Advanced Options of Extending Your Intuition 

As with many skills the basics of Inquiry are easily learnt, but the adept phases take more discipline to acquire. Your own body, your emotions and mind are the instruments being used. Therefore the ability to amplify, to create or focus on certain states of mind and body are necessary for expertise. Your own wishes and fantasies, fears and hopes can easily shift or shape what emerges in your awareness. Doubts about your ability to reach into the unlimited dimension of mind can shut the door completely to any result. So being able to reasonably quieten your mind is essential for the more refined and extended intuitive perception. But a quiet mind does not mean one held so tight and immobile no impressions can arise in it. Or maybe quiet is not the right state, but a listening mind is perfect, for when we really listen, our mind naturally becomes quiet.

Similarly the emotions and body need to be held in a receptive state – what has already been called the ‘piano key’ or ‘keyboard’ condition. Both these are fundamental to the practice of inner-directed movement anyway, but they need to be worked with even more consciously for extended perception. You need to develop the attitude of an observer without fixed opinions – both on allowing a response to the question, and also in connection with whatever may be received. This freedom from opinion needs to be something you can take on when you choose to, and as with quietness of mind, does not need to be something rigid. See Keyboard Condition

The state of mind or consciousness that we call normal is simply the one we experience most. In terms of evolution and education it is the one which has arisen because it offers the most survival value, or is culturally created – that is, it enables us to survive in or fit society. None of these factors make normal awareness anything more than one of many possibilities. There is no reason we should maintain this habitual state simply because circumstances have induced it. See Programmed 

Its value is in preventing you from taking the information received and accepting it as infallible – to see the information received as infallible would be to have an opinion in regard to it. By considering what emerges in a non opinionated way, you can more readily assess its usefulness and relatedness in connection with the original question.

Learning From Your Wholeness

To get a good response from Inquiry at a level more subtle than physical movement you will need to have practiced ‘Opening to Life’ for some months. Then the subtle responses of your mind and energy will be ready to receive the delicate impressions from your wider unconscious.

Using Inquiry is not a strange or unconventional practise. Your being is always responding to the people you meet, the events you live through in subtle feeling responses and intuitions. You have these things occurring in yourself now. Inquiry is simply taking time to listen to what is already happening inside you, and learning to improve your skill in becoming more aware of this facet of your life. As your experience of Opening to Life grows, there will be a developing subtlety in what arises. Gradually your interior feeling senses will operate more fluidly. Your voice will be exercised and used spontaneously as with the body. So you will be able to speak, sing, cry the depths of your being. In this way, when you make an Inquiry, you will not depend you thinking mind, but may receive through mental imagery and insight, through shifts in your subtle feelings and sensations, or through the spontaneous expression of your voice.

Here are the useful stages of approach to Inquiry.

1 –        If you are very fluid using Opening to Life you will not need a special setting in which to use Inquiry, you could do it walking along a busy street talking with a friend. It is only when you are in the early stages you may need exterior help. For instance some people using their intuition need cards, or to look at someone’s hands. So if this is the first time you are using Inquiry set your environment as with the ‘open approach’ to Opening to Life you might be helped by using I Ching

2 –        Clarify what your question is. The wider awareness you are approaching responds most fully when you have a sincere need, or when sincere question is ask you by another person.

3 –        Ask the question and open your being to respond as fully as you are able. Be ready for the response to move you physically, sexually, emotionally, mentally and vocally. In other words, allow your whole being to be receptive. Observe what arises in a similar manner to watching a television screen when viewing a good film – that is, let the story, the plot, or the information, explain itself. Do not at this stage try to shape or question it.

There are many forms of communication – mime, drama, emotions, words, imagery and fantasy, and combinations of these. The more you can allow your body, voice, emotions and mind to freely express, the more this dialogue, this exchange, can take place.

Example: Now I am looking at a friend P. It seems as if I am not limited to the location of my body but my awareness stretches like water beyond myself into her being. As I look at her I say, “You have so much male in you. I see much courage in you.” P replied that this was her archetype, that of the heroine. Someone being in a war, fighting for the other. We laughed over her being Joan of Arc. As I looked at her it seemed I sank deeper into her being, discovering more of who she is. But suddenly I came upon a subtle wall. I felt it as a resistance asking me not to probe any further. So, I looked at her and simply said, “Oh. Okay P.” And I turned my attention away.

I was speaking this quite quietly and P said to me, “Are you reading my spirit?”

4 –        Note what you receive by writing it down or talking it into a tape recorder. Once the response has unfolded its theme – the mime of the body movements; the story of the fantasy; the statement of your vocalisation – then work with the response, asking questions to clarify the subject until you are clear in your understanding of what is being received.

5 –        Consider what you have received and weigh it against practical observation. See if there is something you can learn from it and apply.

Test it wherever practical. Do not be afraid to doubt it and try it against the world. If you are not accessing the best in yourself you need to know it. This avoids the trap of wanting intuition to work at any cost. Intuition is a valid way of gaining information, just as your senses are, or your ability to read. But your senses and your ability to read can also be ways in which false information is taken in. So your discrimination is needed when using your intuition as it is in everyday life. The more you use it the more sharp your faculty will become. But discrimination must not act as a source of doubt that blocks your ability to receive spontaneous movements and impressions.