The Ultimate Guide To Inner Work | Episode 64

Aion Farvahar  0:13
The Ultimate Guide to Inner Work
Psychological, Personal, and Spiritual Inner Work
By Aion Farvahar

"It is not the knowledge of the world that empowers you in life, but the knowledge of the Self. 
The knowledge of the Self is the only knowledge that connects you to your center and empowers you to manifest the life you came here to live. Inner Work is the only way to attain that knowledge." 

Aion Farvahar  0:48
Hi, this is Aion Farvahar. 
I am glad you are here.
This channel is about self realization, and honoring our life purpose and meaning. If you are interested in these topics, please subscribe to stay connected. Your support is the foundation of this channel, and encourages me to create more content in the future. For more information about myself and my life mentorship practice, please find my bio link in the description below.

Today, we want to focus on Inner Work and its different types. Inner work is a consciousness expanding process that leads to your higher sense of self-awareness. The most valuable knowledge you can ever gain in your life is not the knowledge you gain from reading books or listening to the wisdom of the enlightened ones. It is the knowledge of yourself, and direct experience of the world within you. Without the knowledge of the Self, your connection to yourself is not fully present, and your life may seem devoid of real meaning. Without this knowledge, your life is mostly dominated by your emotional impulses to what you experience, without you fully understanding where these impulses originate from. If there is only one person in this world you need to know and fully understand, it is you and no other. 

Aion Farvahar  2:31
Once you get to know yourself, you live life with a sense of trust and conviction, and your decisions are free from doubt. This trust and conviction gives you a sense of courage to push forward, as if there is a warrior within you, leading the path of your life regardless of what destiny brings you. Even in presence of uncertainty or in the darkest and most difficult periods in your life, you stay centered to endure and rise about them all. Your real life only starts when you get to know yourself, and inner work is the only way you can do that. 

This presentation is focused on what inner work is and explains its different types. It also provides some suggestions on what you can do to get started with your inner work. More specifically, we cover the following topics:

What is Inner Work? 

Different types of inner work and their purpose (Psychological, Personal, and Spiritual Inner Work)

Understanding Psychological Inner Work

Understanding Personal Inner Work

And, Understanding Spiritual Inner Work

Let's go over these. 
 
Aion Farvahar  4:10
What is Inner Work? 
Inner Work is a consciousness expanding process to attain a higher sense of Self-Awareness. To begin your inner work, you need to withdraw your attention and curiosity from the world around you, and direct them toward yourself. Instead of trying to understand the condition of the world, or the behavior of people around you, you focus on understanding yourself, including your strongest emotions, thoughts, and beliefs that currently direct how you experience yourself in this life. Your inner work starts when you begin to see yourself and the purpose of your existence here as a puzzle, a puzzle that you need to solve, a puzzle that is the key to what your life is all about. 
  
Different types of Inner Work and their purpose (Psychological, Personal, and Spiritual Inner Work)
From experience, we can classify Inner Work in three different groups, each focusing on different aspect of your psyche. These are Psychological Inner Work, Personal Inner Work, and Spiritual Inner Work.

Psychological Inner Work is focused on psychological understanding and transformation of your personality. The ultimate goal of Psychological Inner Work is reaching a state of inner peace and an unconditional sense of Self-Trust and Self-Worth. Psychological Inner Work helps you become curious about your feelings and thoughts, and understand why they are there. More specifically, psychological inner work focuses on your negative feelings and thoughts, those that drain your life energy the most. These are your self-doubting, self-critical, or self-shaming beliefs, for example about your appearance, your intelligence, your personal power, or your current condition of life. Psychological Inner Work helps understand the originating source of these beliefs, so you can transform them to more positive beliefs, such self-recognizing, self-trusting, and self-loving beliefs.    

Aion Farvahar  7:00
Personal Inner Work is focused on raising your self-awareness related to your life and its purpose. You can think of it as a soul searching process to find your guiding vision in life, a vision that brings the highest sense of meaning to your life. A life that lacks meaning is destined to end up in nihilism, which make the world appear as an abyss, and our life as a suffering punishment we don't fully understand. A life without meaning leads to the dark night of the soul, and Personal Inner Work is the only way we can change that. 

Spiritual Inner Work is not focused on your personality or your life purpose. It is about the awareness of who is experiencing your personality and your life. The ultimate goal of Spiritual Inner Work is the awareness and connection to the spiritual center of you being. In its simplest form, Spiritual Inner Work helps you restore and reconnect to your Soul. In a deeper level, this connection can grows further through direct experience of mystical aspects of the divine, manifesting through your inner guides and your Divine Double or Guardian Spirit.

It may be useful here to focus on these types of inner work separately.    

Aion Farvahar  8:38
Understanding Psychological Inner Work
Psychological Inner Work invites you to become curious about your feelings and thoughts, especially those that are effecting your emotional well-being, and pushing you off your center. These feelings and thoughts usually emerge when you feel affected or triggered by negative life experiences. 

The single most important key in psychological inner work is your ability to create a separation between the feelings and thoughts you have inside and you yourself as an observer who notices them. Let me give an example to clarify this. Imagine I were someone who is sensitive about what people say about me. If I come to accept this sensitivity as a part of my personality, I remain sensitive, even expecting others around me to make me feel safe. Alternatively, I can choose to be curious about this part of my personality. I may soon discover that my sensitivity is a protective part of my personality, trying to protect a more vulnerable younger part of me that feels unsafe around people. Behind all of our emotionally intense feelings and thoughts are vulnerable parts of our personality, who in most cases came about when we were very young, usually during our early childhood. In psychology, these younger and emotionally wounded parts of our personally are commonly referred to as our Inner Child. In most cases, Psychological Inner Work is the way we locate and heal our wounded inner child.  

