Do you remember your own magnificence? That you are a part of something much larger than your personality? Do you take regular time to explore and get to know your inner self?
Everyday life can have such a strong hold on your attention, that you forget that it is only part of the picture. What happens? You move through life ignoring the sustenance, fuel and guidance that is available from within you.
Inner Direction and Forward Movement
There is another way. An alignment between the physical world and your inner direction allows you to harness your energy, moving forward without inhibition. Change becomes accelerated when your actions are grounded in the energy and direction from the inner dimensions.
When you attend to your inner world, becoming quiet and developing a feeling of peace, a new kind of clarity can become the norm. Worry drops away as you listen with discernment, and your actions become an expression of this magnificent relationship.
This partnership of self with Self becomes the dance of life in each moment!
Time to Reflect
Take a breath. Release it. Take another. Devote some dedicated time of concentration/meditation. It doesn’t need to be hours of quiet, perhaps only 15 minutes. Then allow the question to simmer within you. Let responses bubble up into your awareness. Notice new ways of thinking, of images or ideas that arise spontaneously. Pay attention to your dreams. Let it happen. Be aware. See where it leads you next. Let yourself savor this process of receiving from yourself. Don’t judge whatever comes up, just receive it. Make notes.
You are invited to share something from this process. Giving voice to your experience is an important way to anchor an insight in your body. It leads you to deeper insight. It stimulates action. It can point the way to a new direction for someone else.
Share your thoughts!
6 Responses
Thank you so much for this reminder. Living in awareness and connected to the inner Self is the key to more conscious living.
Not doing that makes us feel like we are a boat floating in this sea of madness and tossed aimlessly by the waves.
We were created in the Image and Likeness of the Creator. Knowing this precious heritage, we need to find and use our inner compass and follow the guidance within. All of us have access to it so let’s use it. Our lives will be so much better for it!
Yes, Doris! Having a way to “anchor into” that precious guidance, in the midst of the ever-changing waves of life, can provide us with everything we need. Truly receiving it is the key. Thank you for your comments! Laurie
This is from a discussion on LinkedIn in the Mindfulness Group. The comments are from Colin Blundell and Geoff Smart in an interchange with Laurie, responding to this post. Read on to discover Colin’s “walk-about” exercises!
Colin Blundell • I’d like to refer to a Blog of mine – colinblundell.wordpress.com/2011/11/16/somatic-markers/ where I present the concept of a Figure of Eight. The top half of the Figure of Eight refers to the Outer World; the bottom half is concerned with the Inner World which I see as linked in the manner of a figure of eight.
The quietness and peace resides, I think, at the cross-over point – the place where the dance may be orchestrated…
Laurie Seymour • I just read the piece you wrote. I appreciate the way in which your Figure 8 has evolved and, perhaps, is continuing to evolve.
Colin Blundell • Thanks Laurie! I recently made it into a ‘walkabout’ exercise which is how I do most of my stuff. The idea was for searchers to have in mind something they can’t explain about themselves, like, in my case, maybe, ‘Why do I have this fetish about lawn-mowing’. Walking round the top of the Figure of Eight, I explore the way this is in my ‘conscious’ life; taking all this down into the bottom I discover that I have a ‘somatic marker’ for a worked at notion of ‘order’ (as against the disorder of shrubbery, etc., round the edge of the lawn to pursue the metaphor), only partially expressed in words – they come out as I re-explore the top of the 8. Trivial example but one which took some time to get to. Others came up with things far more searching & profound. What happens consciously – get out the lawn-mower and so on – has a deeper significance.
Then stopping at the crossover point I experience ‘peace’.
Geoff Smart • @ Colin
A worldly judgment of triviality has no meaning in the bottom part of your 8, it worked for you. And your example worked for me, thank you.
Colin Blundell • 🙂 Thanks Geoff! I suppose I meant ‘trivial’ compared with other things that might come up. Actually the ‘order’/disorder paradigm is a very profound one for me!
Laurie Seymour • And is there anything really trivial? Or for that matter, crucial? What I mean is that the whole world shows up in the smallest details.
Your example, like for Geoff, worked for me as well. I’m also intrigued by the idea of walk-about exercises.
Geoff Smart • @ Colin
This quote may put a wobble in your walk about mowing your lawn:
A lawn is nature under totalitarian rule. -Michael Pollan.
My walk may well be about “back seat driving”.
They do say that walking is good for you, and they are right.
@ Laurie
With you there.
Colin Blundell • Geoff: Thanks! Only a brief wobble—then a rather smiley walk now! I admire the way my lawn fights back! Not sure a totalitarian would take that view! But now, seriously, the metaphor requires thinking about as to how totalitarian my sense of order is. That’s worth thinking about… I don’t want to trim the surrounding shrubbery, for instance—I thrive on its disorder but what I like to think of as my ‘intellectual life’ constantly works towards at least a temporary clarity (or sense of order)… I think it’s really interesting when you find that you can step into somebody else’s metaphor and make it work for you; so, for me, it’s nice to shift metaphors into ‘back-seat driving’. At the bottom of the 8 I used to wonder why I warmed to the idea behind Hermann Hesse’s ‘Journey to the East’. At the top of the 8 I’ve long realised that it’s about back-seat driving which is how I like to be when I’m teaching! Leading from the rear…
Laurie: I suppose everything’s ‘trivial’ and everything’s ‘crucial’ depending on where you’re standing?
Walkabout exercises exercise the whole brain. That’s the theory.
Merely thinking about the 8 makes it just an intellectual exercise; trying to feel the sense of it might work but it would not be enough; walking the shape of it depicted on a carpet adds physical movement to a thinking/feeling state—so the whole brain is activated neo-cortex, limbic system and reptilian part and any way that old practical model has been updated since 1950! Talking about what you find as you walk adds to the drama.
A simpler example: put a piece of paper on the floor with ‘happy’ written on it; put another piece of paper a few steps away with ‘sad’ written on it. As you step on each piece of paper associate into the word, shake the feelings off as you move from one to the other. Go to another piece of paper marked ‘observer’—stand on it and look at the other two bits of paper. What does the observer make of the comparison? This is the start of a whole series of walkabout exercises!
Remote though this may seem to be, I think it is related to Laurie’s starting point! What goes on in ‘the brain’ (=the whole body) offers inner direction when you’re willing to go with it; aligning what comes up is about ‘walking’ it into the outer world? The postural gestures of the body give rise to the intuitions of the ‘mind’. Maybe…
Colin Blundell • Of course, from another angle, what’s ‘out there’ is only a construction created by what we imagine is ‘in here’. The Figure of Eight depicts the double systemic nature of what we like to think of as ‘reality’… Laurie’s starting point, I think, suggests this: inner direction to be aligned it with your outer world… ‘Your’ outer world not THE outer world… There may be no such thing!
Laurie Seymour • Yes, Colin, I agree: everything is trivial and crucial. The small things are as important as those things that we want to call crucial.
With your permission, I’d like to put your comments about the 8 onto the Baca Journey website, including a link to the source. Yes?
Colin Blundell • Laurie – I’m quite happy for you to put things about 8 on Baca Journey – charmed in fact!
Geoff Smart • @ Laurie
Your comment on change brought back to my mind one of those oh so rare but delightful spine tingly moments.
I had been struggling with the idea of “God the same, yesterday, today and tomorrow” as opposed to the ever-changing needs I have, never mind those of mankind. Relaxing in a bath (what a good place) the thought and tingle came: “God is unchanging because He is always changing.”
Truly, it is important to listen to that inner voice and be with it for a while. Thanks for the reminder.
You are most welcome, Roy! I’m glad it spoke to you.