Explorations in Wonder

Each Interprets in His Own Way the Music of Heaven

Chinese Proverb

Many of us have lost touch with the natural world and do not honour it as part of our life as many native peoples do, and this we can learn from our inner world and our dreams. We do not tend to the hurts we feel as a natural animal that we are, so become sick in our soul – a soul that we deny we have.

In fact many ancient and some older civilisations still surviving, such the Australian Aborigines and the Native Americans, felt that if a person was not aware of their inner world they were in some way crippled.

So in life and sleep we have two powerful actions working in us. The first is our waking experience based on having a body, its limitations, vulnerabilities and a particular gender. Our second is the power that gave us life and continues to express as dreams, in our breathing and heartbeat – our life. This I have given the description as the Life Will.

While we sleep our conscious self is largely or totally unconscious, and while we dream our voluntary muscles are paralysed – therefore another will or motivating force moves our body. So we have a Conscious Will, and what I will call a Life Will. The first one we have experience of as we can move our arm or speak in everyday activities; but the second will takes over when we sleep. See Sleep Paralysis

This Life will can move us to speak, to move our body, and in fact do things that we cannot do with our Conscious Will and in fact runs all our important life processes like heart beat, digestion and also dreams. It is the Life will that expresses as our inner world.

Many people are in touch and are guided by their intuition, which is the same as exploring their inner world. It is the inner creative self that artists and musicians are in touch with. Many of them find it by expressing themselves without thinking or planning, but letting their inner world/life flow spontaneously. They are creative because they are able to express from  a huge experience we all have within us. But of course being able to be in tune with your inner world is not only found in artists and musician but also in mothers, women who find inspiration in work and living, in anybody with an open receptive mind as with Einstein – children are especially living more in their inner world, and should not be put down or criticised for being what has been called ‘imaginative or telling lies about what they are experiencing.

The huge experience comes from being a seed in your mothers womb, because no plant or creature grows from a dead seed, and each living seed carries within it all the past gathered from all its forebears. So, the seed in your mother’s womb is as old as and even older than human kind, and you carry that wisdom or memories in you. But in this life you developed a new brain, and the memories you gathered this time are what you built your personality from, but beneath that is a very ancient self, a huge experience of life from the beginning. See Using Your Intuition and Opening to Life

How to Reach or  Enhance Contact With Your Inner Genius

I said above that many people find it by expressing themselves without thinking or planning, but letting their inner world/life flow spontaneously. So in such cases they may have learnt how to do it unconsciously. But learning how to do it step by step makes it more available and understandable. So let’s take our first steps into the amazing resource we all have.

So, the first step is to recognise something of what we are trying to enter. I have called that the inner world, but there are many other names people have put to it over the centuries. Some of these are the subconscious and unconscious; the psychic world; enlightenment; the spirit; intuition; the spiritual world; hallucinations; lucid waking dreaming; kundalini experience; superconsciousness; Buddha awareness; samadhi; Christ Consciousness; Krishna Consciousness; Heavenly awareness; and many others.

Of course there are many levels of it, from the Everything of the unconscious to the clear awareness of oneness and unity. But I list them all because each of them starts with being unknown to the conscious ego. The lowest levels of consciousness are just as unknown as the highest. This means we have to learn to watch, listen and learn.

Just as these bears do, not from learning the lessons of survival from their mother’s speech, but from watching with every fibre of their being, and then copying. And that is still true for us, for the most fundamental lessons we learn from parents are not via speech but from unconscious copying. For more insight into that see Conjuring Trick

This is the very basic learning method and was how we gained so much information when very young. We learn to copy mother’s expression, to speak, to avoid hot surfaces and a thousand other things without ever going to school. Look at the cubs expression, they are watching, listening and learning intensely from their mother – the basic learning method, without words. Unfortunately, if mother and father are a neurotic mess, you have a lot to relearn.

Otherwise it is just like Carlos Caban’s drawing of the inner world, containing thousands of links with what we all hold within us. There is so much of it that if you are suddenly opened to it without preparation you might feel you are losing yourself or badly scared.

