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Stepping Back
Relax and step back from your thoughts and emotions. Prepare to simply observe, without being pulled in.
The first doorway
Stepping Back
Most of the time we live inside our experience the way a fish lives inside water. We don't see the water. We see only what floats past.
A thought comes, and we believe it. A feeling rises, and it colors the whole day. Someone says a sharp word, and before we know it we are hurt, defending ourselves, and planning what to say back. All of this happens so fast and so close that we never get a look at it. We are in the middle of the machinery, so we cannot see the machinery.
Our usual tools for examining it fall short. Ask why you think something, and you manufacture an answer. Then another why follows, and another, until you are lost in an endless chain of explanations. Try tracing your thoughts back to childhood, and you arrive at someone barely learning to stand on their own. Neither path leads anywhere useful.
To see anything clearly, you have to step back from it. An astronomer cannot study the stars while standing in a crowded, brightly lit street. He goes out to a dark field, away from the noise and glare, and lets his eyes adjust. Only then does the sky open up. The inner life works the same way. We have to step back from the ordinary rush of doing, reacting, and wanting, and find a quiet place inside where we can watch instead of being swept along. That stepping back, done carefully and done often, is the Innerscope.
The One Instrument That Sees Inside
In 1610, Galileo pointed a telescope at the sky and saw things no one had seen before: mountains on the Moon and moons circling Jupiter. His willingness to trust careful observation over inherited belief changed everything. Today we stand at a similar turning point, but the instrument points inward.
Science has wonderful tools for studying the brain. A scanner can show which parts of the brain grow active when a person feels joy. But no scanner has ever seen joy itself. It shows blood flow and electrical activity. The joy, what it actually feels like to be glad, is visible only from the inside, to the one who is having it. The same is true of grief, love, fear, wonder, and every thought we have ever had.
Experience can be measured from the outside, but it can be observed only from within. That makes the Innerscope the one instrument pointed directly at the thing we most need to understand.
Like any instrument, it has to be used with discipline. An untrained observer sees only a blur, just as a first look through a telescope shows mostly shaking and glare. But a trained observer, looking patiently, again and again, comparing what he sees with what others have seen, begins to find patterns that hold steady.
Why Science Left the Inner World Behind
When the early scientists began exploring nature, they deliberately set aside religious and mystical explanations in order to study the world through observation and experiment. That decision gave us modern medicine, physics, engineering, and technology.
But the inner world was largely left behind. Consciousness, emotion, meaning, and soul were considered the territory of religion, and therefore off limits to scientific inquiry. As science advanced and many people drifted away from traditional religion, a vacuum formed. The outer world grew more sophisticated by the decade. The inner world had nothing to match it.
The consequences are all around us. Anxiety is widespread. Many people struggle with worry, loneliness, and confusion. We often assume that every thought passing through the mind is who we are, and we search for relief in distraction and entertainment. Perhaps the next great frontier is not only outer space, but the careful exploration of inner space.
The Observer Problem
There is a further difficulty. The instrument we use to look inside is the same thing we are trying to look at. The observer and the observed are tangled together.
If we are afraid and try to examine the fear, we are already looking through a frightened lens. If we try to watch our own thinking, we slip into a loop of thinking about thinking. And if we turn attention toward the ego, the ego may quietly step in to manage what we see, steering us away from a clear look at itself.
Meditation offers a way out. In a quiet period of sitting, we stop trying to analyze ourselves from the inside. Instead, we step up one level and simply watch, the way you might look down on a valley from a hilltop instead of trying to find your way through it in the fog. From that higher place, fear can be seen as fear, thinking as thinking, and the ego's maneuvers as the ego at work.
We cannot get this wrong, because we are not looking for anything special. We are looking at ordinary experience, just as it is. Whatever shows up is exactly what we came to see.
The mind will not sit perfectly still, and it does not need to. When it rambles, we simply note that it is rambling, without going down the rabbit hole of trying to make sense of every scrap of chatter. We are not studying each passing thought. We are looking for the main players of the inner life and the general shape of the landscape.
