Took me a few minutes to find my ground in this talk, but then it got rolling. Turn the sock inside out. Turn within instead of without. Our whole Western culture is the outside of the sock, and the inside is a foreign terrifying land. We don’t dare to go there, so we cling to our maps of the exterior world of form: the psychological maps, the medial maps, the religious maps, the medication maps, and all require some expert, a therapist, doctor, priest, or drug dealer. There are no maps for the interior or the inside of the sock. It’s like you finally decide to take your sock off by pulling it inside out, and there is no foot there!

There is nothing to cling to, noting to hang your mind on, nothing that is fixed there. So we don’t go there because we are afraid we will have to give up the outside of the sock which is in form and fixed. No matter how the outside is knitted, what pattern and design, it is fixed. The inside of the sock….nothing. The unexplored territory.

All these non-dual tradition that are coming here from the East about about turning the sock inside out. Non-dual means no form. Nothing. Emptiness. Thats the inside of the sock. It’s not a place, because a place has form. It’s not in time because time has form. The inside of the Sock is NOW. It is right here in this present moment that we begin the exploration of the inside of the sock.

It’s like we have this external sock called Me and the World. I am wrapped in the world. The outside of the sock is dual( me versus the world). But the inside of the sock is nothing because it is NOW. In Now there is nothing external. Everything is Just This. You cannot divide Now unless you are schizophrenic and see a split screen reality.

Turning the sock inside out means peeling away our external sock attachments, the design and patterns of the world, until you are complete gone, until the external sock is gone. Oh, we will hang onto the toe, like the last smile of the Cheshire Cat. But then it two will be gone. What is left? Only Now is left. Now is the inside of the sock of time.

I also said in this talk there there are maps for the joinery into the unknown world: that’s because you are unknown. You are the unexplored land, the last frontier. And you have to go alone. However, if you have the intention to go, the guides will appear, maybe in a book at Barnes & Noble, maybe on Facebook. Anywhere there guide will appear to point you to your text step out of the labyrinth of your mind. You intention will call them up. You intention will actually create the guides you need when. you need them. But without the intention, there is no exit from your suffering.

The inward path is the Noble path, the Heroic Path according to Joseph Campbell. He said follow your bliss. Which means follow your heart, not your mind. Follow your nature, not the Law; follow your intuition, not your logic: follow your passion, not your conditioning. Many of our movies (extended metaphors there are) are about this Turning Point, but they are usually about an external turning point, where you decide to be a musician instead of a banker. But we are talking about the Next Turning Point, when you turn away from the lure of the external world and follow the scent of your own bliss. It’s like following the aroma or rose petals left on the ground.

Turning the sock is a great metaphor, so lets look at it as the second half of life where one turns the sock of the psyche inside out. The first half of life is the ascent up the mountain, achieving family, money, status, success, power, and then you turn the sock and begin the descent, and the rules change in the descent. Now all that you discarded from your nature, from your potential must be picked up and put back in the pack. All that you neglected in your nature is lying there on the trail, and now you integrate your psyche, and new interests attract you. This is the process of Integration or Individuation (a C. Jung term). Your interest is in becoming whole and complete and content with yourself.

Turning the sock inside out metaphorically fits many feet.