Okay, first of all a HUGE THANK YOU to everyone who donated the past few days. I am tremendously grateful to each and every one of you and I’d like you to know that yes, your gift makes a big difference. Not only that, it’s been really cool to hear some of the stories that have come forth after donating. For example, one reader/friend donated to me and also wanted to get a new pair of dance shoes. She then shared with me that the very next day, her dance teacher flat out gave her exactly the dance shoes she wanted and wouldn’t let her pay for them. Get this… the cost of the dance shoes was exactly the amount she’d donated! It’s really cool to see this flow of giving and receiving, how it works in both directions, and it’s on this note that I’d like to begin this post.

It seems like a big part of “being in the flow” is not only being open to receiving abundant blessings from the universe, from other people, and from every which way, but also being open to give what you have to offer. It’s important for both ends of the giving/receiving pipe be open for the best experience of flow. Now by giving, this doesn’t necessarily imply giving physical stuff like money or your possessions, although that’s certainly just as much a part of it as anything else. Less tangible things like a helping hand, a kind smile, an encouraging word, or even your time… these things can all be HUGE gifts… It seems like the greatest gift you can give is the gift of yourself in whatever form you show up. I don’t mean to make this sound like “I’m all that” or “I’m God’s gift to humanity” in an egotistical sense or any of that nonsense, but it seems like when you just naturally show up and shine your light, that seems to impact people more than anything you could possibly do by trying to give for whatever reason. It’s pretty surprising to me still to see over and over that life, for whatever reason, simply works best when I just give up trying to manifest this or make that happen or get this person to respond that way or any of that effort-based stuff… When I say “enough already” and just be myself and enjoy and appreciate what I already DO have, life is FAR more enjoyable, new things and people show up much more easily, and everything just works BETTER.

Since I’m enjoying just being myself more and more these days as opposed to trying to deliberately play the role of teacher or student as if this was all so serious :lol , let’s have a little fun here. Let’s tell a little story today… and since we’re playing like children, let’s make this story like a picture book. How ’bout that?

Off to the Mountains!

Okay, so the weather forecast this week called for sunny and clear skies up in the mountains, so I headed to the local REI to talk to people about places to go camping. Sure enough, I stumbled right into a couple talking to a guy about this exact thing, so I mozied right on in to the conversation. Synchronicity, you rock! The guy suggested two different places, one of which intuitively lit up more for me than the other. After picking up a detailed map of the area, I hopped into the car and started driving. The trail I was going to visit was actually a snowshoe trail and I don’t own a pair of showshoes yet, but the intuition said go anyways so off I went regardless!

There’s a road that heads up into the mountains through a canyon from Boulder to Nederland. You gain about 3,000 feet of elevation here. At the bottom of the canyon there was a guy thumbing it so I pulled over and picked him up. Turns out he was a really cool guy, lived in Georgia as well, and even knew my friend who lives up in Ned. Small world!! Apparently it’s really common to hitch between Ned and Boulder. He told me that the nickname for that road was the hippy elevator and I had a good laugh about it… At one point during the drive I happened to glance over and notice the two cup holders in my car, only one of which had a bottle of water, the one I drink from when driving. I naturally asked if he wanted one and he eagerly accepted, saying that he just had some cocktails with his friends and could use some water. I reached back behind my seat and pulled out a fresh bottle for him. With this experience I really took note of how easily the water I had available blended with his desire for water, like two pieces of the puzzle. The link between the two was a very natural flow that really didn’t take much conscious thought. It’s as if I was guided to look in a certain place which triggered an idea within me.

Questionless Intuition

This is a big part of how I am now transitioning to experiencing intuition.

You see, it used to be that I’d have a few options in front of me and I’d stop and picture myself doing one of the options. Usually one of them would feel more light, expansive, spacious, joyous, exciting, free, light-hearted, easy, and fun. That sense of openness would be my answer. Yet doing it this way, I’d have to stop and deliberately ask and try out a few things, waiting to get that feeling of expansiveness before continuing.

After a while, you start to develop the ability to make that feeling of expansiveness your home. It’s not just your answer to questions, but because a feeling-based way of life. When you start to spend more and more time in this empty expansiveness, you find that there’s a natural arising of things to do, words to speak, places to go, and so on. It’s not just about big things like “Should I move here,” but it also helps guide conversations and the next topic to bring up as we speak. Certain topics have a sort of “vibrational signature” of expansiveness, openness, and light. I like to allow conversations to flow by maintaining that feeling first and foremost and bringing up words and ideas that also “fit” with this feeling.

Sometimes there are things I could say that feel like closure, judgment, and egotism. I’ve noticed that every time I bring up those words or ideas, conversations hit a snag. People don’t react as well. I don’t feel as good. It’s like anything that doesn’t match that feeling of openness and expansiveness doesn’t fit as part of the flow.

And so instead of stopping the flow to ask the intuition ahead of time if this or that is better, it becomes more of a natural continuous flow that you fall into, and you allow every action, word, and movement to be a natural expression of that expansiveness. Instead of a clear “this way” or “that way” that practically beats you over the head with an answer, it starts to become far more subtle so you really have to tune in and pay intention.

That feeling you get from your intuition becomes more than just an answer. It becomes a way of life…

Hiking Out Into the Woods

and so it is on that note that I headed out into the woods. Putting on my snow gear, I headed out into the woods to find a place to set up camp. One of the first potential camp sites I came to was this big clearing which looked to be like a meadow. I considered setting up my tent here, but got a feeling that I should keep walking. It wasn’t until afterwards that I remembered from the map that that wasn’t a meadow, but a frozen lake! Yikes.. that wouldn’t be a comfortable feeling to sleep on top of that…

Continuing to walk along the trail, I spotted this little area next to the trail that offered a perfect place to throw up a tent. It was surrounded by trees which offered a natural windbreak and was still right next to the trail which made for easy access.

That first day I simply sat back and relaxed. In the mountains. Finally…

Above is an afternoon shot. If you look at my boot, you’ll notice how the sun shines in from the side, from the southwest. In the mornings, it would rise from the southeast, right in the dead center of this shot. It would make for a brilliant morning…

One amazing thing about this area is the sound… Atop the spectacular limitless silence you have the wind as it blows across from peak to peak, rustling my tent as it blows by, the very occasional hikers (and dogs) that walk by, the rustling of my gear as I move around, the occasional plane that flies overhead, and the little birds that like to come by. Not much else…

I loved these little snow birds that were super friendly and curious. They’ll fly on over and land on a branch right over my tent or even come down and hop along the snow right next to my tent. I loved the little footprints they’d leave… You know how humans walk one foot in front of the other, leaving a trail of left, right, left, right? Well these little guys hop with both feet together so their tracks are a series of parallel lines that jump across the snow. Here’s one of the birds as he hopped right up to my tent and shared my view with me.

What Happens When You Don’t Get A Response From Your Intuition?

A little backstory about how I wound up coming to Colorado in the first place…

I’d been wanting to go set out and move somewhere more outdoorsy and spiritually open for a while now. Years even. The thing is I’d been too flat out terrified of doing so. Scared of life, basically.

Eventually I worked out the courage to go for it and started considering places to go: California, New Zealand, Colorado, etc. The synchronicities started popping up everywhere… Colorado. Colorado. Colorado. A friend of mine suggested I come on out to Boulder. Of course I’d still have the option to go somewhere else if I didn’t like it, but at least I’d be taking that first step. It sounded like fun, but for some reason I met a lot of resistance to the idea. A lot… I’d really like to do something like this, but could I really do it??

Since I’d been developing my intuitive capacity, I decided that I’d ask it whether or not now was the right time to go, and I’d go with what it said either way. The thing is, I COULDN’T get an answer from it no matter what I tried. How frustrating! It wasn’t fun feeling so indecisive, especially when another person’s plans depend upon your decision…

That whole thing fell through. It wasn’t until later that another friend suggested I check out Telluride, a small skiing town in southwest, CO. That sounded superexciting and when I checked it out, it felt like all systems go! Alright! Got a target! As I started making my plans, selling off the things I didn’t need, my excitement slowly started to fade from Telluride for some reason and Boulder started lighting back up for me. Fine! Alright! You’ve got my attention now. I now see that Telluride was simply being used as bait to get me to MOVE in that general direction. Once I did, it was easy enough to change to Boulder instead.