This Is Science Too
The heart of science is careful observation, thoughtful explanation, and then testing what seems to be true. We can do this with ourselves.
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Observe
Notice what is actually happening inside.
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Find patterns
See what creates peace, fear, conflict, or clarity.
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Test gently
Try meditation, forgiveness, rest, honesty, or a new way of thinking.
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Learn from results
Notice what helps us become more balanced, clear, and whole.
This may raise eyebrows in scientific circles, because it can sound close to religion. But meditation is not a religion. It is a method. It qualifies as scientific in the most basic sense: it relies on careful observation, free from the noise of preconceptions and emotional bias. Observe carefully, repeat the observation, check it against other observers, and describe only what is actually found.
When we sit to meditate, we are not trying to empty the mind or force anything still. We are learning where to stand. Most of the time we stand inside our thoughts, inside our feelings, inside whatever is loudest in us at the moment, so close that we cannot tell the difference between ourselves and what is passing through us. Meditation is the practice of quietly stepping back from that closeness, again and again, until stepping back becomes something we know how to do on purpose.
There is also a kindness in this practice. The more we live from love, the quieter our inner life becomes. Noise builds in us through distraction, unexamined belief, and harshness, ours or someone else's. It can be released, a little at a time, simply by sitting back and watching it pass.
"By stepping back and observing our experience with honesty and curiosity, we can see the true nature of our reality." Deepermind
The Chant That Teaches Stepping Back
People have used the Innerscope for thousands of years. One of its oldest and most refined tools is a short chant: Gate, gate, pāragate, pārasaṃgate, bodhi svāhā.
Click here to listen to the chant.
Where the chant comes from
The chant comes from the very end of the Heart Sutra, one of the best-loved texts in all of Buddhism. It is short enough to fit on a single page, yet it is chanted every day in temples across Asia. It grew out of a much larger family of Indian teachings called the Perfection of Wisdom, which took shape about two thousand years ago.
Oddly, the oldest copies we have are not from India but from China. The most famous was made in AD 649 by Xuanzang, a Chinese monk who had walked all the way to India and back to gather Buddhist teachings. Because of this, scholars still debate whether the Heart Sutra was first written down in India or in China.
Yet no one doubts where the chant comes from. When the Chinese monks translated the sutra, they turned every line into Chinese except this one. The chant they left alone, writing it with characters chosen only for their sound, so that readers would say the words just as they had been spoken in India. They believed the power of a chant lived in its sound, and that even the most careful translation would lose it. Those original words are Sanskrit, the ancient sacred language of India.
A sutra that begins with looking inward
The Heart Sutra opens with an act of inner observation. Its main figure is Avalokiteshvara, whose name is often understood as "the one who looks." Deep in meditation, he turns his attention inward and sees that everything we call our experience is made of five parts. The most famous text in Mahayana Buddhism begins, in other words, with a trained observer using the Innerscope.
Buddhists call these five parts the skandhas, a Sanskrit word meaning "heaps" or "bundles." The first is form, the body and the physical world it senses. The second is feeling, the quick sense that something is pleasant, painful, or neither. The third is perception, the act of recognizing and naming what we meet. The fourth is mental formations, our habits, urges, and reactions. The fifth is consciousness, the awareness that knows all the rest. We will return to these five below, because they line up closely with SEEMS.
How to say it
Speak it slowly and evenly, one phrase at a time. The marks over the letters mean the vowel is held a little longer.
GateGAH-tay
GateGAH-tay
PāragatePAH-rah-gah-tay
PārasaṃgatePAH-rah-sahm-gah-tay
BodhiBOH-dee
SvāhāSVAH-hah
In Tibetan practice the chant is often introduced with Tadyatha Om, meaning "It is like this: Om." In Japan it is chanted in a sound-borrowed form: Gyatei gyatei hara gyatei hara sō gyatei boji sowaka. In every culture the original sounds are kept, because the rhythm and the breath are part of the practice.
