WHAT IS INNER WORK?

WHAT IS INNER WORK?
Authored By Michelle Rojas

Inner work. I know you’ve probably seen it hashtagged on social media. It’s definitely a buzz word, but what does inner work for healing actually mean?

WHAT IS INNER WORK FOR SPIRITUAL AWAKENING?

Inner work for spiritual awakening is the very foundation of spiritual work and your personal spiritual path. Without inner work, you aren’t truly looking within and walking your spiritual path.  

Inner work for spiritual awakening allows you to purge, heal, transform and awaken. Spiritual inner work is the process of getting to know yourself at a deeper level, or really getting know yourself all over again. Spiritual inner work usually involves letting go of unhealthy attachments, which can cause discomfort.

While doing inner work, you deliberately transform yourself into the individual you know you are and can be. Inner work for spiritual awakening is a core part of continually spiritually ascending.

INNER WORK FOR HEALING

When you do not pay attention to your inner self, the unhealed energies build up and your body and life start to manifest imbalances. Your inner self includes your thoughts, your dreams, your imaginings, your feelings, and your self-talk. Your emotional, physical, and mental energies are affected. The longer you put off attending to your inner self, the louder your body and life circumstances scream at you through pain and feeling stuck. 

If you don’t focus on your inner self, then unhealed energies start to build up. These unhealed energies manifest imbalances which can be felt in your entire body and life course. Your inner-self consists of:

  •  your thinking
  • your fantasies
  • your goals
  • your dreams
  • your imagination
  • your emotions
  • your own self-talk 

Your psychological, physical and emotional energies are influenced by your inner self. The more you defer attending and speaking to your inner self, the more you will feel your body and life circumstances yell at you through pain and life circumstances. You’ll often end up feeling stuck and like you aren’t making effective progress in any area of your life, personal or professional.

We are often taught to take care of our physical body by practicing routines such as showers or baths, washing our hair, brushing our teeth, exercising, eating health and generally caring for our physical health. 

However, most of us are not taught to practice inner work or implement it into our daily routines. Inner work for spiritual awakening and healing helps us strengthen our relationship with God / Divine / The Universe or whatever you may believe in. 

Inner work for healing and spirituality helps us clear out toxic, unhelpful patterns and feelings so that we can continue to progress in our daily lives.  Inner work helps us clear negative thoughts, limiting beliefs, fears, perceptions and doubts that may be holding us back. In essence, inner work helps you get out of your own way.

Inner work isn’t just praying or meditating. Inner work is truly listening to your inner self in silence – spending time with yourself, by yourself. Taking a moment to look within yourself and reconnecting to who you are and all that is Divine within you.

Physical ailments and chronic imbalances sometimes lead us to do inner work, but even if you don’t feel this way presently, inner work can have healing benefits beyond this that can help you release patterns that are causing imbalances in your life in your physical, emotional and mental health.

The most difficult things to clear are behavioral routines and patterns that have been taught and passed on to us – patterns, behaviors and beliefs of panic, uncertainty, doubt, abuse, and judgment are common. What we grow up and around sticks with us as we age. 

Because of this inner work is a constant process that evolves as you continue to evolve. Inner work for healing and spiritual awakening requires practice and determination. When you are mindful of this and take initiative to do the inner work, inner work becomes part of your daily routine and spiritual care.

Through inner work, we can know ourselves, relearn who we are and understand how our ego was constructed. Dr. Sue Morter, in her book The Energy Codes, describes the ego as the “protective personality.” This helped me understand the ego in a different way that helped me approach inner work differently. 

Inner work allows us to work through and let go of ego related issues and behaviors and attachments to things that don’t allow us to fully embrace the totality of life. 

LOOKING INWARDS

To put inner work for healing into practice, you have to turn your attention inwards, as silly or obvious as it sounds. We often avoid our inner self by focusing on the problems of others.  We get stuck by placing our focus on helping others while forgetting to help ourselves first. 

This does not mean that we completely ignore the external world as our relationships with the outside world will, people we love, society – all definitely have an impact on us and the ebbs and flows of the world around us can definitely affect you and cause moments of peace and moments of turbulence. 

However, the happenings of the external world are irrelevant to your inner work for healing. If you haven’t grasped this realization, the sooner you do, the better. 

Turning your focus inwards isn’t difficult, but it can take some practice. You can put this into practice by asking yourself some simple questions like:

  • “Who’s believing these thoughts?”
  • “Where are these thoughts coming from? What are they a result of?”
  • “Where are these emotions coming from?”
  • “Exactly why do I believe what I believe?”
  • “Are my thoughts and beliefs coming from an authentic place?”

Each one of these questions help you take a harder look at yourself and make some discoveries that can help you gain an understanding of how society and your family and what they taught you has a deep impact on your beliefs. You directly choose your beliefs, thoughts and feelings. 

