Everyday Enlightenment, page 15
Cayce never charged for his work. As a devout Christian, he felt it was a gift from God and didn't feel he could charge for whatever he said in his sleep. Volumes of Cayce's dictations have been meticulously documented and widely published.
Edgar Cayce's abilities demonstrate the sleeping potential within each of us. The fact that he could access his powerful intuitive capacities while asleep points to the immense powers of our subconscious minds, hidden within the folds and mysteries of our right brains.
Opening Channels to Your Subconscious
Relaxation (and hypnotic trance) is one way to set aside our everyday consciousness and call forth our subconscious mind, but there are many other methods as well. Since ancient times, humans have found doorways to altered or trance states of consciousness—shifts of perception and awareness different from our daily waking state. These doorways include meditation, psychoactive substances, deep breathwork, chanting, dancing, fasting, and extremes of endurance, sensory deprivation, and even painful initiation ceremonies. Such methods were used primarily by shamans, priests, and medicine healers as sacred forms of purification, healing, or vision journeys.
Not all of these methods are as appropriate or effective within our culture or time. Some of the methods just listed either are illegal (nonprescriptive use of drugs) or entail serious risks if done without the supervision of an experienced guide. I will summarize here only those methods suitable for modern-day life—methods that provide a vision quest and generate a deeper intuitive relationship with life. (These following methods provide entry into the shamanic world of the subconscious but are not necessarily designed to bring back specific intuitive information. We will address such methods later.)
• Meditation: As relaxation deepens in a meditative state, images and dreamlike symbols flow in and out of awareness, attuning you to finer, deeper currents of creativity.
• Dream Yoga: Also called lucid dreaming, in which the dreamers are awake within the dream and are aware that they are dreaming. Tibetan monks say that this exploration of the subconscious world is practice for moving through the bardo, the space between lives, after death and before rebirth.
• Breathwork: Various methods use conscious hyperventilation (as in holotropic breathwork or rebirthing ) to achieve states similar to those induced by hypnosis, or psychotropic drugs, but without the potential side effects. Music played during the breathing sessions helps to call forth archetypal images and experiences from your subconscious. Should be done only under the guidance of a trained professional.
• Chanting, Drumming, and Dancing: Rhythmically repeating words, sounds, and movement over time will induce a trancelike state that allows the subconscious to step forward.
These and other methods have been used by native cultures in America and around the world in order to set aside everyday reality and enter the realm of the shamans, the subconscious other-world in touch with past, future, and eternal present within the depths of the psyche. With proper guidance, meditation, dream-work, breathwork, and chanting, drumming, and dancing are being used effectively in modern-day culture as well.
Oracles: Tools to Access inner Guidance
Having explored ways to access your subconscious, we now turn to specific means, which may or may not involve altered or trance states, to access intuitive information as a tool of divination or decision making. Such methods are known collectively as oracles.
Sensitive people, such as shamans, psychics, mediums, certain priests, healers, or channelers, may serve as oracles by acting as a mediator between the conscious and subconscious realms. There are others who combine their own intuition with specific oracular methods such as astrology, numerology, the tarot, palmistry, crystal balls, or the Chinese I Ching, Nordic runes, or other tools. Such individuals may go into mild or deep trance states to access their subconscious but may also simply synthesize information gathered through their own respective tools.
Consulting intuitive advisers in the same way we might consult a specialist in health or psychology can be interesting and informative. But the purpose of the sixth gateway is trusting your intuition rather than relying solely on the intuitive skills of others. More and less skillful guides exist in every field. As our self-trust matures, we come to rely more on our own inner counsel as final authority over information we receive from others.
People who serve as oracles are no different from you or me. They have simply learned to trust their natural intuitive capacities and, through practice, have become highly attuned to their chosen methods. You and I can also learn how to use such methods in making decisions or finding direction. Oracular tools are training wheels we use until we no longer need them and can directly unlock our subconscious wisdom. In other words, the power, mystery, and magic is not in the tool, it is in you. With that understood, we take an appreciative look at the various means and methods used to access inner guidance.
Astrology, numerology, the I Ching, the runes, the tarot, crystal balls, palmistry, and other methods used for thousands of years are based on consistent intuitive principles derived from the workings of the human psyche and the nature of the world.
How Oracles Work
If everything in our world is energetically and spiritually connected, then a drop of rain or snowflake is a hologram of the entire universe. Thus we can take in information through methods that use our right brain, whose intuitive capacities operate much like a radio transmitter-receiver. For some years I myself served as an oracle, using a numerological method presented in The Life You Were Born to Live.
Such holistic and intuitive systems are, almost by definition, nonrational and have been mistakenly associated with occult practices and shunned by both science and religion. Yet these systems have lasted, and will continue to last, throughout time—not because they can (or should) unerringly guide your life (no system or method should take the place of your own inner guidance), but because they remind us of the mystery and interconnectedness of the universe.
I now present the Rorschach effect and the pendulum effect, two phenomena that explain the workings of most oracular methods. We will then explore some of these methods.