Here’s a map pointing out the two cities:

I bring up this story because on the second day of my trip out here to the mountains, I was wondering what I should do that morning after waking up. Should I get up and go hike out, hopefully not encountering deep snow along the way? Should I spend time meditating? What would be best for me to do right now? Again, no answer from the intuition…

As I sat in my tent, a few sets of snowshoers hiked past my tent along the trail. Most of the groups were your typical looking hikers, just kinda in zombie-mode as they walked through the woods. Then these two women walked by, both utterly radiant and beaming with joy. One was practically bouncing along the trail while the other looked over at my tent, smiled, and simply said hello. There’s my answer. I quickly put my shoes, grabbed my pack, and hit the trail.

Back In The Flow…

Again, this was another example of not needing to ask and get an answer, but simply relax and allow life to show me the flow in its own perfect time. I met up with these two women along a frozen lake at the end of the trail and sat down with them while we all had lunch together. Turns out that like most people I’d met here in Boulder, they were amazing! It’s soooo common here to be able to approach most anyone and be dive right into a conversation about energy, living in the moment, consciousness, spiritual awareness, following your joy, intuition, and so on. Back in Georgia people like this certainly existed, but it seemed to be more in small pockets within a larger bubble of Christianity. Here finding people who are more open-minded is basically the norm! It’s not that you have to deliberately talk about spirituality per se. You just be yourself, talk about how you live your life, ask them how they live theirs, talk about what you enjoy, ask them what they enjoy, and just talk about whatever comes up in the moment… Remember what I mentioned earlier about being in that feeling place of expansiveness and talking about whatever seems to naturally come from that space?

The three of us had an amazing time together and I really enjoyed their company… It’s so much easier to find people I click with out here.

Another great thing I love is how free and playful people can be out here. It’s so common to see dirt-covered cars out here. You can tell they’ve been out playing! The other day I was out hiking closer to Boulder with a meetup group. We were walking through a muddy patch and looking down at our footing to make sure every foot was placed in a good spot when I heard the familiar sucking sound of someone making impact in the mud. I look up to see this one woman laughing, having landed butt-first right in the mud, just covered in a splattering of brown goop. Since she was down, she played around in the mud a bit and made sure to get some pictures before finally getting up and out of the mud. People aren’t afraid to get dirty here…

On that note, here I am, sitting in a coffee shop back in Boulder, smelling like, well… smelling like you’d expect a person to smell after a few days of being out in the woods.

It was a wonderful drive down out of the mountains… after 3 days and 2 nights. The roads were nice and clear and the drive was so scenic and enjoyable…

It’s great to be down at a lower elevation. It was a bit tough to breathe at times up at 10,000 feet, especially the very first day. Coming back down nearly a mile in elevation it’s a bit different. It’s kinda like when you fast for a few days and then try eating again. Even though you haven’t eaten for days, you can’t eat a normal sized meal. It’s almost like your stomach shrunk. Coming back down from 10,000 feet, I could take a deep breath but it’d be slightly painful with my lungs expanding a bit more than they were used to. Fortunately it doesn’t take very long to acclimate.

Giving and Receiving

It was a really cool couple of days… I got to experience receiving from a lot of people and giving to a lot of people, giving out rides to those who needed them, giving time and sharing joy with those around me, giving food to the homeless on the side of the road, receiving food and snacks from others… There definitely seems to be a sense of liberated and open balance when you’re in the flow. When you need something and ask, it is given. When you have something which someone else needs, it feels great to give. You get to enjoy the way it feels to give and experience what it’s like to have enough NOW.

Also, there’s DEFINITELY a difference between giving from a place of abundance and having more than enough versus giving and feeling like you have less in the end but you do it anyways because it’s the “compassionate” or “spiritual” or “loving” thing to do. It seems like when you give from a place of lack, you experience yourself having less at the cost of the other having more. Win/lose. That’s a good start and it’s well-intentioned, but there is something better. When you give from the feeling place of having enough, the other experiences having more and you (seeing yourself as a Source with yet even more to give) experience having more as well. It winds up being win/win. Again, the key is to come from a feeling place of having enough. It’s not about what external circumstances are showing you. It’s about what feeling place you come from. That’s the key here.

So getting yourself into a place of abundance, well-being, and having enough, that seems to be super-important when it comes to giving. Giving seems to be most enjoyable and most beneficial to everyone when people choose to be in a place of abundance and are open to both giving and receiving. Life flows both ways. In truth, there’s really only one flow happening here, and we’re all open vessels allowing (or resisting) the flow, but never controlling.

A Final Note: Gratitude

Gratitude… gratitude is awesome. Being thankful for what you do have… it’s like this one simple state of being opens you up to the flow, thereby opening yourself up to receiving even more and being able to give even more. It’s almost like gratitude and appreciation (and I’ve never heard anyone say this this way… it’s just coming to me now) opens up a valve for the flow. Saying it now and understanding the LoA, it makes a lot of sense. Abraham calls it “being in the vortex” and this is basically the same thing. This is that.

So “be happy for what you have”… It’s not something your parents tell you when you used to whine about what you wanted and they wanted you to quit whining… Okay, so it may be a little bit of that too but there is a deep wisdom in that statement. “Be happy for what you have.” Really. It’ll transform your life…

and last but not least, let’s play a game called “Spot the Picnic Table!”

So I’ve been on the road about 5 weeks now, driven over 4600 miles, and have been living life in experimentation mode by applying various principles I’ve come to know and seeing how well they really work in this whole “real life” thing. I’ve made amazing friends partying at Mardi Gras, photographed a cheer and dance competition in Texas, skied in New Mexico, camped along the Rio Grande, hiked down into the Grand Canyon, had an ostrich bite my camera, been homeless in Colorado, discovered how every state has is very own distinct vibe, experienced the most ridiculous and consistent degrees of synchronicity, met amazing friends all over the country, had the universe repeatedly bring me all that I want including exactly the type of weather I want when I want it, been given free food and lodging all over the country… Quite honestly this is the most exciting and simultaneously the most terrifying thing I’ve ever done.

I’m learning SO much. There’s lots of things I’m learning that I didn’t know before and many things that I’m finally actually GETTING. To use an analogy, let’s say you’ve done martial arts for a while and your instructor keeps telling you, “Hands up! Keep your hands up!” and so you know that your hands need to be up but when you’re practicing, your hands subconsciously keep coming down. It isn’t until you actually spar against an opponent and get clocked in the head that you finally GET IT that your hands need to be UP!  This is a lot like that. As is often said, life is our greatest teacher… There’s a lot of things that I “knew” didn’t work, and if you were to ask me before, I’d tell you that no, such-and-such doesn’t work. If you asked me now, I’d be like “nah dude, really, that shit DOES NOT WORK!!” It’s that transition from mental understanding to gut-level understanding.

This has also been a very emotional experience in that it’s forcing me to really look at myself. I’m basically free to go where I want and do what I want (within reason… a 4 wheel drive or all wheel drive vehicle would be super handy for going up into the snowy mountain peaks and camping in the backcountry, for example, buy I digress…). One thing I wanted from this trip was to really shed light onto the remaining unconscious portions of myself. See, I remember Adyashanti talking about when his awakenings first started, and they also began in the nonabiding form as I am experiencing, when he was going through his process he’d sit down in a coffee shop for hours writing and writing about his beliefs and exploring any area within him that would still go into division. This has been a big part of my journey here. It’s really taking what I’ve learned and applying it all. Jump in with both feet and apply the law of attraction, for example. Apply the ability to surrender and let go when your ego gets bruised and you face your inner darkness head on. Do all the stuff you need to do because now it really matters. It’s crunch time and the pressure’s on.

Freedom of Experience

To what degree do I want to experience freedom? I’ve thrown up a tent and camped in state parks and enjoyed being out in nature. I’ve slept in my car and enjoyed waking up in new places and not having to tear down a tent in the cold mornings. I’ve stayed in hotels and loved the big comfy bed and the little kitchenettes that allow me to cook. I’ve stayed on friends’ futons and enjoyed the free lodging and social life. What is the most harmonious expression of freedom that I’d like to experience? Let’s go out and try a lot of different things and see what they’re like!

Now I’m looking for a more permanent home to throw down some roots. It seems that this country really caters to those with a home and address. Where do I want to live? I can live in Denver, a big city with lots of different regions all over. I can live in Boulder which is a smaller town with a great spiritual vibe and amazing outdoorsy people. I can live up in a small mountain town like Nederland which gets a lot more snow and has more unplowed roads. Heck, I can even go live in a tipi on a sustainable farm! So many options! What do I want? What does my heart say?

Go dive into the unknown and follow that intuition… Let’s see where it takes me.

Spontaneity vs. Planning

What degree of structure do I want in my life? What works best? What feels best? What is most enjoyable? You can try going out somewhere in the world where you literally have NOTHING that you need to do. No plans. No nothing. Just show up and here you are. Where does your intuition lead you next? Completely and utterly spontaneous, allowing synchronicity to be everything.