The chant word by word
The image behind the chant is a river crossing. On this shore is the ordinary mind, caught up in its own activity. On the far shore is the clear mind that can see what is happening. Read as a method, each word is a stage of stepping back.
This shore: caught upFar shore: seeing clearly
- Gategone
- Gategone
- Pāragategone beyond
- Pārasaṃgategone completely beyond
- Bodhiawake
- Svāhāso be it
Gate (gone)
Notice that every inner event is already passing. A sound fades. A worry shifts. A feeling rises and starts to fall. When you say "gone," you stop being the thought and start watching it go by. This is the first small gap between you and your experience, and everything else depends on it.
Gate (gone)
The word repeats because one look is never enough. The mind slips back into the stream again and again. Each time you notice and step back, the gap grows a little steadier. This is the observer's discipline, the same patience an astronomer needs, returning to the eyepiece night after night.
Pāragate (gone beyond)
Now you are out on the water, away from the near shore. You notice that something in you watches. The thoughts and feelings are there, and so is the awareness that knows they are there. That awareness is not swept along. From here, real observation becomes possible. The Innerscope is now steady.
Pārasaṃgate (gone completely beyond)
You reach the far shore. The whole inner landscape comes into view at once. You can see not just one thought or one feeling, but how they arise, how they connect, and how they work on each other. This is where the parts of the inner life start to show themselves clearly.
Bodhi (awake)
You have arrived. This is the clear seeing itself: present, calm, and awake to how you actually work inside.
Svāhā (so be it)
A word of joy and acceptance. It is the observer's yes to what has been seen, closing the crossing with gladness instead of strain.
What the Innerscope Reveals: Five Working Parts
When we look patiently, the inner life stops looking like one big blur. It separates into five distinct parts, the elements of SEEMS. These five were not invented in theory. They became clear through repeated meditation, the way science moves from confusion to pattern to testing to naming.
Senses
The doorway through which the outer world enters the inner one. Everything else works with what the Senses bring in.
To find it: notice sounds, the weight of your body, the air on your skin. Catch them before you name them.
Ego
The sense of "me" that wants, avoids, compares, and protects itself. It holds us together as a separate person in the world.
To find it: notice the tightening, or the leaning toward or away, when you feel flattered or insulted.
Emotions
The moving energies that color everything. Far richer and more varied than our few common names for them suggest.
To find it: feel for warmth, tightness, lightness, or weight in the body as a feeling rises.
Mind
The stream of words, pictures, plans, memories, and judgments. It turns experience into symbols and stories.
To find it: watch thoughts arrive and leave without following them. Notice how busy the stream is.
Soul
The quiet depth beneath it all: what matters most, love that asks for nothing, the sense of being part of something larger.
To find it: let the other four grow quiet. It does not shout. It is found in stillness.
Two maps of the same territory
Set beside the Heart Sutra, the likeness is striking. The sutra's form matches the Senses. Its feeling is the seed of the Emotions. Perception and much of mental formations belong to the Mind, and the reactions that grasp at "me" and "mine" are what Deepermind calls the Ego. Consciousness, the knowing that runs through them all, comes closest to the Soul. Two observers, more than a thousand years apart, looked inward and found nearly the same map.
But here Deepermind parts ways with the sutra. Avalokiteshvara sees that all five heaps are "empty": passing, without a fixed core, something to see through. Not even consciousness is a lasting self. Deepermind finds its five parts to be real working elements of a human being, each with its own job, each worthy of study, and each capable of growth, with the Soul as the steady observer beneath them all. The two maps agree on the parts. They differ on what lies at the center.
These elements are explored in more detail on the pages that follow. Start with SEEMS for the full picture, then continue to Emotions, Mind, and Soul.