Learning to listen to our bodies and how they react to certain situations, thoughts, feelings can also be part of inner work. If you realize that every time you do a certain activity or talk to a certain person, your shoulders tense up or you feel an odd feeling in your stomach, honor that by listening and assessing what is causing your body to react that way.

There is plenty going on within you that you can investigate and analyze to do your inner work for healing and that can help you let go of attachments that are causing you to feel stuck.

AFTER SPIRITUAL AWAKENING COMES THE INNER WORK

Just because you’ve experienced a spiritual awakening recently or a while ago, does not mean there is no more inner work to be done. Inner work is a constant process.  

A spiritual awakening is similar to a ferocious fire initially, but don’t let this fire burn out.  Consider yourself like a plant in your garden. Your inner work will allow you to burn down and remove certain weeds or toxic patterns, but just as weeds in your garden grow back or different weeds make an appearance, so do new patterns that require further inner work.  

You’ve got to continue working on removing these weeds so you can continue to grow and blossom.

We have to actively make the choice of doing inner work so we can surrender and make space for your inner Self and the Divine to come through and help us through the process

If you don’t make the active choice to do the inner work, you hold on to those attachments and wounds that don’t allow you to progress. Typically, we hold on because we are afraid of losing things, relationships or the comfort of familiarity or of feeling uncomfortable. 

However, inner work can help you get rid of attachments that are no longer serving you and who you truly are. In the event that you find that there is a relationship (personal or professional), a job or career, or circumstances that isn’t authentically in alignment with who you are, then you should feel compelled to rid yourself of this attachment as it no longer serves you. Inner work helps you work through this and decide what needs to be let go of and what needs to be worked on.

Still, keep in mind that the ego or “protective personality” is not rational. It truly is merely instructed to desire whatever it wants and also believe exactly what it believes. It keeps us operating from a place of limitation, fear and desire. Until you get really serious about doing the inner work, you won’t expose or address your ego’s misunderstandings. 

Your ego will continue to believe what it believes even if you’ve spiritually awakened because you are not pushing yourself or your ego by challenging those beliefs through inner work.

As a quick aside, the ego is you. When I write in the way I do, it sounds like there are two people. I write this way to create separation with the ego because you can separate from it. However, early on, a person is so enmeshed with their ego self that it really is who they think they are. It’s not until someone has really burned up a lot of ego through inner work that it becomes increasingly clear that the ego is not who they truly are.

Keep in mind also that the ego is you. There is a distinction between you and your ego, however. Early on in the process of inner work for spiritual awakening, you are very much enmeshed with your ego self. You truly believe that the ego is who you are. However, through the process of consistent inner work, you soon realize that the ego is not who you truly are.

INNER WORK TECHNIQUES

There are several energy healing techniques that you can test out to help you ease into inner work or continue your inner work for spiritual awakening and healing.

Below I’ve listed a few inner work techniques:

  • Self Exploration: Taking time to explore and know yourself at all levels – spiritual, psychological, energetically, mentally, emotionally. Ask yourself why you are the way you are, why you think the way you do or why you feel the way you feel during certain moments. 
  • Healing & Clearing: Emotional and energetic release work to clear any unresolved issues or traumas from your past that are manifesting and creating imbalances today.
  • Dealing with Your Past: Explore things and events from your past that have shaped your current self and current beliefs and challenge them.
  • Mental Restructuring: Expand your mind and develop new ways of thinking, evolve your mindset and beliefs; shift and pivot
  • Energy Work: Take a moment to reflect how you perceive your own energy and the energy of others. How are you using this energy? How does the energy of others or the environments you are in affect you?
  • Stretching: Challenging yourself, your current beliefs, taking risks you’ve never taken before, trying new things and experimenting.
  • Meditation: Mediation is a primary tool for inner work for healing. It allows you to sit with yourself and what you are feeling emotionally, mentally, physically and energetically. Mediation allows you to explore what you can let go of or what you to solve.

DEDICATING YOURSELF TO INNER WORK

In order to do the inner work, you must be dedicated to the inner work. Inner work does not work with you doing the work. 

Even if you experience a strong spiritual awakening, you have to make the extra push to go further inwards to continue to grow and evolve and ascend.

To do inner work, you have to learn all of the intricacies of your own ego. You need to work through different heights of transformation in your head, mind, heart and body and all the subtle energies. 

You need to get to know your self-delusions and know how to be profoundly and deeply trust your inner self. Through this process, you must show yourself kindness and patience. You have to find a balance between action and relaxation. Learn the difference between avoidance and surrendering. 

There is a whole lot that goes into spiritual inner work for healing, but don’t let that shy you away from the process. You can do this and you can find out for yourself how incredibly rewarding letting go of your ego is. 

I hope this post has been informative and given you an introduction to what inner work truly is. 

This has been the year for inner work for me and for many of my peers and even as a collective and society. 

If you’re out there doing your inner work, I salute you and if you’re just getting started, remember to be mindful, be present and be kind to yourself.



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