What does it mean?

Turning inwards to meet our own needs. 

Where we are reaching outwards with our desires, expectations and needs, we turn to other people, objects and situations to fulfil them. And for a time this may work, but when we are ready to find a different path to self-fulfilment, dissatisfaction appears. Perhaps the people, objects or situations fail to meet our needs, fail to fulfil us. And when we are done blaming them, we can turn inward and ask how else this need within us can be met. How can we do things differently. 

And there are many spiritual answers to that question. They’ll appear to us, in ways appropriate to us, whenever we ask. Consciousness is always in dialogue with our awareness. As we ask, so there is a response. Always.   

One of the spiritual ways to meet our own needs is something I’d name ‘Calling ourselves home’ and it means shifting our attention from our outer experience, to our inner experience. 

This gives us the opportunity to open inner gateways, to resources beyond those the world around us can provide. This doesn’t mean we shun the need for worldly things, but that we reprioritise the order of looking. Turning within first, for inner fulfilment can lead to outer manifestations that align more with what we’re really searching for.

When we turn our attention from our outer experience to our inner experience, we turn and reach inwards into the infinite. Into our infinite inner reSource. 

We find those parts of ourselves that are reaching outwards for fulfilment, we become aware that’s happening, identify what part of us is doing the reaching and call that part of ourselves home, calling them to face inward, opening our inner access to the infinite – to Source. From a place beyond limitation.

This is a spiritual paradigm. And, until it’s experienced it can only be an idea, something to believe in or not. But there are ways of meditating and practises that can help us open our inner gateways. To rest in the peace and strength, the love and compassion, the fountain of all that nourishes us, resourcing us from within. 

So if I am triggered by someone, if my interaction with someone or something leaves me feeling empty, I look at what’s missing and rather than chasing that person down and trying to manipulate or control them or the situation, I ask how can I access that need – whatever it is – for myself, first. Before I demand that someone else gives it to me. 

The first part is identifying what it is I feel I’m not getting from that person

What do I want. And I have to be uncomfortably honest with my answer. It might start out as “Ijust want them to let me know what their doing, on time, is that too much to ask” and that’s not the real answer. Any answer that stops at what we want another person to do, is not a real answer. It’s a smokescreen. And it might feel impossible to get to that real answer. So what we can ask is “how do I feel when they don’t do what I want them to do?” and then we have a feeling to work with. A feeling of dissonance within us that arises when someone or something doesnt behave the way we want it to. 

If we face inwards, we can ask, how do I want to be feeling? And we might get a word answer, or we might get an image, or we might get a knowing, or we might even feel a feeling. 

And whatever answer we get to that, that’s what we’re reaching inwards for. 

It can often be more complex than that and we might get lots and lots of different answers. But ultimately, we’ll know when we’ve arrived at the heart of the matter. Because something will click with us, if we’re being honest with ourselves. 

Whatever answer we get, that’s just our starting point, for breaking free from dependency on others and shifting to being inwardly fulfilled in whatever area we are working with. 

We have to acknowledge why we believe we are empty of this feeling we want to have. And that begins us on a trail of inner work, following the breadcrumbs of what we discover about how we truly work, what motivates us, what drives us and how we can face our feelings and make new choices. 

Sometimes it’s as simple as seeing what I want is for this person to respect me.

And turning inwards to say, “I respect my Self”

With knowingness that this doesn’t come from the smallness of ourselves, but from the vastness. That we are the only ones who can truly respect ourselves and no one else will until we do. But if we take it further, we can ask who is the I we are respecting?