We pulled up in our monastery van and parked at the Coconut Marketplace, a charming, open-air shopping village on the east side of Kauaʻi. My guru needed to run an errand and invited a senior monk and me to come along. We stepped out of the van and walked toward the store. As I came up on the left side of my guru, he turned to me and said, “When you are in the conscious mind, you need to play by the conscious mind's rules.”
Nothing more was said. He was adept at sensing whether I had grasped something or not. If he saw I hadn’t, he would explain further. But if he knew I understood, he would leave it at that.
Each state of mind functions by its own rules. The conscious mind—the external or animal mind—operates within its own framework. When awareness is drawn into this area, you are subject to its rules.
At the height of the conscious mind reside fear and lust. This is the highest level of consciousness for those residing in the conscious mind. From here, it descends into raging anger, jealousy, and the darker realms of the mind. This is the animal nature within us. It is a part of us—both physically and mentally.
We live in a physical body, so naturally that part of us belongs to the conscious mind—the animal nature within us. But mentally, we don’t have to choose to live in this state. While it’s not always easy, we can choose where in the mind our awareness resides.
When awareness is in the conscious mind, we are subject to the rules that govern this state—such as impulsive reactions driven by the five senses and experiences of fear, lust, anger, jealousy, and more. As you descend deeper into this state, you move further away from reason. You stop making intellectual decisions, and your choices become increasingly instinctive.
For example, when something or someone upsets you, you react in an uncontrollable way, with little to no ability to manage your response. You don’t reason—you simply react. Intuition doesn’t reach these areas. You are driven by sexual urges, unable to control, harness, or direct them. Fear is a familiar place you visit. Even though you may reason that the fear is unfounded, you still slip into this area of the mind. The deeper your awareness goes into the conscious mind—the external mind, the world around you—the harder it becomes to reason and use willpower to navigate awareness.
My guru’s guiding counsel to his monks was to live two-thirds within, and thus one-third externally.
Most people live with their awareness completely externalized—pulled into the conscious mind. They allow the external world—its noise, demands, and chaos—to guide their life, and in doing so, shape their inner life. Where their awareness goes in the mind is dictated by external happenings. Their awareness becomes a slave to the world around them. Even their subconscious—and their nervous system—are shaped by what surrounds them.
And then they wonder why they feel overwhelmed, unstable, and unclear.
If the world around you is chaotic and you allow your awareness to be externalized, then the movement of awareness within your mind will mirror that chaos.
Awareness may spend a moment on one important thing, then jump to another before being dragged into a completely different area of the mind. This constant, erratic movement of awareness leads the mind to feel overwhelmed—and eventually, anxious and stressed.
As you’ve learned from my teachings, distraction can be simply defined as awareness jumping uncontrollably from one thing to another. That constant inner bouncing is what leads the mind to feel anxious and stressed. In short, the more distracted you are, the more frequently you experience these mental states.
To live with purpose and move through each day with intention, you must begin by understanding awareness and the mind. You must learn—and consistently practice—focus. To walk this path, you must flip the model: live from the inside out, not the outside in.
You first outline a clear, disciplined way of living on the inside—then shape your outer life to reflect it. You choose your surroundings, your relationships, how you spend your time, and what you take in. You build a life that supports your purpose-focused path, not one that disrupts it.
This path isn’t easy. It requires sacrifice. Old patterns must be let go. You trade unconscious habits for inner mastery. This is living two-thirds within. If you want the rewards of an inner life—clarity, stability, peace—you must earn them through sustained, conscious effort. There is no shortcut. And as my guru always said, the rewards far exceed the efforts required.
Ask yourself today: Am I shaping my outer life to support my inner path—or am I allowing the outer world to shape me?
If you choose the latter, be conscious that your life will unfold based on the world around you.
If you choose to live from the inside out—or two-thirds within—you’ll find yourself better able to shape your life. Those on the spiritual path always build their life from the inside out.
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