Everyday Enlightenment, page 14
Each of us carries his own life-form within him— an irrational form which no other can outbid.
—Carl Jung
Road Map: Another Way of Knowing
The routines of everyday life—driving the same streets to work or to school, the same rituals in the home—don't make big demands on our decision-making capacities. But when important choices or decisions arise about a career direction, change of residence, or pending marriage, many of us feel ill equipped to make the right choice. This is because for most of us, early education developed logic and reasoning skills—we learned only to think rather than feel our way through life. The intuition capacities of our right brain were left to languish—undervalued, unappreciated, and largely unused. So we navigate through life using only our logical left brains as a compass, weighing factors and juggling variables.
Few of us fully trust our own inner guidance system. We can trust what we know only when we know what we have. You will learn to trust your innate intuitive capacity once you grasp the powers of your subconscious mind and discover how it works, when it works, and why it works. Then you will know where to find the still voice within you. Then you will learn how to listen.
Trust Your Intuition opens doors to creativity, guidance, clarity, and instinctive action. This gateway concludes with a powerful exercise that can prove to you your innate intuitive abilities and open clairvoyant sight—showing you how to access and trust your intuition and fulfill the promise of this chapter. But first we prepare, by patiently providing a context, a new vision of the big picture.
Intuition Basics and Broad Strokes
Intuition is not what most people think it is; in fact, it is not what we think at all. Reason may complement or interfere with intuition, but it cannot substitute for it. In fact, intuition comes from a different side of the brain from that of logic. Everyday enlightenment requires full use of both sides of our brains, integrating the logical and the intuitive, the conscious and the subconscious, science and mysticism, to form a full representation of reality.
Intuitive feelings are related to but different from emotional feelings. Someone out of touch with their emotions is usually out of touch with their intuitive feelings as well. Intuition is feeling-impression or sensation that can also arise as what we call “funny feeling” or in the form of images, sounds, and (on rare occasions) taste or smell.
I sometimes use the terms “intuition” and “instinct” interchangeably, since they are related (but not identical). Where instinct is more closely identified as a gut-level sensation, intuition is often a nonlocalized impression. But instinct and intuition are both related to right-brain capacities.
This gateway will explore topics including the nature of intuition and primary intuitive senses; keys to understand the powers of your subconscious mind; ways to induce altered states; oracular tools to access inner guidance; an advanced method to open clairvoyant sight; and how intuition relates to faith. We begin, as in the other gateways, with an exercise in self-reflection.
An Intuitive Self-Assessment
You probably use your intuition on a regular basis without being fully aware of it. The following questions can clarify the degree to which you currently use and trust those intuitive faculties:
• When you have to make a decision or choice and weigh the pros and cons, do you still feel confused or uncertain? What would it take for you to feel more certain?
• Does your decision-making process change when the decision involves what you feel is a major crossroads?
• Recall an important time when you followed your intuition.
• Recall an important time when you didn't.
• Do you tend to place more faith in the guidance of others than in your own instincts? If someone offers guidance that doesn't fit with your intuition, which do you trust more?
• If you could fully access your intuitive abilities, how might your life improve?
As in previous gateways, these few questions generate self-reflection that personalizes the principles that follow.
The Nature of Intuition
When you understand the ordinary rather than magical nature of intuition, you begin to trust your innate ability to know without knowing how. Socrates once advised me to “think less and feel more.” He meant that there are times to ruminate, but the factors we weigh in making logical decisions are only the proverbial tip of the iceberg. Our subconscious mind also accesses what is below “see” level—variables of which we may not be aware. So intuitive decisions tend to be more aligned with our subconscious mission and destiny of which our reasoning mind is unaware.
In order to begin accessing and trusting your intuitive powers, you need to stop being so reasonable. Your intuitive capacities are fully intact but often hidden behind a screen of logic—you get an impression, but if it doesn't make sense to you at the time, you may discard it. Trusting your intuition may involve following some odd impressions without consciously understanding why.
I'll illustrate what I mean with an odd event that occurred to me some time ago. Before I wrote The Life You Were Born to Live, I used to send out life-purpose consultations on audiotape. On one occasion I opened about five envelopes, each with a check and request for an audiotape. But as I opened a particular envelope and looked at the check, I got a bad feeling—as though something were off. I checked the envelope; it did not strike me as unusual. I then looked at the check itself: bank imprint, phone number, signature—everything in order. Then I did something I had never done before (and have not done since). I called the bank to check on the account. They referred me to a second number. I could have dropped the whole thing, but the feeling remained, so out of curiosity I followed through. Eventually I learned that the account had been closed for two months. There had been no reason to follow through on my intuitive impression, but I did.
Trust your instinct and intuition. By doing so, you can tap into the synchronous or even magical elements of reality, access inner guidance, and meet opportunities that might otherwise have remained hidden. You become the master of your own destiny.