Do you want a full schedule with lots of things to do and times to be at certain places?

Do you want to be generally open with only a few things scheduled to give your life some sense of  structure and direction while simultaneously being open to change direction on a dime?

I’m finding the last option to be most enjoyable for me. Complete and utter no plans doesn’t feel so good. I like having a next step to head towards in life and a few things on my to-do list. I like having an overall purpose for my life within which I allow the flow to occur. What do you like?

This is something that has been really valuable, to really let go and actually try out lots of different ways of being in the world and find what feels and works best for YOU. This is probably something that each person needs to find out for themselves…

Intuition

Intuition is SO bang on. It’s been my go-to option whenever it comes down to make a decision. Virtually every decision now is simply a matter of asking my intuition. What does this feel like? How does that option feel? Eventually you really start to develop the ability to discern between the feelings of expansiveness, openness, joy, excitement, and subtleness that usually comes with the intuition’s yes versus the sense of closure, downness, no, stopping, almost shut down that comes with the intuition’s no. Honestly one of the main challenges is getting the mind to align with the intuition. That’s really where the main challenge seems to lie, in getting the mind with all its logic and reasoning to surrender to a simple feeling that doesn’t explain itself.

Law of Attraction

The Law of Attraction really works. I mean it REALLY works. I experience so consistently whatever it is that I most strongly think and believe deep down. It’s SO clear…

You are the light, mind is the prism, the world is your rainbow.
-Ash Ruiz

One thing I found amusing was to over and over hear people say “but this never happens!” It’s like everywhere I’d go, restaurants would hand me free food and beer, the weather would be perfect and just as I’d asked, things would just work out for me, and I’d just smile knowing that this has all been created within me and is being experienced due to my own inner alignment. At the same time, I only experience it to the degree that the alignment with inner being is maintained. It’s like a direct 1:1 relationship. Alignment with inner being, loving what is, non-resistance to the present moment, being in the vortex, being in a state of allowing, flowing the energy of Source through you, whatever you wanna call it… this one singular thing is what leads to the unfoldment of all that I desire in ways that are more amazing that I could have ever imagined had I been trying to micromanage or control any of this. It’s like having full creative power of choosing my vibrational state of being and simultaneously having no control over the physical world. The more I surrender control of the world and focus on inner alignment, the more the apparently outer world shows up in ways that reflect my inner alignment. This is really what the LoA is all about.

Happiness

This has been a pretty hard-hitting one for me. I really thought on some level that going out and jumping in to what I perceived to be a life of freedom and travel would bring happiness. It was subtle, but it was definitely here. This has been one false notion that’s been crashing down the past few days, and it’s been a tough pill to swallow. How many times have I thought that going out and “living the life of my dreams” would be what I was looking for? Wasn’t that what life was supposed to be about? It’s the idea that a certain lifestyle = happiness. Nope. Being out here in Colorado doesn’t make me happy. Heck, even manifesting all the stuff that I want doesn’t make me happy. Experiencing synchronicity and being in the flow itself doesn’t make me happy. It really doesn’t. I’m finding I keep placing conditions on my happiness and joy, as if something in life needs to be a certain way so that I can experience happiness and so I go about trying to structure my life a certain way. I keep placing these conditions on myself and finding that they keep come crashing down. They don’t work.

What I keep coming to find is that happiness DOES NOT lie outside of myself, as cliche as that may be. Happiness isn’t found in being loved. It isn’t found in living a certain lifestyle. It isn’t found in finally getting something you’ve always wanted. It doesn’t lie in mastery of a certain skill or achievement in a particular ability, including manifesting everything you want. Not at all…

The way it seems that it works is that happiness is found within, as if we ARE it. Literally. We find that we ARE it when we quit looking to FIND it. This inner being that is along for the journey every step of the way, this awareness that is ALWAYS present no matter how epic or traumatic the experience of life is, this presence that is always always always here, it’s so easy to get distracted from that and get lost in thought or lost in the world or lost in experiences, and yet this beingness is always here. When there’s a turning within, Love is found here. Joy is found here. Happiness is found here. Peace is found here.  Well-being is found here. It doesn’t matter where in the world I am or what is happening around me. It’s like this ground of being is becoming my home, silence is becoming my home, even if I don’t have a physical place to call home.

I wanted to write a book about the Law of Attraction, put together a workshop, collect videos that were especially helpful and so on, and yet what I’m starting to find is that mastery of manifesting DOES NOT BRING HAPPINESS. If I ever do come out with a product on the LoA, manifesting is going to be seen as sooooo secondary to being joyous, to being joy itself.

Byron Katie

The other day I was listening to Byron Katie and she said a number of things that completely blew me away…

Her whole thing is about questioning your thoughts and no longer believing in thought whatsoever, thereby ending your suffering. Her process to help us accomplish this she calls The Work and it’s repeatedly proving itself to be so effective and powerful…

She says that all suffering is a result of believing in thought. Period.  She mentioned that one thing she loves about life is that when someone else experiences pain, she doesn’t. When she experiences pain, the other doesn’t. We *think* that we suffer because of what another says or does, but the reality is we suffer because we believe thoughts that arise within us about what another said or did. If we didn’t believe any of our thoughts, experiences would simply happen and we wouldn’t suffer as a result of them. When you no longer believe in your thoughts, you are in heaven. When asked if she still feels like she’s in heaven even when bad things happen to her, she said she no longer perceives them as bad because she’s done the inquiry and doesn’t believe the thoughts that arise that suggest something is bad. She then went so far as to suggest that what if you went to heaven and took all your current thoughts with you. Would you then even experience heaven at all? The thing is you wouldn’t, and this is the condition most people are in. We all are in heaven right now, and yet we don’t experience it because we believe in our thoughts.

This is something that Adya has mentioned before as well, that he has literally lost the ability to believe in his own thoughts… I’ve wondered how this plays out in terms of the LoA which says that what you believe you experience… The two perspectives kinda seem at odds and this is a paradox that I have still only partially resolved for myself.

In any event, questioning my own thoughts repeatedly is bringing SO much valuable insight to me, so much clarity, and so much understanding. It’s a very useful technique…

So What Now?

There is SO much I don’t know. Everytime I think I know something, life gently and lovingly shows me how completely utterly wrong I am. There’s just so much more surrender to experience, a continual opening up to even deeper love (especially the scarier places), finding more areas of darkness and bringing the light into them, being happy and joyous for its own sake without any reason necessary, letting go of those fears and resistances and doubts and worries, and really just BEING. Being, loving, enjoying, surrendering…

Really I don’t know anything. Geez…

All I know is that here I am, sitting in a coffee shop, reflecting on the past few weeks of… good god… I don’t know how to describe it…

Whew… So yeah… If you’ve made it this far along and enjoyed what was shared, If you wanna read more from a wandering guy who has no idea what he’s doing half the time  :lol  feel free to donate some cash and help me pay for food and gas. It’s certainly appreciated!

Until next time, happy living!!

-Ariel

Time. I don’t wanna get into the discussion about time, eternity, the illusion of past and future, and all that jazz. I’m just not feelin’ it right now. Instead I wanna address some direct and distinct shifts that are occurring, namely that time (among other things) is quite literally starting to break apart and fracture right before my very eyes.

It’s not just about the experience of timelessness or events seeming to either fly by or take forever, not just those internal personal experiences, but I’m also now beginning to see these internal things be reflected back to me in the world. Digital clocks are now sometimes literally beginning to skip, as in several minutes or hours at a time simply won’t exist for me even though there is still the continuing experience of life. Analog clocks (the ones with minute hands and hour hands) around me are slowing down and getting off sync with other sources of time, and it’s not just old clocks and dying batteries…

It’s quite literally as if certain parts of life literally do not exist for me.

To be honest, there’s a number of things I’ve held myself back from talking about here, either because I wanted to keep this blog focused specifically on awakening or because some of the topics are a little too *out there*… But you know what? Let’s roll with it and see where this takes us, especially now that a bunch of you are reporting to have similar experiences anyways…

Telepathy and Empathy

My latent telepathic abilities have started awakening and I’ve noticed that my inner guidance is often operating in harmony with other people wanting to tell me something. As mentioned yesterday, it’s like being part of a flock of birds, both individual and simultaneously unified, where multiple people are cooperative components to a greater whole. We can call it co-creating the experience of intuitive communication. It’s as if two of us are somehow on the same frequency and can pick up on one another’s thoughts, feelings, intentions, and desires.

