It’s just about mid-week and I haven’t yet posted a practice for this week, which would usually be posted by Sunday. These times when I draw a complete blank become an invitation to relax and open my awareness to what might unexpectedly drop in. This process reminds me of the practice of “not doing”. Instead, it becomes a practice of “being” and “receiving” rather than figuring out or doing.
Then, this takes me to the importance of intuitive awareness and how our current consensus reality in Western thinking tends to devalue non-rational ways of knowing. For me, non-rational ways of knowing are equally present, if not dominant, in my usual way of moving through the world, so I’d like to share some thoughts and an exercise that offer support for intuitive ways of knowing.
Whenever I find myself with a conundrum, not knowing exactly what to do, I ask for help or input. It’s not important to think about where the information or support comes from. For example, I might ask for help from “cat intelligence” or “plant intelligence” if I have a question about how to help the felines who live with me or the trees that grace my small apartment. What comes to mind are all the varieties of collective consciousness that Rupert Sheldrake talks about in his work with morphic fields—fields of information that species contribute to and draw from all the time.
One of my favorite examples of a morphic field is where Sheldrake talks about small birds in England. Prior to World War II, these birds had a habit of flipping the lids off of milk bottles delivered and left on people’s stoops. The birds were after the cream just under the bottle’s lid. Milk then became rationed and not readily available during the war and several generations of these birds were born and died without having learned to take off the lids of the milk bottles. As soon as deliveries began again after the war, the birds were back, doing what they had always done. Sheldrake says that they are able to do this because of the information field of their species, their morphic field, which contains all the information of every member of the species that has ever lived.
And so, when I need help, I orient to this intelligence for guidance. I also talk with colleagues all the time about our human global healing presence, the global information field that contains the healing wisdom of humanity across all time and from all cultures. Those of us who work in healing professions contribute to and draw from this information field all the time. In reality, every human being no doubt has access to and participates in this global healing presence, as well as to every other information field generated by humans. (I actually believe that all life on the planet has access to every kind of information field through processes of resonance.)
For this week’s practice, I offer the following brief exercise as an invitation to nourish your intuitive awareness.
Before you begin, think of a question or dilemma you’ve had that you’d like to explore with some support from collective consciousness.
- Begin by settling into a position that allows you to be comfortable, to feel supported, and to remain alert.
- Notice the support under your body and the ways in which your body receives this support.
- As you settle into your body, allow yourself to settle into your natural internal center of gravity, your internal landing place/home base.
- Imagine that you send your question into the collective information field with which it relates, asking for input, guidance, or an answer to your inquiry.
- An important element here is not to get busy imagining what the response will be or working at this in any way. The goal is to ask and then to be open to receive some kind of impression.
- Notice that you may have a flicker of an idea, a symbol, a physical sensation or experience, a color, a word—you may notice something that for you represents a response to your question.
- A quality of intuitive awareness is that a realization or recognition tends to arrive or arise all at once. If this happens for you, notice your experience when it arrives.
- There may be other times where nothing comes into your awareness during this exercise and then, later, it suddenly pops into your mind or experience, seemingly out of the blue.
- When you feel complete with the exercise, bring yourself all the way back, wiggling fingers and toes and looking around your environment, allowing your neck to move and your eyes and ears to orient to what goes on around you.
One of the things I often ask people to do is to develop a habit of asking for help. There’s no need to know the “who” of it, or the “how”. The key is to deepen an awareness that we are part of a larger expanse of consciousness in which we participate in every moment and that it’s possible to draw input we need from that collective resource.
If it doesn’t feel comfortable or necessary to ask specifically for “help”, see what happens if you ask yourself to orient to the fact of our collective wisdom and see what you touch into when you focus on this resource. Each of us has our own way of tapping into this kind of awareness, so please be gentle with yourself as you explore your unique ways of knowing.
And, as is true with all these practices, please bring along curiosity as your constant companion, as curiosity tends to help us to open to experience. And please also remember to pat gently on the head any judgments that may arise, allowing them to move on through without your having to do anything about them. The same with mixed feelings, which are always possible given our underlying and ever-present wholeness. There’s nothing you need to do with them right now, other than to honor them by recognizing them and promising to return to them later if they need attention.
Here’s an audio version of the written information above, if you prefer to listen to it.
As you listen, please press pause when you need additional time to do take in the practice.
And, please remember never to listen to recorded meditations when driving or using machinery.