If habits are the daily protein that we need to grow, then dreams are like the seasoning. Anyone understands that too much salt will make your food inedible.

Said differently: An intense and vivid dream can point one towards a path—but walking the path can only be done by taking one step at a time. Doing the daily work is equivalent to taking one step at a time. Dreams can be used as a kind of map to course-correct—but one should never be complacent when it comes to physical execution.

We are not yet at a point in human evolution where many people have integrated their traumas. If you’ve ever wondered why many are emotionally immature, it’s because of this. People who have gone through the difficult effort of dealing with their stormy emotions are few and far between. I am still on this journey. And it’s not easy. But I believe it to be necessary if we want things to get better.

Many people look down on this effort of emotional integration. They still have the view that emotions are to be ignored. They believe that if you ignore trauma for long enough it might go away. This is unfortunately not the case.

On the other hand, you might have a desperate few who come to this work when things go south. Divorce. Death. Something difficult. Trauma work is difficult work, and so when the pain of staying the same outweighs the pain of change, most are willing to consider a different approach. But the cost of rock bottom is severe. I don’t recommend waiting until that point.

From an inner work perspective it’s always best to move from the inner to the outer. This means that we must tend to our own emotions, relationships, addictive patterns, and dark tendencies before we try to fix a bunch of things in the world. This is of course not how things are done by cancel culture commentators on the internet, but let’s not get distracted by them.

If we want to cultivate true inner power, we must focus on building a solid foundation of good habits and presence. A good foundation of presence should inform everything we do in the world. Inner change must come before outer change.

It is very difficult to do inner work if we do not cultivate healthy inner honesty. Inner honesty requires us to be aware when we are lying to ourselves. This is the sort of thing that is needed when we want to follow through on our meditation practice, or exercise program, or healthy diet. Inner honesty requires us to course correct when something is clearly not working.

Grounding is a huge problem in modern society. If you’re sceptical about this, walk through a public area and see how many people struggle to walk with ease and grace. Most people have problems with gait, or feet, or knees, or posture. The list goes on. Also, see if you can spot a few people talking to themselves. They are completely lost in thought—not present at all. So, this is an important post, but one that can quickly get too complicated.

I thought it best to make inner discernment the introductory post in this series of inner work. Why start here? It’s important to realise that no program, procedure or process should be followed dogmatically. We should at times check in with our own hearts to see if whatever we are doing is actually aligning on a deeper level.