Step One

There is a great deal written about killing out the ego, that in order to be able to be more aware of the spiritual world one needed to diminish the ego. For example the fundamental aim of Buddhism is to find liberation from the things that bind consciousness to illusory concepts of oneself. This goal, called Liberation or Nirvana, is sometimes described as the blowing out of the sense of self or one’s ego. Also a meditation exercise used by some of Ramana Maharshi’s students was, every time they used the word ‘I’ they cut their arm as a means to stop them thinking about their ego/themselves.

Of course there are many levels of our awareness, from the Everything of the unconscious to the clear awareness of self consciousness. But all of them start with being unknown to the conscious ego.

But of course to be able to let go of something we first have to make sure it is not in control of us, meaning, we can let go of our ego while our ego has such a controlling grasp on us. Our emotions, fears and impulses often have such a hold on people. Mary people are in so much emotional pain they say the can’ t bear it, and some commit suicide. I liken this to a wild tiger loose in your house that keeps biting you – causing the emotional pain. But if in some way you were strong enough you could get hold of the tiger and it could do no harm.

Recently I was explaining to a friend that I wasn’t eating that day and they decided to also eat no more that day. But as the evening came on they quietly ate and ate. Most of us are like that, we are helpless when it comes to resisting our impulses, like the impulse to eat, the sexual impulse, or the impulses arising from our traumas. So you cannot let go of something that has got control of you.

We cannot let go of something that has hold of us – so a strong ego, not an absence of ego is needed if we are to enter the depths of our consciousness and what waits for us there. See Going Beyond

To help us to strengthen our ego so that we can actually let go of it and ourselves it might help to use some of the following.

Carl Jung said that the reason we no longer are able to experience God is that we cannot bow low enough

• Physical movement: In traditional use of yoga postures the aim was to be able to sit without movement for three hours, and to do it each day for three months, because it took a long time to retrain the inner wildness. The postures were to strengthen the body in order to be able to do that.
• Sexual expression is another way the instinctive self expresses. Again it should not be harnessed by repression, but by gradually leading up the body into higher forms of energy release. See Energy Sex and Dreams
• Hunger for food or sensual satisfaction is also instinctive. This can be seen when a new born baby has the urge to do after it starts to breathe is to reconnect and feed from the breast. So regular fasting was an ancient method, but it should not  be done from the attitude that one must lose weight. See Fasting
• The emotions and their instinctive expression in humans can be experienced as panic attacks, painful emotional reactions to relationships, suicidal tendencies, and generally being shattered by your emotions. This generally links with disturbed breathing patterns such as breath holding and not be able to breath smoothly. A traditional way of healing this is by using controlled breathing. Ways of doing this are – but remember, it takes time to change lifetime habits – so see 1-4-2 Breath Control and The Breath Meditation
• The voice is another way of instinctive expression. I have met a few people who cannot stop talking, and a way to deal with it is to become aware of it and harness it. Some of the great beings who took this path tell their story.

  In 1927 Buckminster Fuller stood on the shore of Lake Michigan contemplating suicide. He said to himself: ‘I’ve done the best I know how and it hasn’t worked.’ He was still grieving the loss of a daughter who had died five years earlier; his business had just failed. He was penniless and 32 years old. He wondered how he could support his wife and newly born baby, but, after struggling with his despair for hours in the dark and the freezing wind, he decided to live the rest of life like an experiment. He wanted to discover whether the golden rule of life was dog eat dog. He would find out by seeing what could be physically demonstrated. To free his mind of conditioned thinking and reflexes he stopped talking for a year. He is now known for many, many achievements.

Fuller said that he had experienced a profound incident which would provide direction and purpose for his life. He felt as though he was suspended several feet above the ground enclosed in a white sphere of light. A voice spoke directly to Fuller, and declared:

“From now on you need never await temporal attestation to your thought. You think the truth. You do not have the right to eliminate yourself. You do not belong to you. You belong to Universe. Your significance will remain forever obscure to you, but you may assume that you are fulfilling your role if you apply yourself to converting your experiences to the highest advantage of others.”[10]

• Mental activity is another escape route. It is a way people sometimes use to prevent them for experience other aspects of the mind or consciousness. Many disciplines tell people to stop thinking, to quieten their mental activity. That is one way but there is also Intuition which leads one past the age old responses. Also try Opening to Life

Step Two

This step is designed for those who consider themsevles as having no intuition and do not believe they have an inner world.

