In Presence

What is your inner work? You may know in advance. You may not. Your work may relate to what is happening in this world, your personal experience of it or a larger perspective, including protection of friends, your community or the resolution of a war.

How to begin? Enter the attention space previously described. If you are followed by wishes or concerns that do not mire you in thinking or personal reactions, this may be the subject of your work at that time. Or you may enter free of content and feel your way to the work you are asked to do.

Each of us has particular proclivities or resonances. In a state suitable for inner work, the correct orientation is likely to arise.

I can always begin with an apology for having forgotten to do this work, for which I have accepted an obligation. I acknowledge my obligation. I submit to it. My heart responds. A pressure enters me, pushing me to surrender and accept what comes. I may have an idea of what the work is for but it has its own intending. Often I do not know what that is. Sometimes my wish for some action is allowed, even encouraged.

Inner work proceeds in love. It’s love that takes me outside myself and into this engagement, perhaps with the sorrow and suffering of sentient beings, their strivings, fears and aspirations. Or perhaps love expresses itself as glorification of the Absolute. There is no room for self-concern. Love is the center of a constellation of feelings which further inner work. There is compassion, intimacy, gratitude, praise and humility. Inner work will move you among these and more.

For every crisis, every tragedy, every possible joy, there is a good which has the possibility of entering and completing it.

Suppose that I feel the wish to pray for the end of a war. The resolution exists. I do not need to create it or know what it is. My task is to give the resolution room to enter. Holding a connection to the war in my attention, in my heart, without judgment, without expectation, with love, this is the nature of this work. God has an answer for every problem. Can I faithfully submit to this understanding, that He is the answer and I can assist Him to enter this world through loving attention.

Submission. Faith. The power of Intending. What am I intending? His will. I do not need to do. I only need to allow.