Inner Authority

Traversing the Darklands for the Kernel of Truth

I returned from the warm shores of Indonesia to a sub-zero UK, just in time to see the New Year in. Fireworks arced over the freezing harbour, and I pulled my scarf tighter and my hat lower. It was as cold as death itself. The next day – the first of the year – an icy drizzle settled in for the long haul. So I whacked on the heating, pulled a shawl about me, brewed a pot of coffee and peered out into 2025. My wish for 2024 had been to recover my health and to travel. Both these had been granted and a Roman candle of gratitude flared inside my chest at the strength I now felt in my body.

But where did I want to go next? And what was my purpose now? What’s the purpose of any of us in a world apparently so frayed and worn? I sat for a couple of weeks letting the question stew. It was in that sacred turning inwards, that freedom in her true form bloomed like a munificent dahlia.

Time to turn inwards.

It seems like a contradiction. How can sitting still and drawing the threads of our awareness inwards create freedom? Isn’t freedom about outward expansion and exploration? Isn’t it about jumping in spaceships, or cruising down country roads with all our belongings in the boot of the car? Or building off-grid worlds for ourselves and growing our own food? In a way it is about those things. Because we are, in one of our aspects, physical creatures with an innate drive to discover the new, and live life on our own terms. But, we are not just made of the material. There’s more to us than that, and we ignore the other dimensions of ourselves at our peril.

Here in the Darklands of England-in-January, there was nothing else to do other than turn inwards, anyway. It was that or Netflix. So I lit some candles, sank into the lotus position, and got down to some Marie Kondo for the soul.

The Town Square

When we sit with our thoughts and feelings for long enough, interesting and transformative things occur. We find the aspects of ourselves that lie far beyond the thoughts parading in and out of the town square of our being. We notice the quietness and clarity in the balconies, watching the madness below. We notice the space around the churches of our opinions, and the durability of the flagstones beneath the clatter of our emotions. We notice the huge open skies above, and the roads leading away from the marketplace to who-knows-where. Suddenly there is space.

The Most Important Freedom of All

Indeed, it is while turning inwards that we uncover the most important freedom of all: freedom from unconscious patterns. According to the neuroscience, 95% of the time adults are acting on subconscious conditioning, most of which was formed before they were seven years old. If you meditate at all, you soon start to see, it is those mental fetters that are the true problem, not the government, nor the WHO, nor even billionaires with big egos. It’s our minds where the real tyranny exists. Most of us are completely unaware that we are on automatic pilot the vast majority of our lives, following the orders of an internalised despot, and living according to all kinds of absurd inner rules. But unearthing that, facing it, taking responsibility for it, it’s all so much more difficult than perching on a soap box and blaming the “authorities”, right?

Negative conditioning counts for everything. It’s the reason people commit the worst deeds, and the reason they commit no deeds at all. It’s the reason they accept all manner of indignity, and put up with behaviour they should simply say “no” to. It’s why people are so easily offended, and the underpinning of much sociopathy, low self-esteem, and cruelty. But finally, it’s the reason people willingly throw their power away to any given figure of “authority” (who cares which one, it’s all the same, because the fundamental point is this: that figure is not us).

The moment we believe someone else will rescue us, we are lost. And the moment we think some exterior force can control us, we are finished too. No one can rule on our behalves. The whole idea is nothing but fiction, and I suppose it takes a woman who lived alone in a mud hut in Turkey to know. We all came in with our own inner authority, and when we live from that place, it’s quite amazing to witness how everything drops back, re-aligns, and respects it.

Cardinal Wolsey, the most controlling authority figure in all matters of state in the early 16^th century, looking suitably contained.

The Crumbling Tower

I think I learned this lesson once and for all when I was at the lowest point of my life. Long before my mud hut adventures, I’d set up a yoga camp in Turkey with a guy who appeared to have all the power stacked on his side. I’d invested a large amount of money in the project, so it seemed on the face of it that I couldn’t leave, that I had to stay and put up with all manner of awful behaviour. I had no friends in that area, and no support. I was locked in by legal agreements too. Then one day, after seeing a particularly beautiful sunset and feeling the golden power of my own soul exploding inside me, I walked into the camp kitchen and told the partner-from-hell that he could shove the whole camp between his glutei maximi, because I was leaving him to it.

I’ll never forget what happened next. This hairy mountain of bellowing threat sort of crumbled before my eyes. It was like watching a tower block demolition. All I’d said was “no” from a place of inner authority. He sank into a chair, pleaded, stammered, begged. Bullies are indeed cowards, but they are also spectacularly bad chess players. You see, coercion isn’t how human power is designed to operate, because any kind of abuse or manipulation is dependent on someone else agreeing to be a victim and throwing their own agency in the rubbish bin. At any given time though, the victim can wake up, grab their treasure back, and flip the bird.

The True Authority

Freedom can be so many things to so many people, but...there can be no freedom without inner authority. It’s a vault of truth and integrity stowed in the heart of our very being, and as soon as we touch it, hear it, feel it, we just know the ring of its veracity. It’s us. It’s right. That golden kernel of who-we-are has an extraordinary power and wisdom. It’s a wonder we can suppress it at all. In fact, the only way we can ignore it is to become deeply unconscious.

Our inner authority knows beyond all doubt that the world is stacked full of promise and opportunity. It knows its own power, and has no truck with the bleating negativity of news stories, nor the defeatism of a world-weary narrative. It knows what lights it up, and what its purpose is at any given moment. Life on planet Gaia is so cleverly self-regulating that everything and everyone comes in automatically holding exactly the right instructions. I’ve seen this in action so many times when a group build with mud. When people stop waiting for someone else to tell them what to do and start engaging with the dirt, everyone just knows where they fit in. They know what they’re bringing to the party, and what they want to contribute. This is what inner authority is all about. It’s knowing and standing up for who we are, and what we’re here to do.

Finally, as the Darklands of January canter steadily into the past, and the cart of February, replete with snowdrops and bulb buds, draws into the courtyard of my reality, I know what I’m intending for 2025. I aiming to reconnect with that nugget of myself, and to do what I came here to do. I haven’t been quite sure who or what that was for the past two years, but as winter turns slowly to face the coming year, and what was hidden in the peat below begins to push for the surface, I’m starting to feel the seed of myself again. Alive, stirring, limbering up...getting ready to kick for the sun.

I’ll be discussing how I create a roadmap for myself, and bring forth what I’d like to see in my life in 2025 in the Nature of Freedom podcast for paid subscribers.