How the Five Work Together
No part works alone. Every moment of experience is produced by all five working together, usually too fast to notice. The Innerscope slows the picture down so we can see the parts in motion.
Imagine you are stopped at a traffic light, and the car behind you honks.
- SensesRegister a sudden loud sound.
- EgoTakes it personally at once: he's honking at me.
- EmotionsFlash hot with irritation.
- MindBuilds a story in a fraction of a second: what a rude, impatient person.
- Soul, awakeSees the whole chain as it happens. The honk might have been a warning, a friend waving, or someone having a hard day. It loosens the Ego's grip, lets the irritation pass, and chooses calm.
All of the first four happen before you have even looked in the mirror. The experience of "being insulted by a stranger" was generated entirely inside you, from a single sound. When the Soul is awake, the outer event is exactly the same, but the inner experience is completely different.
This is the central discovery of the Innerscope: our experience of life is not simply handed to us by the world. It is generated, moment by moment, by these five elements working together. When they work against each other, we suffer and cause suffering. When they work in harmony, life becomes clear, energized, and purposeful.
The Deepest You
To live fully, we have to know who is doing the living. The thought that just passed through your mind, the worry that rose and is now fading, the flicker of pride or hurt you felt a moment ago: were you those things, or were you the one who noticed them come and go?
Underneath the noise of thought and feeling, something in us has been quietly present the whole time, watching without being swept away. Deepermind calls this the soul. It is not a doctrine or a belief you have to adopt. It is the simplest fact of experience: something in you is always the witness, never the disturbance.
Finding this place is less like solving a puzzle and more like remembering a room you forgot you had. You sit, you let the breath settle, and instead of following the next thought wherever it leads, you gently ask: who is aware of this thought? You do not answer with words. You rest in the noticing itself, for a moment longer than feels natural. That small act is what it means to go to the soul.
This idea of a soul, not in a religious sense but in a practical, observable sense, is not new. It has been described in many ways by many cultures. The Innerscope does not ask you to believe in it. It asks you to find it for yourself, through careful observation and patient practice.
There is a new way of speaking about yourself. Instead of saying "I am angry," you notice that some part of you is angry. This is a big change. A feeling that once seemed to be you now looks like a mechanism within you that is causing you to feel a certain way. So feeling an emotion is more like the inner weather changing, not a definition of who you are. Instead of having sins define you, you feel life passing by. Most of the time there is no reason to feel guilty about anything.
Emotions now exist with space around them. There is room to have feelings, and space around the feelings, so that you can be you, with minor disturbances instead of massive emotions that feel like a punch. Another way to say this is that we can now stand back from stress, and even love what is happening in life, instead of taking everything personally. This does not mean we should step so far back that life turns cold. We remain warm and peaceful, trusting that most things work out, and that we can meet the rest.
Observation leads to distinction, distinction to understanding, understanding to freedom, and freedom to a more coherent life.
If we identify with our body, we limit ourselves to the physical world. If we identify with our history, we cannot change and go beyond our past. If we identify with our mind, we limit ourselves to the mental world. If we identify with our soul, we are free to experience the whole of life. The soul is a wise observer that puts things in perspective. It is the deepest you, and it is always present.
Other Approaches to the Inner Life
Our culture gives us little help understanding how we work inside. The inner life is close to us and powerful within us, yet often very confusing.
Religion
Gives meaning, devotion, and moral direction, but may ask us to accept doctrine before direct observation.
Philosophy
Sharpens thought, but can drift into argument, opinion, and abstraction removed from lived experience.
Psychology
Offers many useful methods, but they vary widely in depth, clarity, and approach to the inner life.
Deepermind
Begins with direct observation. We step back, look inward, and slowly build a working map of our own inner world.
Some forms of behavioral psychology tried to study only outward behavior, as if the inner life itself could not be observed. Freudian psychology gave great importance to the subconscious, but the subconscious is difficult to observe directly. Cognitive psychology comes closer to inner science because it studies thoughts, reactions, and behavior, and helps a person see more clearly what is happening inside.
