smallTalk 2024

Talk#6 with Patrick

Inner and Outer – separated but connected. The purpose of life is internal evolution. You come onto the Earth knowing that, then quickly forget why you are here, lost in outer life. What comes in is the real you – the individual Solar Ray plus the Deep Essence of all past experiences. That ray of the Sun is variously named – 1st or Active Force of the Sun, Conscience, 3rd Ray, Solar Angel. To help maintain the connection to the Conscience, you are accompanied by an Inner Guide – an independent being who has previously passed the 3rd-Initiation, or was close to it. Together these form your Inner Self. Finally the Earth gives you a Physical-Etheric body with its Hereditary Essence from your parents and grandparents – that’s your outer self. The outer self, evolved over countless years by the intelligence of the Earth, comes in strong, while the Inner Self comes in as a small baby. Your daily consciousness begins as 5%–10% from your Inner Self and 90%–95% from your Physical-Etheric self.

It takes a certain strength to resist becoming lost in outer life. Around you are people – parents, teachers, society, governments, themselves all hopelessly lost in life – pressing you to also lose yourself. The outer self has many needs, desires and external pressures upon it. The energy, that goes out from the outer self into the world, is scattered, that wears you out, suppresses your ability to do the internal practices, you grow old, become sick, weak, quickly you approach your death.

To remember why you are here is the exact opposite of scattering your life energy. When you come into a body your outer self begins to grow until by the time you are a child of 7 or 8 years old your original purpose is outwardly lost – although the small Inner Self deep inside never forgets why you’re here. If you’re lucky that faint inner voice will drive you to search. If you chance to meet someone who knows what to do, you’ll be doubly lucky. You’ll have a chance for the infant Inner Self to grow. Many do retain some feeling that there must be more to life than just the outer madness we all see around us. Consequently, those people in their 20s and 30s search a little, visit teachers, train different practices for a time, but outer life is relentless and keeps pressing in on them. Families, money, health issues, disturbances in society, even wars, gradually steal their energy.

Their practices become less and gradually the dominant scattered outer self takes most of their energy and time. When we request they train twice per week, they can’t, they feel they don’t have enough time, enough energy, so they come to one class a week hoping it will suffice, but there’s little chance of that. Just the opposite, as their minimal practice will serve to quieten some of their inner uneasiness arising in response to their Soul’s plea, but not be enough to actually let it grow.

So the outer self remains scattered, continuing to consume most of their energy. If they can’t make the Inner Self strong enough, early enough, then after a while their outer self consumes too much of a decreasing supply of energy, so their internal efforts weaken. As they approach 50 to 60 years old their Physical-Etheric energy supply falls faster. If they could have at least reached the 2nd-Initiation by then the increasing supply of energy from above would have more than compensated for the external decrease, but having failed that there’s not enough energy left for internal work, even if they wanted to. They stop their regular practices and fall into inevitable decline.

Separating Inner from Outer life. Assuming you are making an effort to follow the practices given out by true teachers, as sourced from Divine levels, which cause the Inner Self to strengthen and grow (without which the Inner Self will evolve very slowly with the general evolution of the Earth), then the next question is how to gradually separate the Inner Self from the outer self, one layer at a time. If you don’t include this aspect the unrefined outer self will continue to dominate and interfere in your inner work, which will ultimately cause your internal development to stall, reducing your potential in this life.

The first separation is between the parts of yourself which choose to work on your internal growth and those that choose not to – based on self-observation, leading to the 1st-Initiation. The 2nd separation is from the parts of the brain consciousness which work predominantly through the 5 outer senses and those that work mainly through the 5 inner sensors – based on Self-Sensing, the Etheric Inner Self grows stronger, leading to the 2nd-Initiation. The 3rd is between all aspects of the Physical-Etheric (Earthly Soul) and what is beyond that (Heavenly Soul) – based on Self-Feeling, the Deep Emotional Self grows stronger, leading to the 3rd-Initiation. The 4th is between the Soul or Deep Mind and the Higher Self or Spirit – based on Self-Remembering, the Deep Mental Self grows stronger, leading to the 4th-Initiation.

Connecting outer life to inner life. But this staged process of separating, where the centre of gravity of your Inner Being shifts gradually deeper, has only an indirect effect on your outer life, which will continue in its naturally strong but somewhat scattered manner. That’s why as well as separating the inner from the outer, it’s also important to gradually adjust your outer life to steadily converge on your evolving inner purpose. Search for ways to relate your outer activities to your internal aims. When you remember why you’re here you strengthen that first separation from the outer self, and can in that moment pull your life back onto lines more supportive of inner work.

