I worked recently with a man (“Tom”) who said he was at a standstill in his business, and his life. He felt like he was struggling to get ahead, but he felt so alone and disconnected. It was like trying to move forward through thick mud or quicksand. It was exhausting, he felt no possibility of growth or progress.
I like to work with metaphors. I often ask a person to draw a stick figure picture of “what it is like” to be in the situation they are wanting to heal or clear or find movement in. So I asked Tom to draw a stick figure illustration of what he was feeling in this situation.
He drew a tiny figure in the middle of the page, surrounded by empty space. The figure was clearly overwhelmed, helpless, struggling but going nowhere.
Looking at this vivid image, I was thinking that first of all what Tom needed was a solid place to stand, inside himself. Maybe that would help him “find his feet.”
I told him about the novel God Loves Haiti, by Haitian-born writer Dimitry Elias Léger, based on his hundreds of interviews of people who experienced the earthquake that left 200,000 people dead. He had found a common thread in the stories of surviving when there is nothing to stand on.
The earth shaking around you, throwing you back and forth, is almost the most violent betrayal of natural laws a person could experience. Because when the ground is shaking, there is nothing to turn to. You can’t duck—it’s the ground. And the shock of that! Mentally, people want to grab onto something, to hold on to it.
It won’t be the ground, it won’t be the walls, because they are tumbling down around you.
It tends to be memories, it tends to be images, of lovers, and parents, and whatever you turn to for safety when things go bump in the night. (from an NPR interview)
I think this insight is the essence of something we can practice in our lives in any circumstance: Creating your inner land from what is most important in your life. I introduce this concept often in classes and private sessions.
If you want to explore this process for yourself, you might consider some of these ideas:
Land represents something solid under your feet. It’s what you stand on as you live your life. So in this context I use it to mean that which supports you and integrates you in your personal everyday life.
What relationships are important to you?
What do you like best about yourself?
(When I was a tutor for children, I would ask them to come up with six things they liked best about themselves. They were used to thinking this way, so it often took awhile to get a list, but this inner trust became the bedrock of everything we did together. I do this with adults too!!)
What accomplishments are you most proud of?
What helps you feel productive in the world?
Think about your work, or your craft. What are you good at?
Consider the physical land that you love, where you live, your home.
What else?
Be sure that you are feeling these elements in your body. Notice where you inner land is. Ask your body to remember this.
All these elements in your life are your strong points, the boulders and bedrock on which you inwardly stand help you to feel powerful and steady as a person. They support you and contribute to your felt sense of who you are, your sense of yourself as a source of support and power in your life.
The Greek philosopher Archimedes said “Give me a lever and a place to stand, and I can move the world.”
As Tom began to build this touchstone for himself, we revisited the stick figure drawing he had made. He found that when he imagined being in the figure in the mud, trying to move forward, and took a moment to stand on his inner land, something shifted. He realized that he had been struggling so hard to “get ahead” that he hadn’t noticed something interesting.
Standing on his inner land in the mud metaphor, he suddenly noticed that if he turned toward the right (ahem…”turn toward what feels right…”) the mud became a little more solid under his feet. As he stepped on it he found that it was even more solid, and then became a path. The path took him uphill, out of the sea of mud, and into a beautiful meadow, full of light and growing things. He began to get a feeling for how to bring movement into that old situation that had felt so stopped and stuck.
Someone else, after doing this exercise in a teleclass said:
As I saw places where I lose ground internally, I practiced seeing myself standing up in my inner land. Not warrior like, or even have armors to fight or defend my land. But, just standing in it, knowing clearly THIS IS MY LAND. As I stand in that clarity, I know that other people can create their own land anytime as well. As the truth is, there is no shortage of inner land. We create this space in our mind after all. Just some people forgot they can do that themselves and think they need to take other’s land for them to be safe. In my now NEW understanding, we all can have our own land and no need to take others’ land.
Your inner land is the bedrock of connections, values, memories, and so on where you stand in consciousness when you use the lever of your will, your attention, and your love to shape the world around you.
Don’t wait for an earthquake! Practice standing on your inner land. Nourish these images, keep them alive in your heart and in your thinking and your actions. Consecrate them as sacred to you. Your inner land is a place to stand, always.
