Unlocking The Treasure Trove of the Mind

In the process of improving ourselves, it’s so easy to look at what we want externally.

We want to have a better body, so we start going to the gym more often.

We want to have financial and monetary success, so we start to work longer hours or multiple jobs/side hustles.

We want to have a relationship with an attractive person, so we start Googling dating tips.

But before all that comes the inner work. This is the work that needs to be done because true, lasting, and sustainable success comes from the cultivation of internal resources.

This article is going to be a deep dive into inner workings of inner work (har har) and uncovering how it will be the foundation of anything you do in your life.

You’re also going to learn:

• What inner work is
• Why inner work is so hard
• How inner work is connected to spirituality
• How to start inner work + some exercises to get you going

Let’s start diving into the deeper waters.

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What is Inner Work?

“Ego clings to what it wants and discards what it does not want, rather like a child in a pram who safeguards its fiefdom of toys placed there to keep it occupied…Bandaged by the practice of contemplation, reactive ego is no longer as we once lived, loved, and thought. Instead we begin to hear the distant echoes of home, a truth-tolling bell from within.” – Martin Laird, An Ocean of Light

Inner work is the intentional and conscientious practice of unraveling and examining one’s motives, fixations, and subconscious programming to understand oneself as a holistic being.

It’s praising your strengths and shedding light on your weaknesses. It’s diving into what gets you motivated & fired up while peering over the cliff of what makes you afraid & feeble.

Simply put, it is seeing what makes you – you and celebrating it while also understanding the massive room for growth and improvement.

It is the root of self development and without it, no real and fulfilling success is possible.

The Background For Inner Work

Throughout thousands of years of human civilization, various cultures and societies have come to the conclusion that there is an entire universe that exists within the intangible dimensions of life and living.

Whether it be Christian contemplatives who would cloister themselves in monasteries for years at a time, Hindu monks who would use the practice of meditation to explore one’s mental landscape, or even extended visits to a psychotherapists’ office – different people have taken different approaches to inner work at different times.

Regardless, the question and the answer remains the same.

The question (whether implied or said outright) comes in these forms:

• What does my inner mental/emotional/spiritual landscape hold?
• What are the depths of this inner landscape?
• What is preventing me from experiencing this inner landscape?

The answer to all of these questions comes in the form of repairing and cultivating one’s own reactions to the various intangible stimuli that one experiences on a daily basis.

What do I mean?

You start to examine things like:

• Why do I get mad when people cut me off in traffic?
• Why do I feel jealousy when I see my girlfriend talking to other men, in a platonic sense?
• Why am I still mad at my parents for what they did in my childhood?
• Why can’t I quit my bad habits even when I (seemingly) try my hardest to do so?

All of these (and much, MUCH more) are of keen interest to the practitioner of inner work.

How is Inner Work Connected to Spirituality?

Inner work and spirituality are like toast and butter. It is virtually impossible to separate the two.

People who practice inner work also are likely to be interested in spirituality and visa-versa.

However, just because you practice inner work doesn’t mean you are a spiritual person and just because you are a spiritual person doesn’t mean you will continuously practice inner work.

The concepts are tied together by the intangible dimension of human experience that cannot be quantified, that cannot be put on a graph.

THIS is what inner work and spirituality are concerned with.

People of the past would often characterize the act of wrangling one’s passions and cravings as “spiritual warfare”.

In every culture that has ever existed, much credence was given to holy men, shamans, conjurers, and other people who had a deep connection to a world that exists beyond time and space.

The popular conception went that these people had access to a world beyond ours and thus would receive insights from this world beyond.

Despite us living in a seemingly “enlightened” modern society where attention given to intangible forces is at a low, we still have a deep unmet desire to experience deeper sides of ourselves.

This means that an emphasis on inner work and everything that goes with it is more important than ever.

Why Is Inner Work Important?

We’re getting to the root of why this work is so crucial.

As just stated, we live in a world where belief in the unseen dimensions of life are at an all time low and “progress” is at an all time high.

We make more information a day than has ever existed in the past 10,000 years of human civilization.

We have instant access to almost any historical document, picture, or video by way of the Internet.

We are on our way to eradicating stark global poverty by the middle of the century.

On the surface, it seems like things are better than before.

But if you’ve been paying any sort of attention over the last 5 years or so, you will see that collectively – we are wayward.

There are millions of people walking around right now who have no clue about:

• Who they are
• What they want in life
• What they should be doing day-to-day
• How to structure their lives in a way that brings fulfillment rather than temporary happiness and stimulation.

This “waking fog” is part of the existential human condition, but it is amplified 10x by easily accessible technologies that put every single thing at our fingertips.

If this relative unconsciousness continues, the sanctity of human life and the planet at large is in jeopardy.

The only way to transcend this is by doing inner work.

That’s why it’s important.

Why Is Inner Work So Difficult?

There’s an inherent difficulty in doing the inner work and self development in general.

This is because despite inner work being something very close and intimate to us, it is still outside the comfort zone of many people.

Many have been socialized their entire life to be relatively passive and to wait for things to come to them rather than doing conscientious work in order to get the things in question.

In addition, inner work often brings up many negative emotions that need to be processed and this is often beyond the mental, emotional, and spiritual capabilities of many people.

This combined with the ability to divert one’s attention in another direction and the general belief that it’s a waste of time (because it doesn’t directly have to do with status, making more money, being with more women, etc.) easily allows you to “substitute” it with escapism.

But the truth is, you can’t really “substitute” inner work with something else, you can only avoid it.

And there’s only so much avoidance you can realistically do until the chickens come home to roost.

This avoidance usually manifests itself in the form of some type of mid-life (or even quarter life) crisis, leading to a lot of drama, heartache, and essentially – wasted time.