There is no need to run outside
for better seeing,…Rather
abide at the center of your being;…
Search your heart and see…
—Lao-tzu
The Primary Inner Senses
You are already aware that you take in impressions about the world through your five primary senses of sight, hearing, touch, taste, and smell. You also learned in Tame Your Mind that these impressions pass through your subjective filters and that one facet of waking up—of enlightenment—is cleaning these filters through which you sense the world so that you gain the ability to grasp reality directly and objectively, as it is, without distortion.
This insight prepares you to more easily understand, access, and trust your inner senses, which work in a similar fashion. Your intuitive (inner) sense impressions most often come to you through one of these five senses. And to the degree you become aware of your mental filters and learn to perceive reality objectively (without all your meanings and interpretations), your intuitive messages come in clearly, without distortion, and become clairvoyance (clear sight), clairaudience (clear voices or sounds), or clairsentience (clear sense or feeling).
In sensing the outer world, most of us rely first on the visual (sight) sense, then the auditory (hearing), then the tactile (touch) sense. This tends to be equally true in accessing intuitive impressions. The subconscious mind delivers symbolic images, pictures, and colors for most people but may instead also speak to us in words (our own or another's voice). Further subconscious impressions may come in the form of tactile or kinesthetic physical sensations (a felt sense or gut feeling).
You may also detect intuitive impressions through your senses of taste or smell—you may sense a deal going sour, get a bad taste in your mouth, sense a sweet opportunity, or realize a situation stinks. But because you use your senses of smell and taste less, we will dispense with these as intuitive channels so we can concentrate on the three predominant modalities.
How You Access Information—A Self-Assessment
Take this simple test in order to clarify your primary and secondary sensory-accessing channels. Right now, before reading further, please imagine a thunderstorm. Imagine it vividly with all your senses, before reading further.
okay. You'll notice that I used a neutral word: imagine. I didn't say picture, hear, or feel. When you imagined the thunderstorm, which sense did you use to enter the scene? Did you first picture the dark clouds, the rain pouring down, perhaps flashes of lightning? Or did you find it easier to first hear the crash of thunder, then see the lightning or stormclouds? Or, less commonly, you may have felt the tactile sensation of the air, the water, the wind, before you were able to picture or hear the storm.
Just as you are somewhat limited in the world without the full use of all your senses, so are you better equipped if you develop and use all your inner-sense modalities when gathering intuitive impressions—what does it look like, sound like, feel like? Each serves as a check and cross-reference to confirm or correct your other impressions. Still, if one modality is weaker, you can refine others (just as a blind person may develop more acute hearing).
Finally, we have a sixth nonlocalized intuitive sense. It doesn't come as a picture, a sound, or even a distinct tactile sensation. You just know.
The Mysterious Source of Knowing
Because the scientific method (a useful tool of the conscious mind and left brain) has become a form of religion in the modern world, anything unscientific becomes what “un-American” used to be—highly suspect and bordering on heretical. It is ironic that most great scientific discoveries, from those of Archimedes to those of Einstein, came from the intuitive right brain while its discoverer was napping, dreaming, bathing, or in reverie. Only later were they validated through the scientific method. In this sense, our right brain's intuitive capacities are senior to the left brain's logical labors, but both sides of the brain (like science and intuition), when combined, form a whole greater than the sum of the two separate parts.
In the process of writing, I open up in a prayerful sense, to information that comes to me out of mystery—things I know but do not know how I know. Perhaps it is a gift from my muse or from what Carl Jung called “the universal unconscious.” I know only that we all have access to the same vast and mysterious storehouse of wisdom. The mechanism and means of delivery stems from our creative, intuitive right brain through which flow subconscious impressions. Such information, the whispered wisdom, the subtle pictures and feelings, are available to anyone who has the free attention to notice them. We return again to the higher theme and purpose of the twelve gateways—freeing attention and energy to access higher levels of awareness and experience. You are now involved with this process as we proceed through the sixth gateway.
With a little practice, as you become attuned to your intuitive messages, you can switch channels in the same way you might put most attention on your physical sight while walking in the woods but, after darkness falls, put more attention on your hearing and tactile senses.
In any case, it begins by taking a moment to stop, look, listen, and feel. This is, in essence, the same exercise you learned in the last gateway—taking a time-out for one minute of prayerful repose. As Ram Dass observed, “The quieter you become the more you can hear.” And see. And feel.
By listening respectfully, attentively, to the quiet voice of your subconscious inner child, you reconnect once again to the simple wisdom at the heart of life.
What About the Higher Self?
The Huna teachings of Hawaii propose that when the soul takes birth in a physical body, it arrives with three selves: a higher self (or guardian angel), a basic self (the subconscious mind and instinctive body wisdom), and a conscious self (or ego identity that develops as we grow out of infancy). The higher self can communicate to you only through your basic self (or subconscious)—through your body and senses. The better attuned you are to your physical senses and emotions, the better you can see, feel, or hear the whispered guidance of your higher self. Trusting your instinct and intuition is a way of listening to your highest wisdom.