There are multifaceted ways of sensing things. If you consider an early human being, prior to the emergence of complex speech and the ability to think in the abstract symbols we call words, all their thought would most likely have been in images like a waking dream. A human couple in the dawn of our history, standing in wild terrain and seeing dust on the horizon, would need to know very quickly whether the dust was a sign of food to eat or an enemy to run from.

Without the tool of thought using words, they would have relied upon their inner response, and their unconscious scanning of experience and instincts. The result would have been experienced as urges to movement and emotion, and as mental imagery. I believe it is because of this long period in our past history, when our ancestors relied on what we might now call intuition – this rapid scanning of information beneath conscious awareness – that we have this latent ability of insight without reasoning.

To get this movement response there is an easy way. At first you may be ‘stiff’ in your response, but even so you will usually get a direct reaction. A more fluid or subtle response – one in which greater detail or insight arises – comes with practice. The following steps are designed to help even the least intuitive of people find greater access to their own wider awareness.

The Oxford Companion To The Mind, it says of intuition that in fact we are all using intuition all the time, in that we do not often go through the steps of logically examining an argument before making a decision. “In this sense” the book says, “almost all judgements and behaviour are intuitive.”

The writer goes on to say that ‘women’s intuition’ may be largely the result of subtle and almost subliminal cues arising from gestures, snippets of conversation and gathered knowledge of behaviour patterns and motivations in social action. So, recently while driving quite fast around a large roundabout a car pulled out in front of me from one of the side roads. The driver gave no signals so I was uncertain if he was going to carry on across my path, or take the next exit off the roundabout. I immediately pulled across to get behind him. This all happened fast and so there was no time to reason at length about what to do.

Returning to the example of the car, the driver who pulled out actually took the next turning off, so I could have driven across his path. The safest bet however, was to follow behind. After the act, with more time, this could all be reasoned out and the decision analysed. At the time however, I needed intuition because of the speed. Intuition in this case was the result of unconscious or subliminal experience of driving gathered over many years, called upon and expressed as automatic or intuitive response.

Imagine you are going to communicate with a part of yourself that has an unlimited amount of information and influence to share with you. What this dimension of yourself gives you will be in direct response to what you ask. So the question you ask will be the factor shaping the response. Therefore it is occasionally worth asking what is the right question to get effective help. Remember that all you receive has to pass through your own body, your emotions and your mind. YOU are the instrument that transforms the communication into understandable experience. If your body is full of tensions, alcohol and drugs there will obviously be interference. If your emotions are taut with anxiety, flooded with disbelief, there will be blockages. If your mind is rigid in its opinions, locked into habits of thought, you will need to practice listening and receiving. Even if you can be ready to drop these for a few moments the channel can clear.

We can call it body dowsing. Dowsing is not always connected with a stick or rod though. Navaho Indians in the United States practise what they call ‘trembling hands.’ After a simple ritual they allow their hands to move spontaneously. From these movements they understand questions asked of them. The American anthropologist Dr. Clyde Kluckhohn and his wife investigated a practitioner on a Navaho reservation. Mrs. Kluckhohn had lost her handbag three days previously so asked the practitioner, Gregorio, if he could find it. Standing in the open air on a hill, and after rubbing corn pollen on his hands, Gregorio was able to tell them the location of the handbag. This was later confirmed.

Many dowsers claim that when they held the dowsing rod and walked above an underground stream, the rod would move and twist independently. Dowsers in other cultures didn’t use a stick or pendulum, but experienced the awareness of the water as spontaneous body movements or sensations. Therefore it is most likely that the rod is moved by unconscious sensitivity acting on the body. If this were not so, fixing a rod on the front of push chair and pushing it above an underground stream would also cause the rod to move. It doesn’t.

Because the basic level of your intuitive sense tends to express itself as body movements and symbols, it brings a quicker response if you use these from the start, and gradually drop them as your ability refines.