You have to modify the outer self, change the motive. Especially when beginning a new project, look at what you’re doing, what you’re feeling, what you’re thinking, and see how it relates to why you’re actually here. That will slowly bring the outer self more in harmony with the aims of the Inner Self, reducing the interference in your inner growth. Focus your outer self on your internal purpose as much as practically possible, so as to not leave it scattered, not leave it lost in its identification with the outer world. The central thing is to remember why you’re here, your internal purpose, because when you forget, the outer self will scatter once more.

That is also one of the purposes of daily dying, where with your Inner Self active, you not only look back over the difficult events of outer life but you also examine where you are at present and further look into where your outer aims are leading you. That connects the Inner Self back into your outer life, where the strengthening Inner Self gains more and more influence, ultimately the outer self becoming a relatively pure expression of your Spirit. But beware, don't lose your separation and mistake that more refined outer self for the Inner Self – or spiritual pride will take hold of you.

I speak very generally, because I don’t want to tell you exactly what to do in your outer life. I’m only trying to help you understand how to reduce the negative pull of the scattered outer self, then you decide how to act on that advice, because that’s the way your 3 brains, as the basis of the 3 deeper minds, learn and grow. Teachers make a big mistake when they become involved in directing their students’ outer lives. It’s the mark of a cult that the leaders, over-control and make demands on the outer life of the members, usually to the benefit of the controllers and detriment of the members. Be careful who you follow, who you listen to. Don’t be impressed by titles, degrees or special uniforms. Amongst all people there is almost an inverse relationship between external standing in life, which is imaginary, and inner level in the spiritual realms, which is real.

Q: Would you say that we have to harness or control the outer self instead of it controlling us?
P: More or less. Your outer self has its own life, it must relate to outer life, you can’t avoid it. The problem is if your outer life is too disconnected from your inner life then it will drain your time and energy. If you understand why you must train at least twice per week (3 hours out of over 100 available in a week), yet you can’t do it – that makes clear how weak the Inner Self is relative to the busy outer self. So lost in outer life you can’t even spare 3% for your Inner Self. Initially, find some way to make the effort to do the practices. Then gradually modify the outer self so that it’s orientation in life is not so dissociated from your internal purpose. When you’re younger, your healthy body supplies plenty of energy. You can afford to enjoy a wide range of experiences. You have more energy than you need at that age. But the warning is that when you get to 40, 50, 60, your energy supply will start to go down, and if you haven’t focused the outer self by then, the Inner Self will be starved of energy and the outer self will dominate it. The earlier you focus on your Inner Self, the better it will be for you later on.

Q: Are you suggesting training not just Self-Sensing and Self-Feeling, but also Self-Remembering?
P: Turning the mind back onto your self in the sense of awareness has 1 external level and 3 internal levels. The external level is self-observation, where you become more aware of your body’s actions along with the thoughts and feelings which accompany that, as you are fully involved in life. That’s the basis of identifying how you are scattering your time and energy and how you can bring your outer life more into alignment with your inner purpose. True Self-Sensing is to turn the mind inside the body and listen first through the 5 internal sensors then further into the deep sense of the body’s energy field. True Self-Feeling is similarly listening on the Deep Emotional level, while true Self-Remembering is based within the Deep Mental.

Q: How can we know if we’ve got the right job? Or other outside life choices like living in the right place or meeting the right people that are actually supporting our internal development?
P: It’s perhaps better not think of right or wrong but gradually identifying the aspects of your outer life that interfere the most, then change those one step at a time. It’s only rarely that large jumps in your outer behavior are required. There’s no concept of making the outer self perfect – that’s not part of internal development. It’s enough to remember when you can, why you’re here, then refine your outer life to reduce the scatter and align more to that internal purpose.

Q: What about hobbys or simple life interests like sports, can they be a problem?
P: As you get older, take care because your external energy will decrease. If you remain overly active in a scattered way with no central purpose, most of your energy will be lost and the Inner Self will starve. If you repeat a mistake for 20, 30 years, you’ll be helpless to stop it. You must gradually change the focus of your time and energy towards more support of your inner life. You might have built an interest in sports, art or business. That’s fine while you’re young – at 20 or 30 you have the energy to do both. But to be still heavily involved at 60 or 70 with things that have no relation to your inner work, they will steal your time and energy and starve the developing Soul.