This seems to be correlating to a sudden increase in empathy (and actually sympathy at times) and intuitive strength that has occurred within the last two weeks. I now feel people much more strongly and even cry and laugh quite often for no logical reason, both in meditation when releasing my own inner stuff as well as when feeling other people’s emotions. Heck, I’ve been crying when watching American Idol auditions these past few weeks, much to my surprise! It seems to occur particularly often when I observe people who really really really want to make it to Hollywood. It’s like I can connect to them and suddenly feel all their emotion come pouring through me.

Again, developing the ability to surrender and maintain a sense of transparency so that the energy flows through me without me absorbing it personally, this is a really important skill. I often prefer this to simply closing down my heart and blocking out other people’s energies, though that certainly has its place in terms of learning to moderate the flow of energy and not take in more than you can handle.

As an aside, long distance wireless communication has always fascinated me. When I was younger I built WiFi antennas, spent time with friends who were amateur radio operators, studied electromagnetics and lasers in college where I learned about RF communication (like radio and TV) as well as optical communication through fiber optic cables, spent time ogling satellites and satellite dishes, and studied up on the basics of quantum teleportation-based communication. This blossoming of interest in telepathic communication is not about the desire for siddhis and supernatural abilities, but a natural progression of and development of an lifelong passion of mine.

Beyond Earth

I’ve also started getting flashes of not only past lives on earth, but past lives elsewhere in the cosmos. Ever since I was a little kid, looking up into the stars feels somehow like being home. Recognizing this and seeing my own galactic history makes it much easier to accept freely for myself many of the extraterrestrial beings who are channeling down to earth at this time. (The Essassani, Arcturians, and Pleiadians are among my favorites that I have come across thus far.) Being able to accept this and release so much internal resistance and denail has been a HUGE relief for me, like a tremendous weight lifted off my shoulders.

One quick point about past lives: When I look back I find that they’re not really past lives. They’re more like multiple simultaneously occurring incarnations. Since I’m now finding my consciousness starting to periodically disconnect from the apparent stream of linear earth time (or more accurately consciousness ceasing to create the experience of time within itself), there have been some discontinuous breaks that have been experienced as mentioned previously. It’s not under my deliberate conscious control. It’s like something that just seems to happen as I fully surrender to the moment. It almost feels like I’m gradually entering the world of time travel and have yet to find the steering wheel or the panel that allows me to pick a time and place to jump to. Either way, looks like I’ve got both a flux capacitor and 1.21 gigawatts at my disposal.

There have also been some conscious connections strengthening with archangels, in particular Archangel Michael. I don’t have a two-way verbal dialog happening with him yet, but his presence is quite clear and visceral to me. His energy I can actually feel quite distinctly, as if he’s standing behind me like the picture above illustrates. (My head even has developed a natural tendency to lean back, again just like that picture above, ironically enough…) Every being, whether collective or individual, seems to have uniquely different energies. This applies whether we’re talking about spirit guides, angels or archangels, extraterrestrials, or even your very own light within. Each has a unique vibrational feeling signature, much like different notes in a song.

This universe is far more expansive than we’ve been taught in school. As nontraditional and even woowoo as some of this may seem, right or wrong it’s something I just have to let go and allow to arise through me. Sometimes reality is stranger than fiction…

Have you noticed how ideas and thoughts just kinda *pop* into our minds? Where do our thoughts come from? What’s going on here?

Well the typical way of thinking about our minds is as if it is its own independent thinking entity, doing its thinking thing. Basically it’s the idea of being a separate being who has the ability to operate while disconnected from everything else.

Now, instead of thinking of ourselves as separate independent thinkers, let’s change our perspective for a moment. Let’s imagine that there’s an infinite pool of thoughts that everyone in the universe can tap into. Every thought, idea, and concept is part of this single collective energetic thought bubble that we all have access to.

From this perspective, you and I are not exactly thinkers who come up our very own thoughts. More accurately we would be like vibrational tuners. We’re like radios that have the ability to vibrationally attune ourselves to different frequencies of thought. Whatever station you tune your energy radio towards determines what thoughts are received.

You have the ability to say “Hello, Hello, Hello, Hello” in your head, but what you’re really doing is tuning yourself to whatever radio station is playing those words and you’re sitting back as those thoughts pass through you. You are not your thoughts. Thoughts pass through you, this empty spaciousness of awareness that is eternally here.

Let’s examine a number of different examples that demonstrate the interconnectedness and non-separateness of thought.

Finishing Each Others’ Sentences

When two people are in love, often they have the ability to complete each others’ thoughts. We may say they’re on the same wavelength, they vibe together, they resonate well with one another, they have chemistry… all basically ways of saying that they’re tuned to the same energy of love and have access to the same subset of thoughts within this infinite pool of thoughts and thus it seems like they’re completing each others’ sentences whereas in reality it’d be more accurate to say they’re simply harmonizing together in frequency, having the same thought radio station passing through their consciousness simultaneously. It’s like they’re both channeling from the same frequency.

Psychics

Have you noticed how psychics can “read” people’s energies simply by knowing their name or seeing their picture? All they’re basically doing is tuning their personal frequencies to match those of someone else and thus it seems like they suddenly have the ability to know what the other person is thinking or feeling. Again, they’re just tuning themselves to whatever frequency someone else is at and ta-da! they can “read people’s minds” or whatever.

Thoughts Are Public Knowledge

Sensitive empaths know this first hand. Many people think their thoughts, feelings, and emotions are theirs and theirs alone, and that their thoughts are private. “No one can hear my thoughts but me!” In reality, all of our energies actually transmit across the entire universe. That is, they basically leak out and anyone can pick up on them. Our thoughts are far less private than we think. With our thoughts we can pollute the collective consciousness or we can enhance it.

Picking Up Others People’s Thoughts

How many times have people felt down or depressed, thinking that there’s something wrong with them, when in reality they’ve simply picked up someone else’s energy? They’re not doing anything wrong per se. They’re simply being weighed down by carrying someone else’s emotional baggage. There’s nothing the person needs to fix or improve in themselves. They just need to quit carrying other people’s stuff! Again, we can pick up on the thought energy of others.

Telepathy

My telepathic abilities have been waking up the past few weeks. It’s amazing how natural and effortless this is. It’s a much more efficient form of communication. Telepathically, it seems like thoughts are communicated wordlessly. It’s more of a feeling, a transmission of knowingness. For those of you familiar with Bashar, he actually uses the word telempathy rather than telepathy. We’re not telepathic. We’re telempathic. What does this mean? Well, empathy has to do with emotion. You know, energy in motion. Telempathy is basically nothing more than waking up a deeper communicative ability, much like your intuition, that works on a vibrational level that is higher than conventional intellectual thought, at least the way I perceive it so far. It seems to be more pure. If you have experience here, I’d love to hear what you have to say. Leave a message in the comments area or just let me know telepathically.

Channeling

Are you familiar with the idea of channeling? Esther Hicks channels Abraham. Darryl Anka channels Bashar. Jane Roberts channels Seth. The way channeling works, mechanically, is that you have two different beings/energies who vibrate at two different frequencies. The being at a lower frequency learns to go into a meditative state and raise their vibration. The being at a higher frequency deliberately steps down their frequency. The two meet somewhere in the middle, creating a third vibratory reality where the two beings essentially lock together. It’s like when you have two equally tuned tuning forks side by side. Ding one and the other one will start to vibrate as well. When this connection is made, there’s a telepathic link that’s created and the thoughts from one being bridges to that of another, like the tuning forks. Thoughts are translated back and forth in a universal vibrational way so that it doesn’t matter if the being on one side speaks the same language as the being on the other… the channel acts as a translator to translate the information into the language in which they were trained. So channeling, too, is yet another way to take advantage of the fact that thoughts are just vibrational signals that different beings can align with.

Creative Insights

Have you noticed how creative ideas can just pop into mind when your mind is quiet? Say you’re in the shower or sitting on the toilet or driving your car.. you’re not actively thinking about your project then and in that gap, when your awareness isn’t overwhelmed by the distracting energy of the intellectual mind, *pop!* an idea that lives on a different frequency shows up. It’s not that you *created* that new thought, but that you relaxed yourself enough to be open to receiving thoughts on a different frequency, thoughts that can enter only through the doorway of surrender.

Where Is the Thinker?

In the Advaita tradition, Self-inquiry is a popular “technique” for Self-realization. It’s basically Ramana Maharshi’s suggested strategy of repeatedly asking yourself “Who am I?” Thoughts arise, sure, but to whom? Whose thoughts are these? Who is the thinker? When we get past the notion that “I am my thoughts,” seeing that thoughts can come and go and even cease altogether in meditation, and yet you remain, the next level of identity to peel away may be the thought, “I am the thinker of these thoughts.” The interesting thing is that if you take the time to investigate for yourself (don’t just agree or disagree with me here, but LOOK for yourself) WHO thinks, you will discover that there isn’t a thinker. At all. There is no separate independent entity called “thinker.” There is no thing here. Nothing is here and no one is thinking. Thoughts simply arise. Again, there is no thought-creating entity here called “the thinker.” What is “the thinker” besides just a thought? Outside of thought, is there such a thing? Take a look and see for yourself.