Wasted time that could have been used more profitably, only if someone did the inner work in the first place.

How to Do the Inner Work: Exercises + Philosophies

If I outlined how to do inner work in detail, it would be enough for an entire course – but I’ll just list the basics here. I’m just going to assume that you have little if any background in this type of thing, so I’ll just go over some ground level starting points.

Dive into the shadows

As I mentioned before, inner work is difficult and thus is avoided by many people. A large part of this has to do with the concept of “shadow work”.

Shadow work is the process of diving into one’s unconscious mind and revealing its fixations in order to integrate them into conscious awareness.

This is not a walk in the park and most people will actively resist this process.

Doing so involves facing a lot of pain and a lot of issues that may have been unsolvable at the time the emotional response to those issues were suppressed or repressed.

An example of this could be childhood trauma. Abuse, neglect, etc. are all forms of trauma that children unconsciously “stuff down” in order to continue surviving.

A child is not equipped with the tools needed to accept these emotions and integrate them into conscious awareness. Therefore, these emotions become part of one’s “shadow self” that’s hidden from view and only emerges when a trigger appears.

A large part of inner work involves developing curiosity (not shame, not judgment) towards one’s shadow side and becoming intimately familiar with it in order to become a more complete and whole human being.

If you want more information on how to do shadow work correctly, check out The Definitive Guide to Shadow Work Using Jungian Psychology.

Also, I’d recommend checking out Jungian Archetypes: How to Make Them Work For You and Your Path.

Experience the negativity

As you do shadow work and inner work in general, you will come face to face with negative emotions and parts of yourself that you really don’t like.

Instead of running away and curling up in a ball, stand tall against them and say to yourself:

“I’m not going to let you boss me around, I’m in control here – not you.”

This is a great way to partially talk to yourself and not devolve into escapism.

To learn how to deal with negative personality traits, check out Negative Personality Traits: 4 Subtle Types of Negativity (and How to Get Rid of Them).

To learn how to deal with self-limiting beliefs, check out How to Change Self-Limiting Beliefs: 3 Tactics and 1 Strategy.

Converse with yourself

Self-dialogue at some point is crucial during inner work. Whether it’s a continuous and intentional inner conversation or its regular check ins such as a daily journal, inner work is impossible to realistically do when you are not communicating with yourself.

My recommendation is to have a daily habit of purposefully pausing and just experiencing what dialogue is going on in your head.

You will find this exercise surprising and maybe even a bit startling because many of us never slow down to experience just what exactly is going on, which is why many of us will remain unconscious until the day we die.

To learn more about cultivating a positive internal monologue, check out Internal Monologue: How to Develop a Positive Inner Voice.

Learn contemplation/meditation/mindfulness

Following from the point above, the whole essence of inner work is stillness. And this is “stillness” that shouldn’t be confused with idleness.

Rather, it’s a stillness of just nonjudgmental awareness that is the language of contemplation, meditation, and general “mindfulness”.

All three of these are ways to tapping into that intangible world and without it, inner work is just a vain display.

There are as many flavors of meditation as there are people under the sun, so it’s important to find one that works for you and your lifestyle.

If you’re not the type to sit down and meditate, there are ways to build contemplation/mindfulness into your lifestyle as well.

Learn basic self-management

Self-management is the ability to organize, compartmentalize, and understand the various aspects of one’s life and how they all fit together as a concrete whole.

An example of self-management at a very elementary level is hygiene and grooming.

However, beyond the ground level basics these things, lie self-management of various internal things. Such as:

• How to respond to and deal with a family emergency
• How to respond when you lose a certain amount of money
• How to respond when you experience setbacks and frustrations in life

All of these and more are the realm of self-management.

And without being able to properly deal with these things, the work you’re doing internally will never manifest into something productive.

To learn more about how to use self-management check out: How to Manage Yourself: 3 Tips to Help Your Personal Expansion.

Part of self-management is self-motivation. If you have troubles with that, check out: The Science of Deep Motivation: How to Get and Stay Motivated.

Embrace the mystery

This last point may seem a bit “out there” but it’s worth considering.

Right now, there’s a lot you know about life. You know the names of your family members. You know the names of your friends. You are competent in your line of work. These are what I call “known knowns”.

There are also many things that you know you don’t know. These are called “known unknowns”. This amount is much larger than what you currently know about.

Then there are many, many things that you don’t know you don’t know. These are “unknown unknowns”. This is where the mystery (and wonder) of life is found.

There are many things that will happen to you in the coming days, weeks, months, and years that are completely unexpected.

Some of them will be “good”, others will be “bad”. All of it will be a mystery because no one can see the future.

Part of inner work involves embracing the mystery of life and experiencing it in its fullness, not behind a veil of mental abstraction.

Conclusion + Wrapping Up

There are many more dimensions to inner work than what I covered here, however, the basics are relatively easy to grasp.

Inner work is the process of examining and unraveling the subconscious conditioning that directs our lives and deciding to intentionally install new conditioning.

Much of this conditioning is deep rooted, as many of our habitual patterns stem from childhood and adolescence.

This inherently makes inner work a trying process.

Regardless, you can make it easier by:

• Diving into the shadows
• Letting yourself feel whatever emotion comes up
• Starting constructive and positive self-talk
• Learning mindfulness
• And embracing the mystery

Inner work is quite a journey, but it’s one worth definitely going on.

And if you need help with your inner work journey, check out Cornerstone.

Cornerstone is designed to help you build a stable and strong foundation in 4 different aspects of your personal development:

• Your psychology
• Your philosophy
• Your productivity
• Your progression

By doing this, you will have a great shot at creating a happy, fulfilling, and successful life for yourself.

If you want more info on the course, check out the link below.

What are your experiences with inner work? Let us know in the comments.