The Inner Shift - by Dan Joseph

The Inner Shift

When I began my psychotherapy practice, I had high hopes for rapid change. "Bring me the tough cases!" I said. "Bring me the folks who have been stuck for years. We'll change those old patterns of theirs!" I had enormous faith in the power of therapy to create miraculous shifts, and was eager to see the power of the methods I had learned.

In response to my invitation, I did receive many clients who were "stuck." Some had been enmeshed in distressing patterns for decades. Many of them had almost lost hope that change was possible. But not me! As a newly-minted therapist, I was filled with great expectations of change.

However, as the months went on, I began to see an entrapping pattern emerge. It was a pattern that nearly all of my clients had fallen into. And it wasn't just them – I realized that I was just as prone to this dynamic as they were. This pattern slowed progress enormously, and tempered my initial enthusiasm.

Simply stated, the dynamic was this: My clients had become convinced that something other than a shift in their consciousness first needed to occur in order for them to be free.

Very few of my clients walked in to therapy and said, "My level of consciousness is trapping me. I'd like help creating an inner shift." Instead, they fell into the trap of thinking that something other than the mind needed to change. For some, it was the job. For others, the spouse, the housing arrangement, the boss, the city, the neighbor, the friend.

To be clear, some of those things probably did need to change in order to maximize my clients' happiness - but first an inner shift in consciousness had to occur.

The external shifts were secondary; the shift in consciousness was primary. Without the inner shift of consciousness, my clients were doomed to simply bounce from one external complaint to the next. Many of them had, in fact, changed partners, jobs, cities, homes many times – only to find themselves in roughly the same place. Hence the loss of hope.

As time went by in my practice, I became a bit more patient and a bit less expectant of immediate change. I developed more of an appreciation of how easy it is to fall into the trap of, "I'd be happy if this one (external) thing would change!" And I realized how challenging it is to say, "A shift in my own consciousness – a shift toward wise-mindedness – is the first and primary thing that I need."

Making the Shift

So what does this shift in consciousness entail? Let me begin by clarifying one thing that it isn't.

Many of my clients, when we begin talking about a shift toward wise-mindedness, incorrectly assume that I'm asking them to "just be positive." Clearly, if someone is in emotional distress, it's very difficult (and probably fairly worthless) to adopt a veneer of optimism or positive thinking.

Instead, what we want to facilitate is a wholesale shift of awareness. In the language of A Course in Miracles, we want to shift away from the false, scarcity-based thinking of the "ego" and toward the secure, abundance-based thinking of our true selves.

What if we already possess endless amounts of wisdom, power, and capacity? What if we have spent our entire lives falsely considering ourselves to be trapped, disconnected, and bereft of inspiration? What if this is the core problem to be corrected?

What if a shift in consciousness – a shift toward divinely-inspired thinking, with all of the practical elements that flow from it – is really all that we need? If we believed that, we would devote ourselves to facilitating this inner shift with all of our effort and energy.

Joel Goldsmith, a spiritual healer whom I often reference in my writings, embodied this. When clients would come to him, he would politely and patiently listen to the descriptions of their challenges. He would then remind himself that he was not a physician or a financial advisor or a marriage counselor – that in truth, he of himself had no great practical solutions to offer these people.

But he would hold the faith that a shift in consciousness – an opening to a divinely-inspired awareness – was the source of healing, and could bring tangible support to meet all his clients' needs. He would then practice, himself, opening to an infusion of inspiration. He would open his mind and seek a "click," an inner awareness that all was in divine order.

As he accessed this awareness – as he re-aligned with the divine consciousness – he would sometimes receive an insight to share with his clients. Or his clients would spontaneously receive insight themselves. Less important than the form of the tangible solutions, however, was the shift in consciousness. The inner "click" was what he sought.

An Exercise

I spent years reading Joel Goldsmith, and wondering how exactly he reached this "click." He talked a great deal about meditation – but I found that (at least for me), some more structured practices were helpful.

Let me share a series of five steps to help facilitate this shift, based largely on some of the workbook exercises in A Course in Miracles.

1. First, choose a situation in your life that's causing you distress. This could be a work-related situation, a relationship dynamic, or a financial challenge.

     (ex. My boss never compliments me. He is never happy with anything that I do.)

2. If you're like most of us, your mind is probably telling you that you could be happy in this situation if something – other than your own consciousness – were to shift. Let's be honest about this. What is your mind telling you would be the obvious solution to the problem?

    (ex. He should learn to be more complimentary. He should recognize how hard I work, and give me some positive feedback every so often.)

3. Let's now consider that such an external shift (though perhaps a nice thing) might not remedy the core dynamic – our mis-alignment with our wise-mindedness. Let's aim to respond to this challenge by first seeking that core shift.

You might say to yourself:

"The core problem here is that I feel disconnected from my true, spiritual self.
I have everything within me that I need to be happy.
I have limitless love, perfect acceptance, and endless wisdom.
All I need do is open to the experience of them."

...or something similar that reminds you of what you already possess. We want to at least begin to bring the mind to an awareness that the core solution is already within us, and that nothing can take that solution away from us.

4. Let's then take a few minutes to open to a shift in consciousness – an experiential shift in which we begin to feel the inner treasures that we've been given. This is the key step. Let's search around within ourselves for what we feel we're missing. Let's open to the delightful experience of discovering that what we believed we had lost is actually safely at home within us, as it has always been.

5. Finally, let's see if the experience of those internal treasures sparks any practical insights – thoughts about how to respond to the situation at hand.

     (ex. I suppose I could ask my boss for feedback on how I've been doing things. Perhaps he's just really busy and stressed himself, and doesn't realize that I need feedback. Perhaps he's happy with how I've been doing things, and simply hasn't yet told me.)

You're welcome to modify those steps in whatever way is helpful. But the key is to first bring the mind from the external to the internal, then aim to uncover the internal solution, before finally allowing that internal solution to guide us in our external responses.

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Blessings,
Dan Joseph
http://www.DanJoseph.com