MasterKey Part 1 Point 6

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Haanel wrote:
There is a world within – a world of thought and feeling and power; of light and life and beauty and, although invisible, its forces are mighty.
The world within is for most people the last unexplored frontier. Your inner world is something that only you can explore in any depth, just as I am the only one who can explore my inner world to any true extent. You may find it helpful to have someone assist you with your journey, but there will come a point beyond which even that person cannot go. And you must go on alone if you are to experience the light, life and beauty to which Haanel refers.
Those three words speak of goodness, of wholeness, of fulfilment. The concepts of light, life and beauty are attractive to those who seek something better than what they experience at this moment. They draw those who seek a more complete life with the promise of something more that is tantalizingly available for the asking.
For those who are afraid, ashamed or feel inferior, light is viewed as something that exposes the harsh reality of what is; life is seen as burden to be endured, that at times becomes unbearable; and beauty only serves to emphasise the ugliness they have collected around themselves in an attempt to keep others at a manageable distance.
In order to reach this inner world, however, you will need to firstly deal with the outer layers of thought and feeling which is the point at which the two worlds connect. This is probably the hardest part of the journey to the world within. That is because the life you live at this moment in time has been determined by your thoughts which combined with your feelings have become your attitudes about things, in essence your belief system. (See my work on attitudes)
One of the defence strategies the human system uses to protect itself is to avoid change as strongly as possible, for as long as possible. The sub-conscious thought processes that reach that conclusion go something like this:
“I have survived, reasonably well, until this point using the system of beliefs I have developed over the years. To change that for something that is untried, untested may place me in a position of danger where my very existence is threatened. It is therefore in my best interests to maintain the status quo.”
The subconscious mind does not have the capacity to differentiate between good or bad, right or wrong, which means it cannot determine whether one system of beliefs is ‘better’ than another. Value judgements take place in the conscious mind. However, it is the subconscious mind that has control over your feelings and when your feelings clash with your rational thought processes, your feelings will win out every time.
As a result, when you first start out on the journey to the world within, it is often a case of two steps forward, one step back. You might even find yourself subconsciously subverting your own best efforts. That is quite natural and you will have times when you wonder whether it is all worth it. And all this is done in your own best interests by your subconscious mind, which at the end of the day is trying to protect you from getting yourself into a dangerous situation.
You see, some of the concepts your subconscious will hang on to, tenaciously, are
“what you know, as inadequate as it might be, is a safer bet than what you don’t know”
and
“if you change one aspect of your belief system, how do you know the rest won’t fall apart and leave you in chaos”
and the one that had me stuck for quite a while…
“if you change, how do you know you will like the person you will become?”
That is why it is often the case that people have to reach an absolute crisis point in their lives where they will do anything to stop the mental pain and anguish before they start on the journey to the world within. The risk you run by waiting until then is that another more permanent option becomes an attractive proposition; suicide. In too many instances people at that point will choose what they believe to be the only option left to them and, tragically, end their lives. It is not so much that they want to die. Rather it is an attempt to stop the anguish they are experiencing.
***
I find it interesting that as a species we have explored just about as much as it is possible, given the current limits we face in our understanding of the time/space continuum. Billions upon billions of dollars are spent exploring as far as we are able to reach into “outer space”, while at the same time we struggle with problems that can be directly related to individuals’ sense of self. Problems that in some situations have reached pandemic proportions.
That sense of self can only be addressed by undertaking a journey to the centre of the world within. It is there, and only there where you can address those thoughts, those feelings that have direct effect on who you see yourself to be, which in turn expresses itself in how you respond to the world around you.
It is not an easy journey to take. As I have already mentioned it is one that only you can take, so you will have to do it for yourself. That, of course, means taking responsibility. If there is anything that makes people shudder it is the idea that they might have to take responsibility for themselves. Huge industries have been established, huge amounts of money changes hands daily in an attempt to shift the responsibility that each of us should take for ourselves, onto someone else.
If something goes wrong, the knee jerk reaction of many is to seek out someone else to blame, someone else to hold responsible. But taking the journey inward is, in part about taking responsibility for yourself. Responsibility, in this sense, means
Accepting that I create All of my sensations Thoughts, feelings And actions.
By denying, or avoiding responsibility you lose out big time. That’s because accepting responsibility makes it possible for you to respond to whatever it is you are faced with at the time. It makes you response-able. By accepting responsibility which is part of the journey within, you are able to tap into the ‘power’ and ‘mighty forces’ Haanel talks of in his brief description of the world within. What that power is, what those forces are is not explained in this point, but will be a topic of some consideration throughout Haanel’s work.