Seeking Inner Guidance

It is important to connect with the best in you, with the mass of unconscious life experience and intuition you hold within, with the shoreless sea of life of which you are a part. It is not like fortune telling or Ouija boards or a party trick. It is a meeting with the extra stores of wisdom in yourself. But do not think of the information or insight you gain as if it were an oracle, or prophecy. You are the creator of your life. You ask for inner help to gain more insight, more information from which to make wise decisions – not to search for something to hand decisions over to.

The possible uses for Inquiry are:

Help to understand life problems – Unravelling the meaning of a dream – Information about illness and what might be done to help – Fresh insights into any research project – Suggestions for creative ideas about work – Finding lost objects – Help in making difficult decisions – Deeper understanding of a person you are dealing with in your work or in your relationships – Insight into your spiritual life and growth.

At first in using what is suggested your response may be ‘stiff’, 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. If you find your experience of inner-directed movement is very fluid, has full emotional response and leads to insights, these first stages are not necessary. Move on the section on Advanced Options of Extending Your Awareness.

First Steps in Extending Your Awareness

             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 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 practise listening and receiving. Even if you can be ready to drop these for a few moments the channel can clear. So it might be worth while reading Keyboard Condition – Virgin – Intuition – Using It

One of the basic actions of inner-directed movement is to make your body and psyche more mobile. This mobility gradually produces a greater intuitive link with your unconscious, and thus the collective experience and creative impulse of your life.

1 –            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.

2 –        Create your ‘space’ and environment as described in the initial practises. Use background music if it helps.

3 –        Stand in the middle of your space and do two or three of the warming up movements.

• In this first movement you start from a standing position, with feet slightly apart.
• Take an in-breath, and as you reach the high point of inhalation take head and arms slightly backwards to widen the chest.
• From the standing position you then begin to breathe out and bend the knees so that you can drop into a squat. Let your arms move forward and up so the hands come palms together near to the face and expel your breath while dropping into the squatting position .
• At this point you should be squatting with head relaxed forward. Rest there for a moment and then carry the movement on by breathing in and rising back to the first position again. This means you have slowly stood as you breathed-in, and expanded the rib cage again by opening the arms slightly backwards and apart, letting the head drop slightly back.
• Repeat the cycle of Squatting and rising in your own time.
• Now ‘meditate’ the movement for about a minute. This means standing or sitting with eyes closed and imagining doing the movement, but hardly moving your body. Try to reproduce the feelings of the movement. Feel the relaxed, down condition, then move into the up, dynamic feeling. This is an important exercise in becoming aware of the subtle feelings connected with movement, and learning to mobilise them.

Second movement:

The knees and ankles should be kept relaxed, as should the hips themselves, so they adapt to the circling. The breathing should then also find its own rhythm. Generally it is out as the hips swing forward, and in as they swing backwards. This is because the chest is slightly compressed as the hips are forward if the head is floating erect.

• Begin from a standing position as the first, but feet slightly farther apart, about shoulder width.
• Keeping your head and shoulders more or less floating in the same position, circle the hips horizontally. The pelvis is taken gradually into a wide circle.
• At half time rotate the hips in the opposite direction for the rest of the time.
• Meditate the movement for about one minute. You can stand or sit to do this.

Third Movement:

This movement uses the legs a lot more, and introduces more spinal twist. Because you are reaching forwards with the opposite hand to the bent kneed, there is a common tendency for people to extend the whole trunk forward too, and that is unnecessary. The trunk curves upright from the trailing leg. The breathing sequence for this is out as you lunge, in as you centre again.

When you are reasonably capable at the movement try doing it as slowly as possible. Make the breath slow, and move in time with the breath – out as you lunge and in as you centre. This is a very powerful movement so don’t attempt too many repetitions at first.

• You start with feet about a metre apart in a standing position, with the hands palms together in front of the chest.
• Turn the left foot to point to the left and turn the trunk to face in that direction also.
• Let the left knee bend until the hips drop right down near the left heel. To make this easier, let the left heel rise if necessary. In other words, don’t try to keep the foot flat on the floor unless this is easy. Meanwhile the right leg is trailing, forming an curve from the floor up along the spine. The right knee is on the floor but hardly bent.
• As you lunge to the left, let the right hand reach forward in the direction you are lunging. The right arm stretches out backward toward the right foot – i.e., in the same direction as the right foot. This gives a slight spinal twist.
• From the lunge position, using the strength of the left leg, push back into the upright position until the trunk faces forward, and bring the hands to the centred position in front of the chest again.
• From the centred position you lunge to the right. Don’t forget that it is now the left arm you extend forwards – always the opposite hand.
• Pause in the lunge, then, using the strength of the right leg push up and centre again.
• With a slight pause at each lunge, and while ‘centred’, repeat the movement alternatively to left and right.
• Meditate on the movement, remembering to get the ‘centred’ poised feeling between each imagined lunge.

4 –        Get into the responsive ‘piano key’ feeling. 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.

5 –        Getting this ‘no’ response is the first step in a growing communication between your conscious self and your unconscious faculties. It is your practise 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.

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

7 –            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.

8 –        When you have practised 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.

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 you do not have to go through a lot of yes/no questions.

9 –        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.

10 –            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.

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 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 spontaneous movement 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 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.

Here are the useful stages of approach to Inquiry.

1 –        If you are very fluid using such movement 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’ ‘virgin’.

2 –        Clarify what your question is. The wider awareness you are approaching responds most fully when you have a sincere need.

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.

 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 you need work with the response, asking questions to clarify the subject which was probably expressed as mime or symbols; so you may need further enquiry to make it 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.