It's Not All Inner Work

Years ago, a man came to me with some extremely specific questions about meditation. Something felt off, so I asked him what was so important to him about these questions. “I love meditating,“ he said. “But something always gets in my way.” “Like what?” I asked. “Like this pile of laundry I haven’t done in three months,” he admitted. “Bro,” I said. “Do your laundry. That’s your first meditation instruction.”

Our culture is obsessed with the idea of “doing inner work.” But this obsession with the inner severs an important connection between happiness and personal responsibility. Feeling good about yourself is not just a matter of watching your mental patterns, as though they were a Netflix series. It also matters how you treat others. It matters how you deal with your debts. It matters how you relate to substances. Looking inside can be a way of hiding from the external actions you need to take, which is to say, not doing the work at all.

I think people fixate on inner work because it’s easier for them to have compassion toward what they find inside. Most people can eventually see that their sadness or anger isn’t their fault. But point out their problems with money or relationships, and they immediately start blaming and shaming themselves. But this is exactly where they need more compassion, not more avoidance. It really isn’t your fault that no one taught you how to save money or communicate effectively. It isn’t your fault, but it is your responsibility, and the problem won’t go away with more crystals and incense.

When the Buddha said our happiness depends on our actions, he didn’t draw a line between inner and outer. Some actions are internal, like thinking thoughts of compassion or gratitude. Others are external, like being more generous or ethical. Meditation doesn’t help if you use it to bypass your relationship to the world. As Ken Wilber used to say: It’s not just about waking up; it’s also about cleaning up.