The Fight Between Internal and External Authority

What would it be like to be initiated fully by your own internal authority? Most of us don’t even think about whether or not we are listening to an internal or an external authority. But we are—one or the other, or perhaps a combination of both.

So, what is external authority? Generally, it means that we give authority to those people who are experts, teachers, or leaders of some kind. Further, it means that if we run our lives by the teaching, words, thoughts, or agendas of these folks, we might not know how to make decisions for ourselves or be able to grant ourselves permission to do anything without consulting these external authorities—or at least consulting their words, beliefs or agendas.

Internal authority, on the other hand, is that ability we might have to go within and consult ourselves in order to find the truth of a given issue, problem, or decision. It means that we can decide whether or not we have the full picture and go looking for it if we don’t. It means that, though we may listen to the experts, teachers, and leaders, we will go within to find out whether or not we agree. It means that we have the ability to give ourselves permission to act or not act as we authentically believe is true.

If we run our lives by this internal authority, we will feel more grounded and capable in most situations. Even if we get scattered or wounded, we can, by looking for internal leadership to find healing, eventually land on our feet.

Traversing the Inner Terrain

Source: Andrea Mathews

Today, there is a societal dictum of sorts that tells us that we should always be following the external leaders of fashion, of thought, of religion, of politics, of social interaction, of social media, of how we are to judge ourselves, of how we are to judge others, even of how we should see ourselves in the mirror. What this implies, and is even said at times, is that we cannot trust ourselves—for we might mislead ourselves, we might even become selfish, or worse, downright bad. When we agree with these thoughts, what they do is send us right back to external leadership to tell us what to do.

In working with others, I have often served people who will ask me several times, “What should I do?” They are so bound up in an inability to trust themselves that they cannot make a decision without the leadership of someone else who will tell them what to do. My answer to that is always, “I don’t have any shoulds for you, what do you want to do?” What I am doing there is trying to send them back to their internal authority. I am trying to facilitate their ability to give themselves permission to act, think, or feel what is true for them.

The reason many of us do not know how to think original thoughts or come up with original beliefs is because we have so many external leaders telling us that they have the best thought, the best belief and we should listen to them. When we ask ourselves what we want to do, we are blasted with the thought—absorbed from the external world—that we are being selfish to ask ourselves that question. We are supposed to “put others first” because that’s what they say.

The truth is that desire is an internal leader. It doesn't mean we are selfish, for compassion is also a desire. It is not the only internal leader. But it is one of them. We may have several internal voices we need to listen to before we can come to a conclusion. And if we just throw these back in the closet and slam the door, then we have avoided internal leadership.

What are we doing with our feelings? Pushing them away in the name of some external leader—whether a person or an absorbed belief? Or, do we sit with these feelings and allow them to inform us of some truth they're trying to convey?

To sit with feelings can mean several things. It might mean we journal on it. It might mean we just contemplate that feeling. It might mean that we dialogue with that feeling, asking it what it wants to tell us—and wait for its answer. It might mean that we consult an internal spiritual guide of some sort. It might mean that we ask ourselves to dream about it and wait to be informed by the unconscious through our dreams. All of these are ways that we can begin to trust internal leadership.

Of course, this doesn’t mean that we have to shut out all of the external voices. But it does mean that we get to decide. We get to filter through all the voices and through consulting our own hearts, minds, and souls, decide what is true or false about the voices we hear. This is different from allowing the giant, amorphous they to decide on all the conundrums of our lives. Just by beginning today to even consider that you may have your own answer, you have opened up to an internal authority.