If you are interested in starting or deepening your Psychological Inner Work, here are a few suggestions to consider: 


Aion Farvahar  10:46
Learn about IFS or Internal Family Systems. IFS is a by far the most powerful model to understand how the mind operates. We usually experience or express ourselves through our feelings, thoughts, and behaviors. In IFS, these are expressions of our distinct subpersonalities, "parts of our personality", or simply "our parts". Using IFS Meditations or working with an IFS practitioner helps you notice and get to know your personality parts, especially your wounded inner child.   


Try journaling about your feelings and thoughts in a form of an inner dialogue. This helps you create a separation between the feeling or thought you are journaling about, and you as a higher observer that is compassionately curious about the source of that feeling or thought. For example, instead of writing "today I was really upset about what happened", write something like "today I felt a part of me that was upset about what happened. I am curious about this part of me and why it felt upset." When you write about a part of you that feels in certain way, you are creating a separation between you and that part. This allows you to engage in an inner dialogue with it to better understand it. 


Consider mindfulness meditation or shamanic journeys to focus on your feeling or thought that you don't fully understand. While helping you be more centered, meditation also helps you create a separation, so you can notice the part of your personality behind that feeling or thought.  

Aion Farvahar  12:50
Understanding Personal Inner Work

Personal Inner Work is about bringing a sense of direction to your life, or help you make decision in presence of uncertainty. Personal inner work may involve soul searching, vision quest, or contemplative ontological imagination to find the insight you are looking for. More specifically, ontological imagination allows you to create hypothetical scenarios in your mind, and notice how you resonate with the outcome of each scenario.  When we think ontologically, we don't focus on things we do or want, but rather on "why" we do them or want them. For example, if you want something, you can imagine having it or not having it, and check your emotional reactions to each scenario. As a part of this process, you naturally become an observer of yourself in your imagination, and through that, activate your higher observer mind to notice the potential outcome of your decisions before you make them. Personal inner work leads to clarity of mind, a deeper understanding of your purpose, and a sense of direction in your life. 

Remember that we humans cannot stand a meaningless life. So, we need to have a guiding vision in life, a vision that gives our life a sense of meaning and direction. If you are interested to do some inner work to find your purpose, you may find the following ontological imagination useful. 

Find some quite time alone by yourself, either in Nature or somewhere cozy you feel most comfortable. Have a notebook handy, so you can capture the insights you may receive during this contemplation. 

Imagine a hypothetical ideal world. The Ideal world defined here is a world that you would be open to live in forever. 

Ask yourself what makes this hypothetical world look ideal to you. What is the most ideal quality of this world that makes it appealing to you? This is the "essential ideal quality", without which the world you imaged is no longer as ideal. 

Check if you can find any form of that essential ideal quality in the real world as you are experiencing in this life. 

Notice the gap in that essential ideal quality between the real world and the ideal world as you imagined it. 

Contemplate on various ways one can close that gap by promoting that essential ideal quality in the real world.

Now, think about how you can best align your career or personal interests to one of these ways to promote that essential ideal quality in the real world.  

This type of inner work, helps you understand what human quality you value the most in life. Your life finds its real meaning, when you choose to embody that quality in your way of life. 


Aion Farvahar  16:33
Understanding Spiritual Inner Work

As explained, Psychological Inner Work is focused on understanding and transformation of your personality, and Personal Inner Work is about finding clarity and a sense of purpose and direction in your life. Spiritual Inner Work is different, and is about the consciousness behind your life, the one that is currently experiencing your personality and your life. Who is the one in you that is experiencing this life? Spiritual Inner Work is focused on getting to know the spiritual essence of your being, beyond this world. You can call it your soul, your divine essence, or your true nature. This makes Spiritual Inner Work a process that helps you notice and fully embody your soul and access its power and wisdom. When you are spiritually awake, you experience the world not just through your five primary sense, but also through your soul's intuition and clairvoyant imagination. Spiritual Inner Work is the most valuable form of Spiritual Awakening, because it focuses on your own spiritual center, as opposed to other psychic or transpersonal experiences.  

Spiritual Inner Work can be practiced in different ways. The most effective are Visionary Meditations such Active Imagination and Shamanic Journeying. Unlike conventional meditation techniques, the goal of meditation in a spiritual inner work is not to experience a state of peace or mindfulness. It is rather to create space inside, to turn your attention and curiosity inward toward yourself and the divine center of your being. In shamanic inner work, this center is symbolized by your spiritual heart or Axis Mundi. 

As a part of this process, you can also have inner dialogues with other spiritual beings, like the helping spirit guides that are there to deepen your connection to your heart center. In a way, spiritual inner work is a self-guided expedition into inner dimensions of your being, an expedition that has a life-affirming purpose and intention. 

In closing, remember that Inner Work is essential to your holistic well-being. It helps you transform yourself and your life in ways you could never imagined possible. It helps you restore your power and live life with a sense of peace and conviction. Your life is the journey of your becoming. A journey from "who you are" to "who you came here to be." Remember that when you transform yourself, you also affect and inspire the people around you. 

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Blessings.