Strengthening Our Inner Force: The Three Stages to Develop Our Consciousness

Training Our Hearts to Create Joy and Freedom

Inner Force by Ian Stauffer. Unsplash.

In our practical Buddhist philosophy class last night, we discussed this sentence:

If everything depends on the outside (outside forces), you will not be free and will become the slave of the external.

If everything depends on the inside (inner forces), you will have the wise discipline to develop the power to become Buddha.

I’ve heard this several times before, and I always had many questions about it:

• How can we learn to develop so that everything grows from the inside?
• If the inside is so important, why do we exist with an ‘outside?’
• Where are harmony and patience if everything depends on internal?
• Where does being ego-centric / selfish end and ‘inner force’ start?

Buddhism covers three steps to help us work through these for ourselves.

Stage One: What is Inner Force? Consciousness

Inner force has many explanations in Buddhism that I know.

All together can help us to build more power.

• Body, Mind and Spirit represent our inner force.
• Internal can be about causation. Our intention becomes our thinking, which becomes our speaking and action.
• Internal can represent feelings. Feelings are created through the 5 Skandhas or 5 Developments: Information changes, we receive it, calculate, act and awareness.
• Internal can represent our consciousness. The ability to be aware of everything. Because everything going on internally is our feeling, we can understand our inner reality by understanding how this feeling is created.

We will use the last definition in this post, but I have included links for the others.

Step Two: Develop your consciousness to be aware of all 8 functions.

What are the 8 Functions of consciousness?

• 1–5 Senses: The body is our tool to learn everything else about life.
• 6 Thinking/calculation ability: Understand what is thinking and how to use it properly.
• 7 Ego / Identity — separate from everything else
• 8 Hidden Consciiounses: Mysterious force only open when we leave the body

How to start to develop our consciousness? Start with the body.

Mostly, we think we should think more.

But our thinking is also painful when our body is in pain.

So healing the body back to feeling great makes our thinking great too.

But life is not just about thinking of something!

In Buddhism, they explain this is a gift.

Without a vulnerable body, we would never learn the wisdom to train it.

We need poor thinking to be curious to improve it.

With a heart that feels temporary even though it is not, we are curious to learn what it means to be eternal.

Through tai chi, healing, observation, meditation, reading philosophy, and kindness.

Let’s summarise them below:

• Healing opens up and corrects our bodies. That will help us to stay bright and share with others. How can we become more tension-free?!
• Tai Chi helps us train and unite our energy and force, creating inner peace and free joy anytime we want.
• Training Feng Shui develops our observation of the space around us to influence if we can in a healthy direction.
• Reading philosophy helps us to understand our psychology, moods, emotions and inner world deeper to create inner peace.
• Training our observing ability through observing meditation and enjoying nature opens our minds
• Practice Kindness/generosity helps us to make our ego less important. Which in turn expands our consciousness.

Level Three: Use our consciousness to become a creator of our body, mind and spirit.

Once we practice the above, we develop abilities inside.

You can never find them, but they are truly our own. No one can give it to you. No one can take from you if you remain disciplined.

In this stage, we no longer rely on the outside for our mood, feelings, opportunities, and direction.

With these new abilities, we can create and share the skills from Level Two.

We become our disciplines.

Now the creation has changed direction. Our direction to be aware of consciousness influences others around us to improve their body, mind and spirit.

Not forcing on others nor orders, but what Buddha calls convenient wisdom.

What is Convenient Wisdom? A harmonious way to help others to develop their internal f

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