Where Are Thoughts?

So this infinite pool of thoughts, where is it? Does it exist somewhere in this universe of time and space? Can we hop on a spaceship or some sort of interdimensional portal and travel to this pool of thought, wherever it is? Well, all thoughts are already right here, right now! You can think up anything! If the thoughts weren’t already right here, you literally wouldn’t be able to access them. It’s that simple. So thoughts don’t really exist anywhere. They’re just here, in this eternal placeless place. This pool of thought doesn’t exist in time and space. It exists nowhere. An equally valid perspective, to acknowledge the paradoxical nature of this, is that all thoughts exist everywhere. They are available to all beings at all time in all of space.

Accessing Infinite Thought

Every idea that the world’s greatest composers, thinkers, writers, and sages ever thought are available to you now. You have the ability to access all ideas and knowledge of the universe. It’s simply a matter of gently letting go of the self-imposed blocks and limitations that we, ourselves, place upon ourselves when we project ourselves into this physical reality.

I’m still very much experimenting with this idea and learning to get a handle on it. In my experience thus far, when I let go of the idea that I intellectually know or don’t know something (duality), then I just know what I need to know when I need to know it. If I don’t know it, then I don’t need to know it. Rather than memory and the intellect, there’s a deeper knowingness that we begin to access.

It’s not like we need to think every thought in existence simultaneously, but we do have access to whatever thoughts and ideas that we need, when we need them. Not a moment before, but also not a moment after. As tese physicalized mind/body things, we’re kinda like thought buckets, able to hold a finite number of thoughts at any one time, but capable of filling ourselves from our connection to the infinite thought stream, the source and home of all thoughts.

No Ownership of Thought

So these thoughts are definitely not you. Your thoughts are not you. Here you are, unmoving, unchanging, and everpresent. Hello awareness! … and here’s the stream of thought. It keeps coming and going, and you keep watching it.

Not only are thoughts not you, they are also not yours, any more than a song coming through a radio literally belongs to the radio or any more than the air that’s currently in your lungs is literally yours. The air that’s currently in your lungs you may certainly be using, sure, but that doesn’t make it somehow yours.

What is “my thought” other than just another thought that passes through awareness?

It’s funny to see people get so protective over “my” thoughts, “my” ideas, “my” creative insights, and so on, and then proceed to patent and copyright these ideas as if they themselves literally own them. This is the old way of thinking. This is out of alignment with how thoughts actually work. We’re growing out of that way of thinking now. It’s based out of fear, as if the separate self that I am will be diminished and have less if I fully share with the separate self that you are. It’s a valid perspective based upon the illusory sense of separation, yes, but separation itself is totally an illusion in the first place.

Choosing Thoughts

Let’s say someone were to ask you how you raise your arm up in the air. What would you tell them? “I dunno… I just do it.” I learned to wiggle my ears first time yesterday. I’ve always wanted to know how to do it, but how could anyone teach me?

We could talk about the thought arising, which does something in the brain, which fires electrochemical impulses through the body, which contracts certain muscles, which makes the arm raise or the ears wiggle. Sure, we could go there, but how is a thought chosen? This free will thing, how does that work? What chooses?

I have no idea.

Do you?

Today I had the absolute pleasure of speaking with spiritual teacher and intuitive healer, Matt Kahn. The two of us have been checking out each others’ work on facebook and occasionally speaking online, but it wasn’t until today that we got together and really talked. He’s been getting these intuitive nudges to speak with me, (Thank you, Julie!!) and our discussion was nothing short of AMAZING. We spoke over the phone for about an hour (Edit: Not  2 1/2 hours. I was wrong… time really flies!) while he compassionately guided me beyond my current sticking points, showed me exactly what I was unable to see, and intuitively brought up ideas and insights that were exactly what I needed to hear when I needed to hear them. It was quite literally as if each topic, each sentence, and each WORD was custom tailored to my particular regarding awakening, much deeper than the generic “Who’s the one who’s asking the question? Just surrender. Be still. Observe it.” You know, the typical stuff that we Advaita-heads like to say.

For example, I’ve been pretty into the whole non-dual, no self, awareness is aware… thing. He came in out of left field and recontextualized all of that. It’s not that he invalidated it by any means, but rather I’d been so focused upon that that I couldn’t see my way out. It had become so much my spiritual dogma (not exactly, but I can’t think of a better word) that it was actually becoming a hindrance to moving on. Everything that we pick up we must eventually let go of. If you ARE a guy, do you need to run around telling everyone that you’re a guy? No, of course not. It’s clear. You just live it. Plain and simple. Similarly, the Truth is ultimately what you ARE, not what you say.

“You are not the one who speaks the truth, you are the truth that speaks.”

-Matt Kahn

See, even when we experience something directly, it’s easy for the mind to subtly turn that into a teaching or a belief system and say, “Ah, THIS is the Truth! Look at all these quotes by enlightened gurus talking about this and that! They know what’s up too! This MUST be the correct perception of Reality!” Is that really so different than evangelical Bible thumpers who claim their words are “the right” words? Rather than allowing the teachings to simply be a confirmation of the Truth of what you ARE, they become a substitute for it and what we cling to. It’s the classic case of, “The finger pointing to the moon is not the moon,” example #346.

I would love to share with you what we talked about as well as my experience in the discussion. We discussed a TON, and not in an overwhelming sense, but in an abundant and full and complete way.  However, when I started writing this stuff out, I quickly realized that it’d be like 18 million pages long, soooo I’d rather not…

Instead, lemme give you guys a taste of some of the amazing topics we discussed:

Topics Discussed with Matt

• Letting go of the student role, the reading of books, the memorizing of quotes, the intellectual understanding of spirituality, and so on
• Going beyond accumulated knowledge
• “Spiritual retirement” and the end of all practices (yay!!)
• How to instantly see the Truth and free myself of these practically bipolar emotional swings like confusion/clarity
• How even these new things he shared with me I would one day be letting go of
• The more subtle inner workings of my/the ego
• How the ego doesn’t care what form it takes. It just wants to be right. How to use this to your advantage
• The 3 different forms perception takes and how to quickly discern the difference between perception and Truth
• How when we let go of teaching others what we’ve learned and instead simply be ourselves, our unique gifts and purpose in the world can finally awaken and manifest
• The spiritual ego creating a “no separate self” self
• How we don’t have to pull people out of the illusion and bang them over the head with Truth. Instead we simply allow them to play with their toys, for the longer they play with them, the closer they get to the toy breaking down on their won. Let them play. Let them be asleep if they so choose to be. Love them anyways.
• Experiencing things like emotions or going to the movies and totally experiencing them as they are, without the need to invalidate them or not experience them just because “they’re an illusion.”
• My unseen need to “earn” enlightenment via doing it right and accomplishing something. When you stop trying to earn something, you receive everything
• The unseen reason for my resistance to completely finishing things, for that would mean there’s nothing left to do, which would mean no purpose to live, which means I might as well roll over and die for life would then be pointless
• How having nothing to do and being obligated to do nothing actually gives you the freedom to choose anything
• Relating to, validating, and loving others, even when they disagree with you… in a fantastically open-hearted way that totally disarms their ability to continue pushing against you
• Ego-less manifestation and how to be okay with desiring and attracting things like lots of money or beautiful women from a state of pure appreciation, without the ego running the show

Ego-less Law of Attraction

The last one was particularly entertaining. After we finished talking about the whole enlightenment thing, he intuitively somehow picked up on my desire to harmonize enlightenment with the Law of Attraction and how to get what you want without having it be a total ego thing.

I really enjoyed his total down-to-earth real-life perspective on living the awakened life as a regular person. For example, he was like, “What do you want? You want a girl with big tits. You’re a guy! You can be honest about your desires. And you want a lot of money so that you don’t have to work and can enjoy yourself.” This totally caught me off guard and had me cracking up. It’s SO my style and so bang on with respect to  my personality! Wonderfully irreverent, so not conforming to any limiting box called “proper, polite, spiritual person” or any of that silliness… Just REAL.