The Rorschach Effect: Named after the nineteenth-century psychiatrist who devised it, this psychological test consists of a series of mirrored inkblot images and random designs that are shown to psychiatric patients, who then are asked to describe what these pictures look like to determine their degree of psychological integration. Since the pictures don't actually look like any one thing, we project our own subconscious imagery, content, and meaning onto what we see.
This mechanism—projecting our own subconscious meaning and interpretation—is the same one used to intuitively read meanings in tea leaves, crystal balls, the tarot, runes, the I Ching, and other oracular tools.
The Pendulum Effect: This second phenomenon is based upon ideomotor action, which refers to a phenomenon that demonstrates how your subconscious mind can have an impact on and deliver simple “yes” or “no” messages through your body. It works to receive input from the symbolic subconscious mind by translating it into simple physical signs in the same way one might communicate with paralyzed stroke patients by having them blink once for “yes” and twice for “no.” To access messages from your subconscious, try this simple experiment:
• Attach a ring or earring or small weight to a six- to eight-inch piece of thread or string.
• Hold the end of the string, letting the weight hang freely.
• Now, keep your hand still until the weight is relatively motionless.
• Next, think or imagine that the weight has begun to move back and forth, back and forth, in a straight line; just gaze at the weight and think “back and forth,” “back and forth,” without in any way consciously intending to move your hand. Watch what happens.
• Think or imagine, next, that the weight is moving in a circle. Just think “circle” and notice what happens to the back-and-forth motion. You will notice that thoughts create movement without your conscious intention.
Now it gets even more interesting.
• To determine which direction your subconscious mind prefers to use for “yes” and for “no,” first think “yes” and wait to see which way the pendulum moves. Then, to check, think “no” and see how it moves. These “set” the yes and no signals. Find out what works in your own case.
• Next, in a relaxed state, visualize questions or decisions about which you would like subconscious input. Remember—the questions need to be phrased so that they can be answered by a simple “yes” or “no” sign. Hold the weight steady, relax, and wait.
Using a pendulum is one of the most effective ways to access your own body wisdom, especially for questions about your own health, but also including any aspect of life about which you may have subconscious knowledge. This phenomenon of ideomotor action also operates for physical-intuitive guidance methods such as dowsing for water or minerals.
Now that you recognize the subconscious mind as a primary source or channel of your intuitive capacities, it is time to learn how to access it. One of the most important methods involves using your dreams as an oracle.
Dreams: When the conscious mind sleeps, your subconscious steps forward to rebalance your psyche in its own mysterious way by weaving a rich and varied tapestry of symbols, metaphors, and archetypes, upon which you can project or find meaning. Some dreams may reveal only that you ate too much pizza the night before, but others convey oracular lessons, cautions, opportunities, and guidance. Dreams are the royal road to the subconscious and a fascinating tool of intuitive insight.
Many of us remember dreams only on occasion, and then only in nonsensical fragments. I hadn't given much energy or attention to dreams until I visited with a Jungian therapist who said, “Bring me your dreams next week.” Committed to this enterprise, and willing to wake up during the night and write down what I remembered, I ended up with five pages of dream imagery by the following week. You can remember your dreams when you clearly intend to do so, and it becomes easier over time (especially if you practice meditation, which serves to break through the barriers between waking and dreaming awareness). Keeping a dream journal, a diary of your dream time, your dream life, provides a rich source of intuitive information.
Intuitive Problem Solving in the Dream State
You may have had the experience of going to bed with a problem or a dilemma—or struggling with a decision—and when you awaken, the problem is resolved or clarified. Carl Jung's Memories, Dreams and Reflections is one of the best all-time texts about the mystical process of dreaming. And Stanford professor Stephen Laberge, in his classic work, Lucid Dreaming, offers guidance for modern dream yoga, to actively enter into the dream world as it unfolds.
Your subconscious mind can solve problems or riddles seemingly out of reach of our conscious mind. Dr. William Dement of Stanford University, a world-renowned expert in the field of sleep and dreams, gave the following riddle to his students: H I J K L M N O—eight letters of the alphabet. The riddle made no sense, but he asked the students to think about it before bed, then sleep on it and write down their dreams to see if their subconscious mind could come up with the answer.
Ted, one of the gymnasts I coached at Stanford during this time, told me about the riddle the next morning but said he still hadn't solved it. “All I remember dreaming about,” he said, “was a storm at sea. I was on an old schooner, and the waves were rolling and crashing around me, and the rain was pouring down. I have no idea what the dream meant.”
Later that afternoon in class, Ted discovered that he had solved the riddle without consciously knowing it. H I J K L M N O are the letters of the alphabet from H to O. Get it? H2O—water. And he had dreamt about pouring rainstorms, the ocean, rolling waves.
Dreams do more than solve riddles. They also represent who you are and reveal much about your shadow, hidden aspects of yourself that you will meet in the next gateway.