Q: Is it more selfish to want to put your energy on developing yourself than on going out and doing something in the world?
P: If you remember why you’re here, then that answers the question. Whether something is right or wrong is measured by whether it’s in harmony or out of harmony with your Spirit. As Spirit comes into life with the specific purpose of spiritual development, then it’s not wrong to seek that. But you still need to balance inner and outer life – the essential rule being ‘do no harm to others’. But it’s also not correct to selfishly ignore other people, like a monk, nun or yogi who retreats to the mountains or otherwise cuts themselves of from life. If you do that you will develop in a very selfish way which is against the essential nature of your Spirit and will restrict your inner growth.

Q: Are looking for our motives, trying to see the reason why we’re doing things, and remembering why we’re here, aspects of the same thing?
P: Remembering why you’re here is more central, because that gives you the measurement of right and wrong. What’s in harmony with your Spirit is right and what’s out of harmony is wrong, so to remember why you’re here is a very clear idea, we are here to develop ourselves. You can measure the connectedness of what you’re doing in your outer life by this one act of remembering, then decide where to spend your time and energy. Examining our motives comes after that.

Q: When you say what’s in harmony with the Spirit is good, what’s not is bad, that’s more or less the measure from the internal world?
P: Correct. The Spirit has 3 aspects – the Spiritual Triad over the 3 energy levels, Deep Mental, 4th Energy Level and 5th Energy Level. The first one is on the Deep Mental level and is commonly called your ‘Conscience’. Those who have some connection with the 1st aspect of the Spirit (3rd Ray) can’t do evil things without feeling something is very wrong. Those who haven’t lost contact with their Conscience, feel it very strongly inside when doing something wrong.

Q: Is the Conscience the only measure of right and wrong through all stages of inner growth?
P: Not exactly. As you develop yourself, your sense of what’s right and wrong needs to be refined, because you start to meet the 2nd Force of the Sun, which has a much more subtle presence, so something more refined is expected of you. You have less chance to wander off the straight path without feeling something’s not right. When you meet the 3rd Force, the 1st Solar Ray it’s higher again, with almost no deviation possible if you hope to remain in harmony with it.

Q: Do the 3 forces of the Sun have a correspondence to the 3 sublevels of the Middle Dantian?
P: Yes, there are these 3 parts of the Deep Emotions, the lower one is more influenced by the Physical-Etheric realm, the middle one is more directly influenced from the Deep Emotional realm, the upper one is more influenced by the Deep Mental. When you’re in the middle part, there’s little contact to the Physical-Etheric and there’s almost no contact to the Deep Mental. When you evolve internally, there’s a small minor initiation between each of those 3 levels, sometimes marked by a smaller dream than the Initiations themselves. Your mind chooses the best representation for the dream. Spiritual dreams are from the upper third of the Deep Emotions, complex psychological dreams are from the middle and daily ones are from the lower third.

Q: How to begin to interpret our dreams?
P: Remember, all dreams take place in the Deep Emotional realm. When you dream from the lower part it’s quite simply related to your outer life. When you dream from the middle part, it’s deeply psychological, metaphorical, complex, difficult for the superficial brain consciousness to comprehend. Dreams from your upper part almost always involve some spiritual Force or Being. If your physical teacher appears in a dream, that most typically represents your Soul or your Inner Guide, but it can, less frequently, represent your actual teacher. Very occasionally it will represent your teacher’s teachers, your Spirit, or even very rarely one of the Intelligent Forces of the Sun.

Q: How do you decide what to discuss in these small talks?
P: My usual process is to look around at the people I personally know who are trying to develop themselves. That’s thousands of people, from my Old Teachers’ students, their teachers’ students , my own students and their students. I look around and I see how is it working out in terms of inner evolution? What’s actually happening in their lives? I see people making an effort yet some people start to take a dive, 50, 60, declining. I can see there’s a point after which it is difficult to save them in this lifetime. So I try to analyse the problem, how to reduce the chances of people failing in their life, have more people succeed internally. The choice of my talks arises from my best understanding of that. I speak very generally because you’ve got to do it for yourself and you’ve got to make your own choices, that’s how you learn. It’s almost never correct for someone else to tell you what to do in these circumstances. If they have told you what to do, then you find what they told you was a mistake, all you’ve learnt is that person doesn’t know what they’re talking about.