Life does not come at us from the outside in, even though that is the way we’ve always seen it. Naturally enough, our behavior is based on what our mind identifies as the cause of the problem. We keep fighting the exterior challenge as a means of healing ourselves, but we keep getting hurt. A wound that is covered over too soon fails to heal from the inside. In the same way, as we try to fix the psychological wound from the outside, we interfere with the natural healing process, which must be an internal one. Because we don’t understand the nature of the wound, we rend it again.

For example, perhaps a woman believes that the pain she feels is caused by cruel men. She vows never to be hurt again. Her attitudes toward men become hardened, but at the same time she secretly becomes more desperate to find a kind man who will cure her pain. To her dismay, she continues to attract cruel men through the unconscious signals she sends out. The hardened attitude that she takes as her strength is really her weakness, and it perpetuates the problem. As long as she continues to look at her problem from the outside in, there can be no genuine solution.

Instead of focusing her energy on trying to protect herself from the falsely perceived enemy of men who will hurt her, she begins to see that her real enemy is the intimate, invisible one buried in her false beliefs that: (1) without someone to love her she will never know real love, (2) unless she finds a man who will be strong for her, she’ll always be outmatched by an uncaring world, and (3) that her happiness and security are dependent upon something outside of her own True Nature.

With her new knowledge of the real enemy she would no longer hate or fear anyone. Her true understanding of herself would also give her a new and compassionate understanding of others, including those who had hurt her before. And with her new perception paving the way, she would never again get involved with a cruel man in a desperate search for acceptance. For the first time it would be possible for her to have a nice relationship with a nice man. Her life would have been healed from the inside out, and now the outer would reflect the genuine strength and contentment of her developing inner being. [To be continued…]