Moving Toward Our Inner Core

…and the One Simple Act that initiates that movement

On Just Being presents a comprehensive, focused strategy for personal growth and explores the vital link between personal development and sociopolitical change. The cornerstone of the view of life that informs this effort can be simply stated:

Human beings are fundamentally good at heart – innately curious, loving and brave – and the world is predominantly nurturing and benevolent.

This premise can seem naively idealistic when viewed with justifiable skepticism, my own included. But I have become convinced that life could not sustain itself, even for an instant, were goodness not at the core of our very existence. I now see this as self-evident.

Yet problems and hardships are the stuff of life, and tragedy, cruelty and malevolence have always been pervasive in our world. So even if we accept that we are good by nature, it is painfully obvious that this intrinsic goodness is often well beyond our reach.

The most constructive attitude we can hold is to see life as a grand adventure and view each problem and crisis as an opportunity to remember, summon and strengthen our core of goodness. The more difficult the challenge before us, the greater the achievable result.

The heart of the strategy for personal development presented here is to discover and know the center of our being – our Inner Core – and to learn to perform a specific shift of attention – One Simple Act – that helps us move closer to our core strength and goodness in any situation. And the benefits of becoming more familiar with our Inner Core, by learning how to closer to our core, are enormous.

One Simple Act

The quest to know my Inner Core is a multifaceted lifelong effort, yet a simple act of consciousness can initiate the process of connecting to my core in any given moment. This One Simple Act is implemented instantaneously and may last only a second or two, or it might continue for 10 seconds, 20 seconds, a minute – even indefinitely.

Its purpose is to move me – the locus of my awareness and attention – closer to my core than I was before executing the act. How long I conduct this action and how much closer to my center of being it takes me depends on what I deem appropriate for the circumstance and how skilled I am in performing the maneuver.

OK, here’s the simple act:

Step back, envision my Inner Core, and feel the sensation of being in my body.

I’ve described the One Simple Act above as consisting of three stages. However those steps can be accomplished in one integrated movement with practice. Still, it starts with stepping back from whatever I am focused on.

Alternative words can be used to describe each action:

• Instead of step back, pause may work better in some situations. I widen my attention from the thought or action I am focused on to recognize that I have other options. This first stage is arguably the most difficult to achieve. How do I remember to step back if I am absorbed in another thought or action? This quandary and other aspects of this maneuver will be addressed in forthcoming essays.
• In the second stage, recall or imagine might evoke a mental picture of my core more readily than envision. And if I do not have a clear image or sense of my Inner Core? First, just stepping back and sensing my body is effective, even without step two. But adding the intervening act of remembering or imagining my core makes this movement substantially more potent. If my sense of my core is vague or weak, then I start with that. It will grow stronger over time.
• Feel the sensation of being in my body is particularly open to personal restatement to convey the idea effectively, as fully experiencing this feeling is indispensable to accomplishing the One Simple Act and knowing my Inner Core. I will suggest other ways of describing this all-important visceral awareness soon.

My goal is to impart a clear, indelible understanding of the nature, composition and workings of our Inner Core and to provide practical tools, tips and techniques to make the One Simple Act accessible to anyone who chooses to experiment with it.

Under the Sun

I realize I am making a rather bold claim in this essay. But I am hardly alone in making it. The rich benefits of knowing our Inner Core and the power of the One Simple Act, by whatever name or no name at all, have been known for millennia. Teachings about the center of being and how to grow closer to it are a principal element of virtually all wisdom traditions, whether religious, spiritual, mystical or metaphysical in nature. Many philosophical and psychological schools of thought also posit a core self, and likewise commend the act of pausing, slowing down, and relaxing into a more grounded, centered, expansive state.

My intention is to demystify and simplify the “perennial philosophy” by emphasizing its end goal: to master the movement of stepping back to remember and move closer to my center. In accomplishing the work to become expert in this act of consciousness I will come to know the source of my being, my Inner Core. The ability to accomplish the One Simple Act in any and all circumstances has always been a mark of genuine saints and mystics and other highly evolved human beings.

I only recently labeled this movement the “One Simple Act” but I have been striving to become more adept with it for decades. Am I claiming to have mastered the skill myself? Absolutely not, far from it. But I do know beyond any doubt that my Inner Core exists and that the One Simple Act works. Choosing to test this hypothesis launches the journey. Then the real work begins: developing my ability to execute this silent maneuver in an ever-widening range of circumstances.

 

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This essay officially launches On Just Being. More content is in the works and the site will be updated frequently. Comments on this essay are welcome in the section below.

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Thanks for tuning in.

– Ronald Fel Jones