In Common Light

We all have inner problems – whether this be loneliness, shame, a deep desire for love. We often avoid these feelings by manipulating the external world to match our preferences. From a spiritual perspective, does changing the external world in avoidance of these problems really help in the long term? Is there a different way? These are the fundamental questions that Chapter 9 of The Untethered Soul called “Removing your inner thorn” explores and answers.

The Thorn Analogy

The chapter opens with an analogy to illustrate how many of us make external decisions in order to avoid our inner pain. It presents the life of a person who has a thorn stuck on their arm. This thorn rests on a nerve, which causes pain each time it is touched. This person makes life decisions so that the thorn does not get touched, such as: 

• To be able to take a walk in the woods without a bush brushing against their arm, they must clear the path in front of them.
•  In order to sleep without worrying about rolling over on their arm, they develop a “sleep apparatus,” (82). 
• In order for hugs from other people not to hurt, this person develops yet another apparatus that “allows for closeness amongst people without actually touching,” (82). 

Inner Thorns and the Illusion of Solving the Problem

Singer then applies this analogy of an external thorn on someone’s arm to an internal thorn in someone’s heart. When we feel lonely, for example, we may 

• “If you’re lonely, you must avoid going to places where couples tend to be”
• “You find yourself pondering… what is it that [I] can say or do in order to not feel so lonely?” (84). 
• “If someone is attracted to you, and this eases your feelings of loneliness, you wish you could say, ‘How do I need to act in order to please you? I can be any way you want. I just don’t want to feel these periods of loneliness anymore,’” (84). 

These adjustments can look like solutions, but they are temporary, and do not get to the root of the problem. Singer critiques this approach because: 

• “The problem will be back the moment the external situation fails to protect you from what’s inside,” (84).
• “Should someone die or leave you, the loneliness would again disturb you,” (84). 

Additionally, once you base your external decisions on avoiding an internal problem, you are then responsible for everything that you pulled into your life based on that. You attract fake friends, people who particularly make you feel good about yourself, you chose a career to look cool to others. This then attracts people and things based on your inner problem, keeping your inner problem even more alive.

How Avoidance Keeps you From Wholeness

You may be thinking, what is so bad about making a decision in the external world to avoid feeling a negative emotion? Because when you are living in avoidance of your inner problems, you are not whole. By whole, I mean, you are happy with life already, and you do not need anything from the external in order to be okay inside. Singe describes the ideal end goal of removing inner thorns beautifully:

•  “You want to talk to people because you find them interesting, not because you’re lonely,” (85). 
• You want to have relationships with people because you genuinely like them, not because you need them to like you” (85).
•  And, my personal favorite: “You want to love because you truly love, not because you need to avoid your inner problems” (85). 

True freedom comes from removing the thorn, not protecting it. 

How to Remove the Inner Thorn

First off, it is possible and very freeing to get rid of your inner thorns: “Since your thorns are simply blocked energies from the past, they can be released,” (85). It takes time to do so completely, and it always will be a work in progress. 

Each time your thorn gets touched – each time you are triggered – you practice observing the inner disturbance rather than identifying with it. You take a place of awareness and allow the energy to run through you. This takes time, but the more times that you observe and release your trigger, the weaker it will become, until, eventually, it is released.

Example: Getting Lost in Social Anxiety

Imagine that one of your inner thorns is social anxiety. You are getting ready to go to a large gathering at your school, where lots of people will be there, and in anticipation, you start to feel this anxiety come up. 

You get lost in the thorn:

• You start to over think: “ I am going to see so many people there. I need to pick a good outfit so that I look good and I need to think of things to talk about.” 
• Symptoms appear: you start feeling nauseous as you walk into the event. 
• You avoid the thorn: In order to avoid feeling more anxious, you first sit with your family before dinner. 
• You feel slightly better, but you end up not enjoying the event as much: When you sit down with your friends, you withdraw, you don’t speak as much. You turn your attention to the speakers and away from your friends. You feel a bit better because you don’t have to face your anxiety. But, you did not have as much fun. 

Example: Removing the Thorn

On the flip side, here is an example of the process of releasing your inner thorns: of observing your inner energy. 

• You are getting dressed and notice your sense of anxiety comes up. 
• You recognize that this feeling of anxiety is not you. You are the subject. The anxiety is the object.
  • “Your way out is to just notice who’s noticing,” (86). 
• These spiraling thoughts do not follow you to the event, and at the event, you have a more centered awareness. 

To get a better understanding of how to be aware, you take a step back. You just allow the noise to do its thing, you allow the thorn to loosen. 

Final Notes

All in all, we may think that using the external world to fix our problems helps. We think that patching up our loneliness with fake friends does the trick, we think that being nice to people will fix our desire to be liked by others. This only keeps the problem, and then attracts people and things based on our problem. We have the power of freeing ourselves completely from these problems with a simple yet powerful tool: awareness. Being aware of your trigger when it comes up, and letting it pass, ensures that you do not act on it and that its energy can have a weaker hold on you over time.

I understand that coping with anxiety is much more complex than this and that there are strategies beyond merely observing. Additionally, trauma takes more to heal than these practices alone. For less intense emotions, at least, these techniques have the potential to help a lot. 

Further, this chapter does not stand alone from the rest of Singer’s book. Thus, if you want to better understand spiritual terms and concepts, I would recommend reading the full book. This book itself also doesn’t stand alone from other theories in psychology, philosophy, and religion that advise us in how to cope with our inner world.

I hope that this post can at least can serve as a different perspective for tackling everyday problems and understanding a shift in how we go about our everyday lives.

References

Singer, Michael A. The Untethered Soul: The Journey Beyond Yourself. New Harbinger Publications, 2007.