Except during the nine months before he draws his first breath,
no man manages his affairs
as well as a tree does.
—George Bernard Shaw
Learning to Trust intuitive Messages
Ever since the initiation experience that I described in the prologue, my intuitive capacities have expanded because my conscious mind has formed a close and trusting relationship with my subconscious mind. Rather than my logical mind dominating or devaluing these intuitive stirrings, my left and right hemispheres have made contact, become friends, and, at times, embraced. (A neurologist might express this as a neural opening in the corpus callosum, which connects the left and right brain—but I prefer my metaphor.)
This respectful and cooperative relationship between your conscious and subconscious, your left and right brain, is central to opening and trusting intuition. To access your intuitive capacities, you begin by paying attention to new radio frequencies you hadn't noticed before.
Intuitive Powers of the Subconscious Mind
Although we cannot see subatomic particles, physicists know of their existence because of their effects. Similarly, although we cannot see the subconscious, we can observe its effects. The phenomena described in this section, taken together, strongly support the existence of a (sub)conscious intelligence working through the autonomic nervous system, in charge of the body.
The Placebo Effect
This effect, an established medical phenomenon, happens to a significant number of people whose symptoms are reduced or eliminated when given sugar pills (with no active ingredients) that they believe are effective medicine. Clearly the pill isn't effecting a cure; but your suggestible subconscious, in control of the body, increases white cells or whatever else it needs to heal the body. Many miraculous remissions and healings are attributed to so many sources, including restricted diet or fasting, high-level exercise, prayer and faith healing, special water (such as that found at Lourdes) or holy objects, chemotherapy or radiation, modalities such as massage, herbs, or acupuncture, or a combination of these. No single approach works for everyone. The secret is to find out which modality appeals to you—which inspires, interests, or captures your imagination—which one you most believe in, because it is that belief that empowers you to heal. (The confident manner and charisma of the healer may in some cases be more important than the modality of therapy.)
Hypnosis
Hypnosis is a simple process that induces a state of relaxed trust or drowsiness. In such a state (and also when you are ill or anesthetized) the skeptical conscious mind recedes as the processor of information, and the suggestible subconscious mind can be accessed directly. Suggestions go into the subconscious (and the right brain) that can influence the workings of the immune system, for example. A skillful hypnotist can briefly touch a subject's arm with an ice cube and suggest that it was the burning end of a cigarette, then watch as a red welt appears on the subject's arm. You cannot consciously will a welt to appear on your arm, a fact that again points to the power of your subconscious mind, which controls your body's functions.
Material can come forth from the subconscious as well, which is why hypnosis is sometimes used with witnesses to crimes, who can, while in a trance, sometimes recall levels of detail not consciously remembered (things they saw but didn't know they saw). Hypnosis is also a way to communicate directly with the autonomic nervous system and immune system through the subconscious mind's mediation—why physicians and others have had some good results with visualization techniques and other right-brain therapies in supporting or enhancing immune response.
Take, for example, the work of Dr. Bernie Siegel and the amazing phenomenon of Edgar Cayce.
Bernie Siegel, Respectful Healer
Bernie Siegel, M.D., surgeon and author of Peace, Love, and Healing, has respect for his patients' subconscious healing abilities while in surgery. Anesthetized patients (with their conscious mind asleep but their subconscious mind alert and aware) are in a particularly suggestible state; how they are spoken to and treated can make a difference in their outcomes. Recognizing the power of his suggestions, he talks to unconscious patients throughout the operation. Sometimes, when a patient's pulse rate is too high during an operation, Dr. Siegel will say something like “We'd like your pulse to be eighty-six.” He'll pick a specific number because he wants everyone to see the pulse go down to that exact number. Dr. Siegel has said that something in the body hears these messages and knows how to respond to them.
The same “something” can wake you up each morning just before the alarm goes off. Sometimes it knows who is calling before you pick up the phone. That “something” may even access physical skills and abilities from past life memories or other sources we don't yet understand, such as in the case of Mozart and other child prodigies who demonstrate extraordinary capacities they have never consciously learned.
And you now know what that something is—your intuitive mind.
Edgar Cayce: The Sleeping Prophet
one of the most astonishing and well-documented testimonials to the intuitive powers of the subconscious mind is found in Thomas Sugrue's book, There Is a River, the biography of Edgar Cayce, one of the world's most famous channelers. Cayce was considered a relatively dull student and poor speller, until one day he put his head down on his spelling book and fell asleep. When he awoke the young Cayce could spell any word in his book. After Cayce finished his otherwise undistinguished scholastic career, he found work as a photographer. Soon after, it was discovered he would talk in his sleep and diagnose illnesses with uncanny accuracy, as well as recommend effective treatments. He needed only a person's name and address. When asleep, he would in some way visit the person's body, diagnose what he saw, and recommend sometimes traditional, sometimes unorthodox, remedies. Cayce had no conscious knowledge of medicine or healing.