Prayer: Like dreams, the sacred practice of prayer can also help you to access intuitive wisdom. Prayer is a sincere, humble, yet fervent request for higher guidance. This practice is nondenominational; prayer is not limited to any particular religious tradition. Prayer may be the highest, most personal and powerful form of accessing intuitive wisdom, because traditionally you are asking God, or Spirit, or your higher self for help or clarity. As such, prayer works best when asked with the attitude “Thy will be done”—in other words, with a willingness to follow whatever guidance comes.
Sometimes prayer asks for a sign in the body or in the world. The help you pray for may be delivered during the prayer or some time afterward. This method can be practiced (improving with your own openness over time), tested, and verified. It brings clarity, insight, and answers to crucial questions, increasing our sensitivity to the quiet voice of our inner guidance.
To find desired answers, you have to ask the right questions. Many of us never think to consciously ask questions because it feels silly or pointless or because we don't believe answers will come. But this is one meaning of the biblical injunction “Ask and it will be given you…knock, and the door will be opened for you.” The method of asking, whether in a prayerful attitude or nonsecular state of openness, as in a trance or reverie, involves a clear and focused request, followed by a state of relaxed receptivity and trust in your intuitive channels to hidden realms of shadow and the highest realms of light.
Travel: Although travel hardly strikes most of us as an oracular method, leaving your everyday environment to explore new territory has a stimulating or tonic effect on your subconscious mind—you feel awake, aware, and alert. And it is quite common, almost universal, to achieve new perspective, clarity, and intuitive insight into yourself and your life while traveling—literally getting some distance from an issue or problem. Thus travel can provide a good opportunity to make intuitive decisions. You don't need to spend a great deal of money or necessarily travel to exotic locations. Even going for a walk in an unfamiliar locale can inspire new and creative ideas.
The Heart of Intuition
As I have already noted, even if psychics, astrologers, or other oracles are truly gifted, intuition is at best a do-it-yourself project. Other people's perspectives can be helpful at times, but ultimately the sixth gateway is about trusting your own inner guidance, doing your own readings, rather than searching for wisdom outside yourself. The goal is to take responsibility for guiding your own life and trusting your own intuitive capacities to do so.
You are an oracle. You can read the signs in your own body, in your dreams and waking reveries, ii the reflections you see in rain puddles and in your heart's whisperings. You are the expert on your life and destiny. When you are paying attention, no one knows you better than you can know yourself.
The world is an oracle. You can access intuitive wisdom in any moment while watching a supple tree, bending in the wind; you can make meaning out of the shapes of clouds; the changing seasons or a stream winding down a mountainside can lend life-changing insights.
Having explored the pathways of intuitive guidance, appreciate this: Just as you can drive a car or watch television without understanding all the mechanisms of internal combustion or electronic wave transmission, so can you trust and use your intuition without knowing precisely how it works. Trust is the key that opens the gateway. Now it's time to apply what you have learned in making and trusting your choices and decisions.
Intuitive Decision Making
Life confronts you with many decisions, options, and choices during the day. Do you turn left or right, do this or that, say yes or no?
When you come to a fork in the road, take it.
—Yogi Berra
Logic and reason alone (using half your brain) doesn't necessarily work well no matter how much analysis you perform. You can weigh variables and compare pros and cons, benefits and liabilities, until your mind starts chasing its own tail and you experience paralysis by analysis.
You may have difficulty making important decisions because you are afraid of making the wrong decision; you may confuse what truly attracts you with what you (or others) think you should do; you may try to make the decision too early, long before it is necessary or relevant (which is like trying to figure out which foot to use to step off a curb that's halfway down the block); or you may still rely only on your conscious mind and get lost weighing variables.
The left brain has knowledge, but without the intuitive wisdom of the right brain every decision comes out half-baked. There are two sides to every issue (and every brain). The key is finding a blend and balance of the right and left, inside and out, East and West, logic and intuition.
The following guidelines will help you to open to and trust your intuitive decision making powers:
• Ask yourself, “What if I knew?” When you feel uncertain, doubtful, or wavering, ask yourself the magic words “What if I knew?” and see what appears.
• Stay relaxed and play it like a game. The more relaxed you are (as in hypnosis or sleep), the more your usually dominant, logical, left-brain conscious mind steps back and quiets and your intuitive capacities come forward. And keep it light; when you aren't attached to whether you win or lose, you often play the best.
• Let go of logic. Logic interferes with intuition. Use them both, but not at the same time. Ignorance is bliss: assume nothing and wait. See what appears.
• Trust your innate abilities. When I competed in the finals of the World Trampoline Championships years ago, I made up my routine in midair. As I somersaulted through the air, my body made an instant decision about the next move. My conscious mind simply couldn't have done this. I opened up and trusted my body to do whatever it would, just staying present. As I trusted my instincts, you can trust your intuition.
Even applying the preceding guidelines, you may sometimes lack sufficient perspective to make a clear decision. After all, how can you know the consequences of a decision ten years from now? You cannot know, not for certain. But you can gain perspective by using your intuitive imagination.