Now here’s the cool part: I shared with him what I wanted and he asked me to visualize that and feel what it felt like. I said it felt “expansive, open-hearted, and liberated.” He asked me how that energy felt and I responded that it felt “amazing.” He caught that word as it was a special word to me, not just loving or good, but *amazing.*

Whatever you want, give that to the world. So if deep down I want to feel amazing, and the money and the girlfriend would be ways for me to feel that, my job would thus be to give the world *amazing* energy. See others as amazing. See the world as amazing. Be the energy of amazing. Really be that and radiate it into the world. It is by being that energy that I would attract all of that which, to me, would feel amazing. So simple!! That is one of my unique gifts. That is what I’m here to share with the world. By looking at my desires (what I want) in this way, I can discover what I would love to give to this world. This really is the deeper purpose to the law of attraction.

Sessions with Matt

The discussion with Matt was beyond excellent. He has an amazing ability to zero in on exactly what you need to hear, as if he was quite literally your best friend. It’s amazing to listen to him speak and then remember that many of the things he says, there’s no logical way for him to know. It’s his intuition in action, and it’s laser targeted.

I also enjoyed feeling his energy in the transmission. The energy and presence is perhaps even more powerful than the words themselves, as great as the words are. It is SO helpful to have someone who has been where you’ve been and can see what you aren’t seeing to help you along the way. In my opinion, it is perhaps one of the greatest gifts you can give yourself. He’s so real in his teachings, not lost in space with esoteric spiritual teachings or anything, but very down to earth.

www.youtube.com/watch?v=Us95WX3Ry5I

If you’re interested in having some guidance with your own awakening, I HIGHLY(!!) recommend scheduling a session with Matt. Information about his sessions are available here.

About Matt

Matt Kahn, is a spiritual teacher and intuitive healer who invites seekers of all faiths, to discover their true divine nature.

Since an out-of-body experience at the age of 8, and profound awakenings at the ages of 18 and 28, Matt began waking up from the dream of reality to realize true divine nature. Now as a spiritual teacher, Matt delivers peaceful, loving teachings to all who are eager to expand and uplift their state of consciousness.

Matt is an awakened master with an uncanny ability to offer direct, and accurate messages that speak directly to the soul. The energies realign your awareness with the dimension of the soul. Through this work, you are able to easy live in direct connection with the soul, dissolving any barriers in mind and body, and eradicating the patterns of human suffering in your life. The intention of this work is to fully allow the soul to blossom into expression, through your unique personal experience — transforming the world around you into a reality of divine grace, infinite abundance, and joyful harmony.

Many spiritual seekers have experienced profound healings, and have awakened to their true nature through his timeless insights and peaceful presence. His teachings are often compared to a unique blend of Eckhart Tolle, the great Indian sage Papaji, and the Buddha.

His teachings, whether verbal or written, are delivered through a transmission of presence that serves to rebalance both hemispheres of the brain, while expanding and uplifting one’s consciousness.

Matt’s unique, compassionate approach blends timeless wisdom and the gifts of expanded awareness, with a style that deeply resonates in the modern world. He has been an advisor to celebrities, corporate executives, as well as an inspirational teacher to other psychics and healers worldwide.

In addition to providing individual healing sessions when his schedule allows, personal retreat programs, and his “Road to Realization” program, Matt travels around the world with his partner, imagery guide, and sound healer Julie Dittmar. Together, they lead presentations and retreats that invite human consciousness into the joy of peaceful existence.

For session bookings, media inquiries for interviews, or event bookings, please call the Seattle office at (253) 639-0770.

You can check out his YouTube videos online, follow him on Twitter at @TrueNature, and visit his website at www.TrueDivineNature.com.

Thank you Matt! So much appreciation!!

Today we’re going to do a video post on the topic of learning to discern between the Intuition and the Mind.

www.youtube.com/watch?v=6QczLIT4Mv8

www.youtube.com/watch?v=i2g39AsS5os

What do the differences feel like in your experience?

What have your results been in following what feels like your intuition vs. what feels like your mind?

Anyone can read a book on non-duality and begin talking like an enlightened person.

“It’s all an illusion. None of this is real.”

“There is no me. It’s all the One doing everything.”

“I am All That Is.”

“Love is all there is.”

and that’s all well and good. It’s a great start. It may begin breaking down old ways of seeing the world, sure. But is this it? Are we limited to just knowing the words and going through the motions? There’s gotta be something more. People who’ve woken up don’t need to learn the language of non-duality. There is a deeper wisdom available which allows them to see Reality clearly as it is.

So what’s the dealio here? How does this work?

Accessing Deeper Wisdom

It seems that there are a great many roles we can play and a variety of styles of relationship that we can have relative to wisdom here in this world of form.

For some people, their path is to have all their wisdom come from within. They weren’t really spiritual or anything, but they went through their own spontaneous awakenings and the realizations all came accordingly. Eckhart Tolle, Byron Katie, and Ramana Maharshi are a few such people.

Then you have people who devoted themselves to various spiritual practices including meditation and whatnot, seeking the wisdom and advice of gurus and sages who have come before. Examples here would include Adyashanti, Gangaji, and Nisargadatta Maharaj.

There’s also people who channel wisdom from other beings by basically allowing their personality to step aside while another presence kind of “steps in” to their body like a new pair of pants. Examples here include Esther Hicks channeling Abraham, Darryl Anka channeling Bashar, and Jane Roberts channeling Seth.

You’ve also got people who sorta channel, but not really. They can effectively talk to God at any time while being fully present in their body and have a dialogue with God within. Examples here include Neale Donald Walsch who wrote Conversations with God and Marie Levit who wrote Healing God.

This lifestream (this Ariel thing here) would fall in the second category listed above including Adya and all. The way it works here, I allow the mind to go relatively quiet and let the words just flow through me, filtering what’s said as little as possible. When I’m “off,” it feels like words come from the struggle and confusion of my egoic mind. But when I’m “on,” it feels like words just flow from silence… from nowhere really. Just.. here. Maybe it’s the energy of my soul, of consciousness, of intuition, of my inner guru or buddhi… I don’t really know, but whatever you wanna call it, there’s a a deeper source of wisdom within.

These are but a few of the many many ways that All That Is has of accessing its wisdom. Something that all these ways have in common is that the beings are able to reach beyond the mind, accessing deeper aspects of consciousness in a variety of ways. They are not limiting themselves purely to the intellect, beliefs, or logic.

Coming from Just Your Mind

One thing that irritated me for the longest time (and admittedly still does at times because I too am still working through seeing how deeply the mind’s roots can ensnare consciousness) was to see people blindly buying into ideas that some famous guru or whatever had said. It’s funny to see people’s entire vocabularies change as they basically become a sort of clone of their guru. Perhaps they even start selling products based on ideas they’ve collected. They may act as cheerleaders promoting and marketing their favorite guru. The words may resonate with a deeper part of them, sure, but the fact of the matter is they actually have no idea if what’s being said is even true. The words have little to no bearing on one’s direct experience or way of perceiving the world.

Isn’t it interesting that whatever it is that we believe, there’s probably people on the planet who believe, just as strongly, the exact opposite to be true? In fact, they believe it so strongly, they may even go to war with you over these beliefs. Such is the power of the mind. There’s nothing literally wrong happening here. It’s just the nature of how our minds operate by design.

Just looking over the course of human history we can see the effects of limiting ourselves to and subsequently defending our treasured beliefs.

This is the thing about trying to come to know spiritual truth via the mind. It just doesn’t work. Really.. I’ve tried too…

Believe nothing, no matter where you read it, or who said it, no matter if I have said it, unless it agrees with your own reason and your own common sense.

-Buddha

It seems to be soooo common to see people quoting others when really they actually have no idea whatsoever whether or not what’s being said is actually true. (Props to you if you caught the humorous irony of me using a quote to talk about not relying on quotes.)

People claim that it’s somehow magically all one, yet they experience nothing but separation.

To me, this is a violation of integrity. To put it mildly, you’re bullshitting yourself.

This isn’t to say that I’m against saying things like “We’re all one” if you’ve never experienced oneness. To take one of many examples, from a purely practical standpoint, seemingly separate individuals can create much better results when coming from a place of family-like unity and cooperation than they ever could competing with one another. Whether or not you’ve seen directly that it’s all one, you can still take advantage of this in your own life now. In this way, paradigms that come from learned beliefs still can contain applicable value.

That said, their value goes only to a certain limit. There is eventually a point where the belief just isn’t enough. It may very well be for a while. It may be enough for lifetimes even.

But eventually, and you’ll know when the time is right for you, buying into a belief system of oneness or whatever else is no longer satisfying. You want to taste the real thing, not just talk about it and read about it and hear about it. Each person in their own perfect time.

From Believing to Knowing

It is when this threshold is reached that we are ready to transition from believing to knowing.

It is at this point that we may begin some serious investigation into our minds, exploring even our most treasured beliefs and seeing if they stand up to inquiry.

