Our Inner Anchor

The Gentle Power of Our Inner Anchor

With our society in turmoil and many people feeling uncertainty or even fear, let’s talk about how we can anchor ourselves through an expansion of our inner perception. This is meaningful because dealing with many people has rarely been this challenging.

Distance is growing between many friends and family members, and relationships are becoming strained.
Children have had little opportunity to interact pleasantly over the past two years, resulting in a lack of social development, which affects both children and parents.
We all know people who are currently struggling, with themselves, their surroundings, or their work. Many are somehow “disrupted.” There are numerous examples.

In this Zoom meeting, we will discuss what makes our inner selves more steadfast yet flexible!
We’ll explore how we can perceive reality more freely, allowing us to be more open to others and their positions.
We’ll delve into what happens within ourselves – in our minds and hearts – when we experience resistance, uncertainty, fear, or grief. What gets triggered within us?

Our heart always reacts with its feelings very quickly in situations, but it actually has no words. It essentially only says yes or no. Sometimes we don’t even notice it. Our mind responds with explanations and reasoning, but much more slowly, often in response to feelings that are not consciously perceived (and therefore not understood). We use our minds to keep feeling good, effectively ignoring subtle heart information. What possibilities do we have to confront and purify our perception, which often leads to this way of reacting?

There is indeed cooperation within us between ‘head’ and ‘heart’… almost always unnoticed, but unfortunately sometimes also a weak (or even misguided) interaction that goes entirely unobserved.
Our heart cannot realize our transition toward becoming inwardly free on its own, although this is often claimed in spiritual circles, for reasonable knowledge is genuinely required.
Our head cannot realize this on its own either, because feeling, inspiration, and dedication are needed. Head and heart, as a ‘team’, can begin to support one another in a very effective way, in a pure cooperation that continues to strengthen as we become more willing to purify our head and heart. This will bring us into a very different and more fundamental kind of ‘comfort zone’ than our everyday sense of well-being: an inner unity that is sustainable and cannot be disturbed by external circumstances—an Inner Anchor, as a gentle force or even power.

Silence within ourselves is like a kind of empty canvas onto which things are projected. In deep silence, all kinds of matters can surface—things that may have been subtly asking for our attention for years, that wanted to whisper insights to us, but which we could not hear because the mind is constantly in motion. And then we are given the opportunity to re-evaluate what arises within us: what is truly important, what could I begin to address now? What can be peacefully left behind? We may discover that some inner matters have already been able to resolve themselves over time. But unresolved matters will also rise to the surface, usually experienced as various forms of unrest. The art is to feel this without “moving in it,” meaning without immediately playing along with our thoughts. Just feel. With all the emotional “tools” of the heart, it can begin to purify itself. For this, a quiet mind is of great importance.

Ordering and classifying then becomes the task of our intellect, Reason, the head. In silence, it can do this very well. Yet the intellect, with its many paths of reasoning, often behaves like an untrained dog that drags us along, taking us for a walk instead of the other way around. Our mind therefore needs “puppy training”. Only then can structure be given to it, and does our functional intellect become what it is meant to be: understanding, ordering, classifying, and thus contributing to our highest faculty of discernment by asking the question: what is truly important for me right now?

So it is about creating a balance between head and heart, between reason and feeling. This is the path of purifying “Head, Heart & Hands”(action), because all our actions arise from these. The image of the carriage with the horses, the coachman on the box, and the Passenger inside the carriage fits beautifully here—a metaphor for how you move through life in the purest way.
This is explained in the fictional interview with Gurdjieff.

When we strongly internalize this and truly commit ourselves to it for some time, a shift occurs. Something opens up, and we feel a sense of strength and fearlessness arising within us. We then come fully “into our power,” as it is often called today. And that is something entirely different from feeling powerful through ego or indignant resistance. From this inner strength that now emerges, we can act according to what is needed. We respond only to what the situation asks or requires of us, freely and undaunted, you might say. The body, too, will remain strong and healthy through the absence of self-imposed pressure and stress, no longer mirroring our restless emotional–mental state of mind.
Thus we live from our inner anchor. Satyagraha!

© Michiel Koperdraat