Many of us tend to separate our inner life from our outer life. We may say, “over here” is my deep yearning to be true to myself and “over there” are my work and engagement with family and friends.

But our best outcomes come from creating a fusion of these two lives. Our outer duties are ideally pursued as an expression of our authentic self.

So this is the principle I want to offer you today: The more you are anchored in your Inner Core, the greater is your ability to access the qualities you need to do your best outer work.

When you strive to live this way, you start to realize that the most powerful way to draw out the best in people around you is also from the inside out, by attuning yourself to their Inner Core. I have profiled one of my heroes, Jacques Lusseyran, in this essay. Jacques was a blind man who led a group of the French Resistance against Nazi rule in World War II, became a concentration camp survivor, and later a college professor in the United States. Here is how he wrote about his experience as a teacher.

“…silence, a certain quality of silence, shows me much better the degree of understanding, of interest, or of objection I cause in my students than could any enlargement of a movie showing their physical presence in slow motion…What causes the failure of so many teachers today — and in Europe as well as in America much is made of that failure — is their inability to step out of their own heads. Many teachers are capable, many make praiseworthy efforts, but very few are able to enter the one realm where teaching can flourish. That realm is the common space between minds. Blindness has helped me there. I had for a long time practiced the techniques of an immediate exchange between human beings: the evaluation of voices, the evaluation of silence. Thanks to blindness I learned to read many signs that came to me from others, and that usually escape the notice of the seeing. If there is one realm in which blindness makes us experts, it is the realm of the invisible. An audience is not an enemy for me; it is a new entity. Many new connections are suddenly formed within me. Since I cannot observe my audience with my eyes, and since I need not make the futile endeavor to divide it into single perceptions, it speaks to me as a whole, as a unit that can communicate.”

Discover how your five Core energies can help you dissolve the false distinction between the inner and the outer so you may create outer impact from a place of inner mastery in my book Inner Mastery, Outer Impact.

Warmly,
Hitendra

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