Byron Katie likes to to have you bring up your beliefs and ideas and then ask yourself, “Is this true? Can you absolutely know that it’s true?”

We can get really fundamental here.

You are a human being. You are God. Everything is one. You are a spiritual seeker. You are the creator of your reality. The sky is blue. The earth is round. 1+1=2. The mind has the capacity to know anything at all. The thoughts you think are your thoughts.

What beliefs seem so totally obvious that you wouldn’t bother to question them?

Question them.

Cut the crap. Recognize the false as false and quit buying into your mind’s illusions. We had mistakenly positioned our minds as the one who calls the shots. “I know best,” says the mind. When you quit depending upon your mind for answers, it will start to fall away as it loses its place as “the source of wisdom.”

In its space will remain, well, nothing. Emptiness. Pure being. Consciousness itself. It is from this emptiness that true wisdom arises. This is the inner guru. As Davidya explains, “There is also the idea that when we know nothing, everything will be known. (laughs) This is because all concepts we hold onto are barriers to being. As we release the grip of more and more of our mythos, we awaken to what is true.”

But don’t take my word for it.. or his! You can even take that up for inquiry. Do you know what anything that has been said here is true? Find out for yourself.

We can all be a parrot for a while. Eventually, however, we’ve had our fill of that game and enough is enough. It’s time for something deeper, something more raw and pure.

This wisdom within is available to us all. If you’re ready, the invitation is to begin reaching beyond your mind.

The above listed way is just one of many ways to do so. How do you access your own inner wisdom?

You guys and gals are all so beautiful. Not only are you sweet spirits and open-hearted beings, but you also already contain all the wisdom you need to make it through this world.

I’d like to acknowledge one of the readers of this blog, Binnoy, who’s been asking lots of deep questions in the comments section of this blog and then turned within to find the answers that already lie within.

Check out this comment for a perfect example of someone looking within and finding what’s already available here and now.

We all have the ability to turn within and awaken our inner wisdom. With every question we ask always comes an answer ready to be realized within. It’s two sides of the same coin. If you can ask the question, you already know the answer, otherwise the answer wouldn’t have inspired the question to draw forth the answer from within you in the first place.

None of us NEED external guides such as books, teachers, and so on, but those tools may certainly serve to remind us of what we already know within (which is why the answers resonate with us). As we learn to trust ourselves more and more and turn to our inner knowingness instead of stopping at just our guesses and beliefs, we find that we are all a lot more wise than we realized.

You could even say we’re as wise as God!

How To Awaken Your Inner Wisdom

So how does one do this?

The key thing is to set aside the conscious mind and allow the inner knowingness to flow. The answers that come, you may not know how you know or why you know. You just know. It’s as simple as that.

This is one of the things I do when writing this blog. I just relax and allow myself to start writing. It’s a stream of consciousness. When I don’t know an answer, I’ll allow my thoughts to go quiet within and just start writing. What comes forth may seem incredible even to my own mind! It’s learning to tap into the knowingness that goes far beyond what the intellect has learned thus far in this lifetime.

We all have this ability. We’re born with it. It’s just another part of our selves that we have access to. You have access to your thoughts. You have access to you breath. You have access to your lungs. It’s just learning how to tap into that aspect of yourself consciously.

How Do YOU Access Your Inner Wisdom?

We all have this ability and I’m sure you have done this many times in your life, whether you realize it or not. Some of you may even be masters at this already.

How do you access your inner knowingness? What suggestions and advice do you have for those who are ready to enhance their ability to tap into their innate knowingness?

Share your wisdom, if it feels right to you.

Hey guys, today I would like to share with you a discussion on intuition, what it is, and how to better use it to benefit our lives. Sharing her wisdom with us today is Akemi Gaines, the spiritual coach at Yes to Me – Spiritual Healing and Growth for Greater Success.

She has the cool ability to read people’s soul records (often called Akashic Records) and clear the energetic blocks and restrictions that limit her clients’ abilities to live life fully.  Bringing together her insights on how the intuition works, she just launched her new program on intuition development.

I had a number of questions about intuition itself, so she and I came together to share and bring forth these understandings.

I am very excited to dive into the topic of intuition because it’s such a great way of learning to act in the moment and operate from a place of knowingness beyond the mind, deeper than anything the limited intellect could possibly know. It’s like a higher level of being in this world, part of the next stage in human evolution.

And so with no further ado, let’s jump right into it!

Ariel:

Hey Akemi, thank you for doing this interview. I’m so glad you’re here and am looking forward to learn from you as you share your gifts with us.

Akemi:

I am honored to be here at your beautiful website.  And developing intuition is such a helpful skill that I feel passionate about.  As you just said, we can make better informed decisions by developing intuition.  It can improve your life so much in so many ways.

Intuition vs. Imagination

Ariel:

Absolutely! So diving right in, one of my biggest questions about intuition that I want to address right from the start is how to differentiate between a genuine intuitive “hit” and just some random thought or feeling that arises. How can we tell what’s real and what we’re just making up?

Akemi:

Gee, you get right to the point, don’t you, Ariel ^_^  That is an excellent question and is the core of my new program of intuition development.  Intuition and imagination can seem very similar because intuitive hit comes through the same channel with imagination.

However, there are differences.  For one, if you get an idea or understanding that just doesn’t seem to belong to you, that is beyond your regular level of comprehension, that is intuition.  Also intuition comes straightforward and usually lightly (with the exception when your or someone’s life is in danger).  Your own ego’s thinking, on the other hand, comes with the weight of agenda.  It feels manipulative and it often raises negative feeling.

Having said this, you need to learn the difference through your own experiences.  It’s not like you memorize the checklist of how to identify intuition and be done with it.  You want to learn experientially how intuition feels within you.  This is why developing intuition in everyday life is critical.  Also this is why my new program takes six sessions of one-on-one coaching.

How To Detect Intuition

Ariel:

For me, intuition typically feels like a feeling or a nonverbal knowingness, neither of which are very concrete. Are these the forms it always comes in or are there other ways too I’m not paying attention to?

Akemi:

There are four main channels we receive intuitions.  They are:

• claircognizance (immediate knowing)
• clairsentience (physical sensations, “gut feelings”)
• clairaudience (non-physical sounds)
• clairvoyance (non-physical images)

Each person has different skill level in each communication path.  Many people are good at claircognizance or clairsentience, like yourself.  There is nothing wrong about that.

I think there are six steps in intuition development:

1. Opening up to intuition and asking for intuitive messages
2. Receiving intuition
3. Recognizing intuition as intuition
4. Trusting your recognition of intuition
5. Taking action based on your intuition
6. Reviewing the results of your action to fine tune this process

Each step is essential and by practicing all the steps, you can learn how to use intuition in your life with confidence.

Where Intuitive Insights Come From

Ariel:

I love your point about reviewing the results of your actions. It sounds like that will also help you build confidence and learn to trust the information that arrives intuitively.

When we do receive an intuitive insight, where does that information come from? Who knows the information in the first place and how do they know?

Akemi:

My definition of intuition is intuition is the messages we receive from our Higher Self and Spirit Guides.  Our Higher Self and Spirit Guides are in the spiritual plane, that is a higher dimension than this three dimensional physical plane we live in.  So they have better perspectives than we do.  They can see beyond the limitations of time and space.

Moreover, our Spirit Guides are more evolved than us, so they know better.

So I’m calling my new program “Spirit Guides Coaching“.  It’s not me who coaches, however – it’s the client’s own Spirit Guides, and I mediate the communication.

How Intuition Works

Ariel:

If you could break down how the whole system works, to the best of your knowledge, of how information is communicated between our Higher Self, our Spirit Guides, our mind, and so on, how would you describe the process?

Akemi:

Your Spirit Guides pass their messages to your Higher Self, which is your spiritual consciousness.  Some people are pretty aware of the presence of their Spirit Guides, while others may think their Higher Self just got the messages out of nowhere.  In any case, the message can go from there to either to your subconscious mind or conscious mind, or both.

If your conscious mind is closed to the intuitive messages, you may receive the message only in subconscious mind.  In that case, the first attempt in developing intuition is to become aware what the subconscious is getting, and also to open up your conscious mind.

Synchronicity

Ariel:

Ah, that’s cool to hear that information can still come in subconsciously, and that we don’t miss out completely on all the intuitive goodies if we’re not paying attention consciously.

How does intuition relate to synchronicity?

Akemi:

Interesting question! I think synchronicity is just another play our Spirit Guides participate to help us around.

