Trust in the Divine
A few years ago I went to a neuro-linguistic programming workshop and the organizer said desire works in one of two ways: push or pull. We either say, “Yes, that” about something, or “No, not this.” What I’m realizing is intuition works in the same way.
I’m familiar with the “yes, that” intuition – it drove me to move to San Francisco, to call that person last week, to read that book. I know how to handle “yes, that” intuition. “No, not this” is more challenging. I don’t mean the one-off, “Don’t go down that dark alley” sort. That’s easy to listen to. What I find more difficult is the sort of intuition that says, “You can’t live here” and there’s no other home showing up. Or the intuition that says, “You can’t work here” but another job is not on the horizon. It’s the directionless, leap-of-faith intuition that unnerves me.
I associate light with the divine. Photo by Micah Hallahan on Unsplash.
My spiritual teacher defines intuition as a reflection of Consciousness, or Spirit. He also says that meditation leads to a clearer reflection of Consciousness. When I think about it like that, intuition becomes more simple. It’s a snapshot in time. It’s an expression of something greater than me, not a seven-point plan for life.
Something I often tell my mentees is higher power will shine a flashlight, dictating where to put our feet next, and that’s it. I want higher power to light up the sky and show me all the steps, give me all the directions, indicate exactly where I’m heading, but it doesn’t always work that way. In my experience, the way forward is often unknown and my part is to trust the path will appear. Even when it’s scary, even when it doesn’t make sense, even when it flies in the face of conventional wisdom.
It’s interesting for me to notice when I play trust games with people I have no problems. I will close my eyes and allow myself to walk forward blindly, knowing the people I’m playing with will keep me from running into trees or stumbling over rocks. However, when it comes to trusting the divine, I don’t feel quite so fearless. I’d much rather keep my eyes open and see where I’m going.
The conclusion I’m coming to is at this point in my life my eyes must stay closed. I’m getting the full, well-rounded picture of intuition, trusting the future will be exactly what I need. Trusting that even though I can’t see what’s next, the divine can and is taking care of it.
I dream of a world where we recognize intuition doesn’t always guide us to something, that sometimes it steers us away from something. A world where we realize we can’t always know exactly what’s next. A world where we remember taking a leap of faith means trusting in the divine and we do just that.
Another world is not only possible, it’s probable.
I like this pondering very much and may have made a sound of delight when listening to the text while waiting for the train in the darkness of a November afternoon in Finland…
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Anyway, we have the same spiritual teacher and he did talk about Consciousness, intuition, reflection of the Consciousness on the mental plate and what happens as our mind develops.
And in his basic talks he explained intellect and intuition in a very technical way. Our mind has all kinds of contents, thoughts, imagery which we have mostly originally aquired through our senses, learned that such things and ideas exist. And intellect means that we can play with these contents, move them, concentrate on them and most importantly, consciously connect or associate one content with another. That’s what the mind does anyway naturally, there is the attraction of similar things or contents and then we can do it on purpose – when we use our intellect and not just rely on the free association.
According to our spiritual teacher the intellect appears or can function when the subjective portion of the mind, the “feeling” of us being an active personality is bigger that the objective portion of the mind, where the content reside, float and associate.
Mostly of course we hear the functioning of our intellect as the inner talk when we think with the language(s) we have learned, the words that have meaning that are just pointers to things. Intellect can also be tactual or visual or gustatory(?) or olfactory, but most probably we mostly think in auditory and visual contents or concepts. 🙂
Intuition is a same kind of a process, but it happens when the existential portion of the mind is even bigger than the subjective portion. So it can “feel” like another “voice in our head” and as we know it is not rare for people to think that they are hearing the voice of God or whatever they have learned earlier that might speak in their head.
So the message of intution is not coming from the objective mind, the contents we have accumulated there but from deeper layers of our mind where everything is also connected so intution knows no borders or restrictions, it is “direct knowledge”.
BUT, a big but, it always comes “to the surface”, to our thinking level of mind through all the deep layers in our mind, so it is always colored. 🙂 That is why people who have learned different religious ideas “hear the messages” from “different gods”.
Our mind develops naturally (through clash and cohesion…) but as we meditate, we speed up that process, that expansion of mind, strengthen our existential mind (also our subjective, “I do” mind…) so our intuition get stronger and clearer.
I can’t say that my intuition is very strong, my intellect is, that can be tested :-), but yes, I feel at home with all this inner production of mental contents.
I do recognize that trusting the inner guidance -thing, but as at this point I know that it is very strongly my personality, the cracks and stains in my mirror that make me get all kinds of ideas and do all kinds of things, I actually try to let my mind relax. 🙂 I mean I have solved the problem of not knowing what to do and what not to do by not(!) making any leaps, faith or not. 🙂 I know I do have to process and polish those stains and cracks at some point or time, but I feel no need to hasten. 🙂