Private Beliefs
Most people move through life as a series of day-to-day happenings. Underneath all of this, each person carries a private set of beliefs about what life means, often inherited from parents, family, church, and culture long before we were old enough to question them.
These beliefs may be helpful, but they often remain unexamined. A person may believe in God, fear failure, distrust love, or feel unworthy without ever asking where these beliefs came from. They become part of the hidden structure of the inner life.
What we may inherit from our culture
We are told what is true, what is good, what is dangerous, what God is like, what success means, and what kind of person we are supposed to become.
- Inherited
- Observed
- Questioned
- Aligned
- Coherent
When we step back and look inward, we see not only our thoughts and emotions, but also the beliefs quietly guiding them. We can ask whether these beliefs bring fear or freedom, confusion or clarity, conflict or coherence.
Deepermind does not ask us to throw away our private beliefs. It asks us to observe them, understand them, and bring them into alignment with logic, love, and direct experience.
Metaphysics
Metaphysics has a credibility problem. Much of what travels under that name is untestable, loosely observed, and built more on assertion than evidence. Science is right to be skeptical. But skepticism is not the same as a closed door.
Some things in life seem true, but science cannot always tell us what is going on. For example, some people heal or help certain conditions without medical treatment.
Here is what happened to me. During a meditation session, I had a coughing spell that I could not stop, no matter how hard I tried. Then a friend of mine, known as a healer, came over and raised his hand over my head. Presto, the cough instantly vanished! How did it happen? I really don't know. It may have been spiritual, or maybe psychological. I felt the intention my friend had, and it became my intention. I already had that intention, but somehow this was more powerful. I do not need to know how it works, only that it DID work. It clearly worked for me, so I am a believer. This is the gray area where science and spirituality meet.
Since I felt this intention and it worked, could it be that if I imagine an angel within me and feel the angel's intention, the angel could help heal me too? When we start to feel sick, we could imagine an angel within us and allow this angel to help us heal. It is worth a try, and it costs nothing. But it works best alongside good medical care, not in place of it. What we believe is powerful, and some of the most profound experiences in life come from believing in something more powerful than us.
This is not a license to believe everything, but a license to explore the possibilities. I would not spend a lot of money on this, but self-healing is free. Still, the gray area is gray, and we cannot depend on healing ourselves all the time. That is when we turn to science.
"A balanced path lets science guide our understanding and lets metaphysical poetry uplift and heal the soul." Deepermind
Why This Matters
I once met a lady who thought she could fix her TV by praying for it to be fixed. I know how to repair electronics, and I have never even tried using prayer in my work. The first step is a methodical, step-by-step understanding of how something works. That takes training, and information about the item you are fixing. A schematic is a road map of how the electronics is built, so you can trace a signal along its path and see where it stops. Test instruments, from a simple voltmeter to an oscilloscope, then help pin down exactly where the problem is.
How we work inside is a gray area, but now we have a schematic to investigate. Using science together with metaphysical insight gives us a fuller understanding of the inner life.
The Innerscope is like electronic test equipment for the inner life. We can probe our experiences and find out what is going on. It shows us the five working parts of our inner life and how they combine to produce every moment of our experience. If we are going to heal anything, grow anything, or live more fully, we first have to know how we work inside.
None of this reduces the spiritual life to cold mechanics. Deepermind honors mystery, meaning, beauty, love, and transcendence. It simply says that wonder does not have to be vague. We can be clear without becoming cold, and we can observe the inner life without losing its depth. In this way Deepermind becomes a new kind of inner science, not built on blind belief and not limited to materialism: a path of observation, understanding, and awakening, so that we can live with more freedom, coherence, goodness, and depth.
The old chant points the way. Step back. Step back again. Go beyond the noise. Go all the way to where you can see clearly. Wake up to how you work. And say yes to it.
Gate, gate, pāragate, pārasaṃgate, bodhi svāhā.