Inner and outer worlds

The last couple of days have shown me in practice the message so many spiritual teachers give. Your happiness shouldn't depend on circumstances outside, but practising their teachings should gradually allow you to find your happiness regardless of whatever's going on outside.

Of course this process works all ways, depression happens despite circumstances improving, but it is interesting how sometimes a real disaster outside can stop before it hits your inner being. Technically we only interpret events outside to label them good or bad, based on our experiences of the past, when in fact they have no physical effect on us at all, so it should be possible to retrain ourselves not to be affected by them. Nick Roach's whole work is based on this principle, and yesterday it was demonstrated to me, when both my important areas, business and pleasure, had truly died and I was metaphorically shaking their ashes into the Welsh Harp reservoir. But after seeing a friend in the evening I felt fine. The outside events truly put themselves in the background where they were, replaced by what was happening in the present. Of course, once you've reached the level where you're connected with your inner peace all or most of the time this will be more or less unshakeable, with other emotions only being a minor ripple on the waves above.

I probably still have a million miles to go on my own level of awareness, but I use the tools I have to burn the rubbish inside as I'm told they can, and just thought I'd share one of the times I noticed I wasn't reacting to the outer circumstances. Ideally, the other things would help as well, I'm only human and no one wants to go bankrupt or be alone, but as one teacher I saw, Satyam Nadeen, became enlightened in a crowded prison cell, I'm a long way from that.