When the Inner and Outer Worlds Don’t Match

I’ve been thinking a lot about the space between our inner and outer worlds — and how, to some degree, they will probably never fully match.

Our inner world is alive in a way the external world can’t quite keep up with. It moves through image, feeling, memory, instinct. It holds complexity, contradiction, and truth all at once. The outer world, by contrast, asks for decisions, roles, timelines, and explanations.

So yes — some level of mismatch is inevitable.

But I don’t think the suffering comes from that alone.

I think it comes from what we do when we don’t want to accept the reality in front of us.

Because often, our inner resistance isn’t confusion.

It’s refusal.

Refusal to accept that something has changed.

Refusal to grieve what isn’t going to happen.

Refusal to admit that what once fit no longer does.

So the inner world pushes back. And when it isn’t listened to, that resistance turns into dissonance — a low-grade incongruence that seeps into the nervous system, the body, our relationships, our sense of self.

We call it anxiety. Or restlessness. Or feeling “off.”

But often, it’s simply the cost of living against what we already know.

Listening Isn’t the Same as Acting

One of the biggest misunderstandings about the inner world is the fear that listening to it means we must immediately act on it.

Blow things up. Make drastic changes. Burn down the life we’ve built.

But listening doesn’t demand impulsivity.

It demands honesty.

There is something deeply important about letting that inner voice be heard — even when the intellect disagrees, even when the timing is unclear, even when the implications are uncomfortable.

Because whether you like it or not, that inner world is already responding to reality.

Ignoring it doesn’t make it go away.

It just forces it to speak through the body instead.

A Myth of Alignment

There is an old myth that has stayed with me.

In some tellings, there is a woman who lives between two worlds — the upper world of light and structure, and the underworld of depth, shadow, and feeling. Each year, she is pulled between them, never fully belonging to one without betraying the other.

When she remains only above ground, something in her withers. She performs, she functions, she pleases — but she is restless and hollow.

When she descends fully, the world above begins to suffer — the fields dry, the seasons stall, life loses its rhythm.

The myth isn’t about choosing one world over the other.

It’s about honouring both.

Harmony is restored not when she escapes the underworld, nor when she abandons the surface world — but when her movement between the two is acknowledged as necessary. When her inner descent is no longer treated as a threat, but as part of the cycle that gives life meaning.

I think we are like that.

Our inner world isn’t asking to replace our outer life.

It’s asking to be included in how we live it.

Living in Congruence

Alignment, I’m realising, isn’t about making life look a certain way.

It’s about congruence — that quiet sense that you are not constantly arguing with yourself. That you are not forcing yourself to feel something you don’t. That you are not pretending not to know what you know.

It might look like:

Accepting a truth internally long before you act on it externally

Allowing grief, resistance, or longing without immediately trying to fix it

Letting your choices slowly bend toward what feels honest, rather than what looks correct

When the inner and outer worlds are allowed to speak to each other, something softens. The nervous system settles. The body exhales.

Not because everything is resolved — but because the war has stopped.

Harmony Isn’t Perfect — It’s Honest

I don’t think the goal is to eliminate the gap between who we are inside and how we live outside.

I think the goal is to live in a way that honours that gap, listens to it, and allows it to guide us — gently, imperfectly, over time.

Because the deepest harmony isn’t found in having a life that looks right.

It’s found in living a life that doesn’t require you to silence yourself in order to survive it.