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New Day Herald

Living from the Inside Out
[with Video]

 

This article by John-Roger was first published in the New Day Herald in March, 1994.

“Live here inside, and go out there when you want to. It’s difficult to live from the inside, but it’s also the easiest way to live. Now, isn’t that a contradiction in terms? We’ve been taught out there how to go out and make good grades and have this and get that and do this other thing. And very few people have ever told us how to sit and meditate in prayer and how to have communion with God and how to source Divinity to inspire us and lift us and bring us joy. But that’s the only place we can get it.” – John-Roger, DSS


How you handle what goes on inside you is going to determine what appears on the outside. And if you live from the outside in, what the world or the environment does to you, makes you a victim of your own reality perceptions. There are also mileposts and standards of things out there in the world that you must accomplish in order to live out there. You have to have better clothing, better diamonds, better jewelry, a better income, a better retirement plan, a better car, a better boyfriend or girlfriend, a better lifestyle, better, better, better, better. When you get all that, then you have to go for the best. There’s just no “rest” in that.

When you live from the outside in, you’re depending upon other people to produce your joy and happiness. You may start to look around and see who is on your vibration so you can start to feel good. Now you’re looking for a relationship, and it probably has a bunch of requirements on it. You know: home, kid, white picket fence, the grass cut just so high. “Oh, no, mine grows just that high and breaks off automatically.” That is seeking for perfection in this world, and it’s never going to give it to you. The big joke is that it’s perfect already the way it is, but you don’t like it.

Sometimes we hang on to bad habits in order to avoid living from the inside out. Some bad habits are more comfortable than no habit; the emptiness is worse than having a bad habit in there. Smoking is one of those. Some people would rather have the feeling of the smoking and the nicotine in their body than the empty feeling they have when they stop. The same with food. They’d rather have food — lots of it — in them than to have that empty feeling in them. When we do things like that, we’re living from the outside in because we’re not allowing ourselves to even become aware of what’s really going on inside of us.

In our society, many people have been trained really well by their parents how to be social and how to make it in this physical world. But when they go back inside, they have a hollow place in there. That frightens them or makes them uneasy, so they’re not going to go back inside very much. They may go back inside to find fault, to pick, to feel right. Now they feel something on the inside. It’s called righteousness. But that doesn’t make them righteous people. The only time we’re righteous is when we’re connected with righteousness, and the only thing that fits that description is Divinity, the life energy source.

To get into the Divinity, there’s a certain action you have to take. You have to keep elevating yourself. But as soon as you look for somebody else to share that with, it goes away. After you find God, what do you do with God? Even to ask that question is living out there. You’re not going to do anything with God, or you haven’t found God. You don’t do God; God does you. If you can do God, then that’s not really finding God.

Live here inside, and go out there when you want to. It’s difficult to live from the inside, but it’s also the easiest way to live. Now, isn’t that a contradiction in terms? We’ve been taught out there how to go out and make good grades and have this and get that and do this other thing. And very few people have ever told us how to sit and meditate in prayer and how to have communion with God and how to source Divinity to inspire us and lift us and bring us joy. But that’s the only place we can get it.

Years ago, I did a seminar on the word joy. The “J” is Jesus first, the “O” is others second, and the “Y” is you third. So joy is Jesus, others, and then you. You do that, and you start to find joy. Jesus in this context is Divinity. Find the Divinity. When you give it to others, yours will come right through. It just follows, like night follows day.

How do you give the Divinity to others? Just let it go. What do we do with Jesus? We tell people: find him for yourself. What do we do with Christ? Find Christ for yourself. What do we do with God? Find God for yourself. Maybe God’s a big ladder, and you’re just going to get on the bottom rung. Or you may be up real close to the top. But it’s an extension ladder, so at the “top,” it’s really just the middle. We call it average or ordinary. And the prior condition to God is ordinariness. Specialness is the prior condition to unnecessary experiences, which we call evil. If you learn from the experience, however, the blessing was hidden in the curse. So let’s not judge our actions or the actions of others.

Isn’t it amazing what we can do out here in the world that is so crappy, and inside we’re still just as pure and bright as the sun coming up tomorrow? I think it’s phenomenal. A person who does this is living from the inside out. And when they do that, it’s almost like—I don’t mean to sound crude—it’s like their crap doesn’t stink. They’re just living something that’s very pure. It’s a sense of innocence.

If you put a sense of desperation on the sense of innocence, what you end up with is somebody doing frantic things. It’s like those old movies of a woman running down a hallway, being chased by a monster, and she doesn’t know where the open door is. She stops to try every door, but there are a hundred doors, and you know that the monster’s moving faster than she’s moving because she’s stopping to try all the doors. So what you say is, “Run!” But what if she runs past a door and it’s the one that’s open? That monster is going to follow her no matter where she runs. Just run. Maybe he’ll get tired…. That’s living out there in the world.

You have to deal with those monsters out there in the world. But if you stop and come back inside, that’s opening the door and going in and sitting down and knowing, “I’m safe here.” What if somebody’s already there ahead of you? Then you have to wonder again, “Did I enter a safe place, or have I entered a place of monsters?” Put Jesus first, others second, yourself third. The joy will be there, and the monster will love you.

Baruch Bashan.


THE MAGNIFICENCE OF YOUR BEINGNESS BY JOHN-ROGER

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