Shakespeare said that art is a mirror held up to nature. The nature he means is our nature, yours and mine. The images of art, poetry and myth all refer to something inside of us. If you look at the outside world and never make reference to yourself, you have perhaps misread the image. You are missing a part of yourself.

The inner world, say the prophets, is the world of our own requirements and energies and possibilities. The outer world is the identity, the field of incarnation. That’s where we are, that’s where we live and work. Novalis said “The seat of the soul is where the inner and outer worlds meet.”

For the past few months, my inner and outer worlds have been meeting, in conflict and uncertainty: the election.

I think of the inner and outer worlds when I think of this long period of division, rage and accusation. It was, in some ways, frightening. I had not witnessed anything like it in my life time.

My attention has been drifting, I need to return to my journey inward. I have no idea if we return to live again once we die, but I do believe in the reincarnation of the soul while we are alive. Reincarnation, writes Joseph Campbell, suggests that we are more than we think we are. There are dimensions of my being and a potential for realization and consciousness that are not yet included in my idea of myself.

My life is deeper and broader than I believe it to be. What I am living is but a fraction of what is really inside of me, of what wants to come out. I want to be more than I have  seen and felt in these past months.

I hear a collective sigh, a loosening of the grip after all of this anger and argument.

Time for me to turn away from it, to return to the inward journey, where I belong, where I truly live.

The outer world seems so angry and obsessive to me, a disturbance in the force.

I wonder if my identity is truly out there.  I sense quiet and calm ahead for me. Part of my own reincarnation is the awareness of my strength. I will turn away from the anger and argument and go inward with my writing, my love, my service, my animals, my photography, my writing.

The outer world feels like a volcano to me spouting and spitting angry red lava, our new technology a deafening eco chamber.

I want more than that for myself. I do  not care to be angry. The first Buddhist saying is “All life is sorrowful,” and so it is, it is not a whine or complaint but a truth, a light to follow. Loss, loss, loss. “You’ve got to say yes to life and see it as magnificent in this way,” writes Campbell, “for this is surely the way God intended it.”

For me, the path inward is in part about seeing life as it truly is, accepting it and loving it. I can’t just love the life that is easy and good, I see it as magnificent in the way that it truly is.