First get into the responsive ‘piano key’ feeling. This is to let your body and emotions become like piano keys, ready to response to delicate touches, by dropping tensions and rigid ideas and feelings. Maybe practice it.

Now mentally ask the question how your body will give you a ‘no’ signal. Each person has a different way of signalling ‘no’. So your signal may be head shaking, a particular movement of a hand or some other part of your body. Remember, to get the ‘No’ signal you must be like piano keys, it must not be done by thinking but by allowing spontaneous movement. If you don’t know what that is, watch your breathing, and try yawning a few times till it happens by itself.

Getting this ‘no’ response is the first step in a growing communication between your conscious self and your unconscious faculties. It is your practice area of having a to and fro ‘conversation’. Try it a few times until you are clear about the signal. If there is any uncertainty ask your unconscious for clarification.

Always remember – every part of you is vitally alive and full of intelligence. Your body and mind will respond and communicate if you can listen.

Now ask for the ‘yes’ response. Your body will move and give another movement to signify a positive response.

Although the yes and no response is very basic, it has enormous uses, and many questions you need clarification on can be explored deeply by investigating in this way. All the amazing processes of computers are founded on series of yes and no responses. Investigating a health question for instance, you could ask if your diet was okay in general. If there was a yes response, you could ask if there was a particular aspect of diet that was at fault. Depending on whether there was a yes or no response, you could frame further questions.

When you have practiced using this yes and no response, you can enlarge the vocabulary used in the communication. Your unconscious will readily accept or even suggest symbols or symbolic movement. This means you could set up a sort of ‘keyboard’ representing aspects of the question you want to pursue. See Life’s Little Secrets and Intuition – Using It

I watched a very capable and impressive dowser work, and was struck by the excellent system he had for communicating with his unconscious source of information. He found water by allowing a series of movements with his wand, so at that stage the movements and their strength were the symbols he worked with. Once he had found the site however, he tested for depth. He did this by simply calling out a depth and watching the reaction. So he called out “20 feet – 30 feet – 40 feet” until the agreed reaction occurred.

This is rather like the yes/no reaction already dealt with, but it has a difference. The reaction has already been agreed, so he does not have to go through a lot of yes/no questions.

6 – I have found some useful ways of putting this into practise. You can create a visual or imaginary symbolic map on the floor. A very elementary one would be a straight line. If you stood on the straight line stretching to your right and left, behind you could represent the past, and ahead of you the future. Behind you could represent your inner world, in front of you the external world. Your movements in relationship to this line would describe what area of experience – past/future, inner/outer – you were exploring.

7 – Symbolic movements such as turning to face backwards or reaching forwards could equally well be used to represent these same concepts. Or you can ask what body movements represent the various aspects of the question you are exploring. Thus if you were exploring a business question and calling on your innate experience and intuition to look at a problem, you could create a map of the different areas such as manufacture; finance; work force; etc. Or you could ask what movements represented these before you started.

Although this may sound clumsy, and it certainly is less streamlined than the more accomplished ways of enhancing insight, it is amazing how much information can be gained in this way with practise. Also, for people who think they completely lack the intuitive faculty, these stages are ways to make accessible what appeared unobtainable.

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 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.

Similarly the emotions and body need to be held in a receptive state – what has already been called the ‘piano key‘ 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.

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.

It’s 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 practised deep relaxation for some months. Then the subtle responses of your mind and energy will be ready to receive the delicate impressions from your wider unconscious. You can learn this by using Opening to Life

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 inner-directed movement 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 just on physical mime, but may receive through mental imagery and insight, through shifts in your subtle feelings and sensations, or through the spontaneous expression of your voice.

Intuition is one of the greatest of life skills you can use in living a life that is creative and expressive of your own relationship with the immense potential, mass of information and perceptions you carry unconsciously. Therefore, just as many of us now use the Internet to gain more information and insight into projects, business plans, ways of dealing with relationship and supporting our children or partner, so we can access our intuition to enlarge our grasp of things, and open doors to enormous creativity and insight. Many top rank professionals, doctors, engineers and therapists daily use their intuition in their work. (Dr. Shafica Karagulla, an international neurologist, has explored the professional use of intuition in her book Breakthrough to Creativity)