So what does this idea of an inner resident and inner suffering have to do with an inner eye?
The inner is the eye which sees. It is the only eye which has a true vision relative to the soul. All that we see with our physical, ordinary eyes is dimensionless, compared to the vision of the inner eye. The inner eye reveals the truth of situations both within and without, which knits the fabric of reality together in a manner that transforms the outer. This adds a dimension to the vision of life which cannot be described, but only sensed in an organic manner. Even drugs such as LSD, which purport to open the inner eye, do not fully open it, although they produce some spectacular— and unfortunately, often disruptive— results, due to the fact that it is an unbalanced opening.
A man whose inner eye is opened will discover suddenly that he has never actually seen life before. It is a terrible shock to those who believe they know what life is, only to discover that they may have lived 40 or 50 or even 60 or 70 years and actually never have lived before.
But this is what yogis work for; don't work if you aren’t willing to be shocked. In that case, you would be far better off doing nothing.
The outer is of a lower order, but it has a hypnotic quality that binds the attention to it. Only if the inner eye is opened can this hypnosis be counteracted.
The opening of the inner eye injects truth into life, in so far as the inward flow of the divine enters through it. We are vessels into which the world flows; this is the first truth. But indubitably, we are also vessels into which the Divine flows, yet only to the extent that the inner eye is open can this be organically sensed.
The inner resident eventually issues an invitation to the opening of the inner eye. If the inner eye does open, a conjunction begins to take place between the forces of the Divine inward flow and the ordinary outward flow of life.
Because our centers, or chakras, don't act in synchrony and are not harmoniously balanced, there is a functional discontinuity between these two forces. If the inner eye is opened, the adept will have specific experiences of this which verify the situation. At this point, certain meanings embodied in the enneagram will become much clearer.
The cause of suffering in man arises because of this disconnect between the flow of the divine and the flow of the ordinary. In a perfect arrangement, where everything flowed correctly, there would be no suffering, but such an arrangement is no longer available to human beings.
Only by suffering our lack of harmony can we begin to harmonize. That is to say, an attention that sits between the divine inward flow and the inward flow of life is the only agency that can mediate this problem. The lack of harmony between the two forces produces a type of anguish, which is the substance necessary in order to harmonize the system. This anguish develops throughout the course of a lifetime and is one of the most important properties a human being can carry into existence after death, for reasons that are too complicated to explain here.
Most of what I have written about over the last six years in regard to the question of developing an inner intimacy centers around the gentle attentiveness that needs to assert itself in the space between the divine inflow and the outward experience of the world. The quiet place within oneself where the breath is centered, the inner resident, the center of gravity, the opening of the inner eye — all of these are related factors which gently help to harmonize and open us.
Every single one of the actions is intimate, because only an intimacy, a willingness to become close to one’s inner Being in spite of one’s fear, and a willing to know oneself, will serve to foster the development of the energies that are needed to harmonize more deeply.
May your soul be filled with light.