Think about it from their perspective.  The Spirit Guides on your inner circle work exclusively for you.  They care for you, and their own further evolution depends on how effectively they work for you. So they send out their messages as intuition.  “Come this way! You’ll learn your chosen life lesson faster in this path.”  “Uh-oh. Don’t write off that idea.”

Further, they work so hard to cause synchronicity as a way to get your attention.  They don’t like ignored just because they are invisible (to most people).

When my client start taking my Spirit Guides Coaching, they often see more synchronicities in their life.  Their Spirit Guides are so happy and excited that you are finally paying attention to them that they get a bit showy.  Just another benefit of taking my program.

Trusting Intuition

Ariel:

Let’s say our intuition is telling us to move in a certain direction, but our mind is simultaneously feeling fearful or hesitant to move in that direction and so we begin doubting whether or not that intuitive insight was actually our intuition at all. As an outside observer, following our intuition may seem like the obvious logical choice, but in the moment the emotion may feel overpowering and dominant. How can we best deal with conflicting emotion “in the heat of the battle” so that we can best listen to our intuition when we need it most?

Akemi:

You just described the common scenario your ego plays so that you keep listening to him, not your Spirit Guides, or your intuition.  Second guessing intuition is basically about killing your intuition. Many people do this, and consequently stay stuck in their life for a long time.

One way to handle this situation is to start small.  Don’t wait until you need to make the big life-altering decision to develop your intuition.  Start now and use your intuition on small things in your daily life.  Preferably with a skilled and experienced coach – like me ^_^   Then, as I described earlier, review how taking action based on your intuition is working for you.  This builds confidence, and you can start using intuition on bigger issues.

Intuition is Subtle

Ariel:

Wouldn’t it be helpful if our intuition was more obvious? I mean, if we were going to come to earth and bring guidance with us, wouldn’t it make sense to make the signals clear? It’s not like our free will would be completely compromised if our intuition was a little louder and more obvious.

Akemi:

Oh, it’s not clear and obvious to you?  Just joking.

You just made a great point about the potential of our free will being compromised by “clear, obvious” intuition.  If your intuition came as a loud voice of God with a movie like glorious white light, would you act on your intuition?  Of course!  You’d be stupid not to.  So your free will is indeed compromised in this case.  Which is no good – we are here to create our life with our free will and power.

At the same time, we are not born all alone without spiritual helpers (Spirit Guides) and the way to communicate with them.  God is not that cruel.  We are supposed to have good intuition so that we can navigate through this life well.

My intention for the new intuition development program is to help people recognize their natural ability to communicate with their Spirit Guides so that they can make better decisions fast and be comfortable acting on those decisions based on intuition.  Life will be so much easier with this skill.

How Akemi Uses Her Intuition

Ariel:

When you are looking for answers as far as what to do in your own life, Akemi, what do you do and how do you do it?

Akemi:

In addition to my as-needed continuous communication with my Spirit Guides, I do weekly check in with them.  I bring my own agenda and requests for my life, hold a meeting with my Spirit Guides, listen to what they have to say, jot down their suggested action plans.

If that sounds too “psychic” or professional . . . okay, in a more layperson’s term, I listen to my inner voice.  I do this as I take a walk, or relax at Starbucks, or when I relax on the couch.  I also meditate daily to keep my mind clean and calm.

Following Your Intuition

Ariel:

Speaking of meditation, are there any other important points you’d like to bring up that we haven’t discussed yet, but you feel would be very helpful to address?

Akemi:

I know opening up to intuition can be scary.  It’s not something you learn at school nor something recommended by the public healthcare system. You might feel “weird.”  You might feel nobody would understand you.  And the intuitive messages you get might surprise you.

But it’s okay.  Actually, it’s so much better than being stuck in your life, caught up between the fear your ego is fielding to you and your soul’s desire to grow further.

There are people who spend years saying something like, “Well, I want to do this . . . I feel intuitively attracted to this path . . . oh, but it’s different from what I’ve been doing . . . I’m scared.”  Get this – being stuck for years!  If they can just learn what intuition is and step by step master how to trust their intuition, that kind of waste can be saved.

Intuition can help you.  Tremendously.  You just need to open up and trust your intuition.

Thank you, Ariel, for having me here.  If someone has any questions, please ask in the comment.  I will be checking back to answer them.

Ariel:

Thank you! It’s such a treat to hear from you and thank you for taking the time to extend to us a helping of your wisdom and experience. I appreciate you for being yourself and staying true to your inner calling.

Namaste.

About Akemi Gaines:

If you enjoyed this interview, why not learn more about her intuition development program and spiritual development in general at Akemi’s blog, Yes to Me?  You can subscribe (free) here.  Also, check out her Akashic Record Reading.

Question:

Hi Ariel,

I was just wondering about this. I was fine with my understanding of non-attachment until this particular idea came and I’ve now confused myself… 

I assume that the whole idea of incarnating is to grow and evolve and express your true essence.

And if we are not challenged, we have no impetus to grow.

So if we are truly operating from the Higher Self, making the perfect choices, and being detached from the outcomes, how does growth happen???

Maybe from a non-dual perspective it probably doesn’t matter, but it’s not clear why…

Your ideas on this would be appreciated. 

Blessings

B.

My Response:

Great question. So if our intuition is constantly guiding us, how does growth happen?

Effortlessly. At its own perfect pace.

You see, there comes to point whereby people find that using their own free will will never actually bring them happiness and lasting fulfillment, no matter how hard they try.

www.youtube.com/watch?v=lv9ggJiNFz4

With the surrender of the personal will, the body moving, consciousness evolving, choices being made… all of that stuff happens seemingly on its own. In fact, it is only by truly letting go of the illusion of free will that you can be guided by spiritual (God’s) will.

A river has no trouble deciding if it should flow to the left or to the right of a boulder. It flows effortlessly, without thought.

We all have an inner voice, a silent still voice, that always knows what’s best to do. When we come totally from that voice without needing the mind’s second opinion, life seems to operate from a state of flow at its own perfect time. You “just know” the right choices to make.

The voice is NOT separate from you. That voice literally IS another aspect of you, just like the mind or the body. The voice IS you. It’s not some God “out there” somewhere.

Awakening into this experience and letting go of the illusion of free will does not mean that you become a bump on a log, a useless sack of meat and bones.

Quite the opposite in fact.

Surrendering to God’s Will

Traditionally we’ve been taught that we need to control situations. Letting go is seen as the equivalent of giving up. It’s seen as a tragedy, something that brings about a sense of loss and danger.

When people hit rock bottom and realize they can’t overcome an addiction, they realize that they can NOT of their own free will overcome the addiction. They finally come to accept this and surrender. They let go of the illusion of control.

The Twelve Step Program has proven itself to be a very powerful process. Let’s take a look at exactly why this is by taking a look at the first 3 steps, as published by Alcoholics Anonymous.

1. We admitted we were powerless over alcohol—that our lives had become unmanageable.
2. Came to believe that a Power greater than ourselves could restore us to sanity.
3. Made a decision to turn our will and our lives over to the care of God as we understood Him.

It is only then that we can truly allow a power greater than ourselves to take over and help us out. It is through spiritual will that addictions are overcome, that life happens synchronistically and in a state of flow, that there is something to actually TRUST when one says, “I trust the universe to supply my abundance and prosperity.”

The bit I’m unclear on, and you mentioned the very words, is “free will”. I have assumed that through the exercise of personal free will, we make decisions which shape our destiny to bring us growth experiences.

We do… until we don’t. You see, the illusion of free will as we know it, just like all other dualistic illusions, only exist as a reality when there is a separate individual to have the will in the first place. It is by taking advantage of personal will that the individual’s consciousness raises.

Upon awakening, there is only the Will of Life itself, which we can refer to as God’s Will or Spiritual Will.

www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZhlOZDxgmwY

The Law of Attraction is a perfect example of how to use your own personal free will to experience growth and evolution. The same applies to goals, affirmations, and all the other self-improvement stuff we’re inundated with.

There’s nothing wrong with it. It’s just how an illusory ‘self’ operates in this world and we do make our own decisions with our own free will to further our own personal growth. It is a necessary part of the process. This is how the illusory “you” operates at a certain level.

Once awakening happens (NOT when an individual awakens. That doesn’t happen), all aspects of the self are seen to be totally invalid and absurd. The mind and ego still exist, at least at first in my experience, but the words and beliefs that exist are utterly meaningless, invalid. Thus, the personal will and personal desires don’t exist as a valid reality because there is only the will of the One.

As my good friend Mike Elias said,

We only have free will when we consider ourselves separate from the One. In that case, it is our illusory individual free will flowing either with or against the flow of the One. When we surrender our personal will, the will of the One takes over and the choices are made by the totality instead of the experiencer of the body.

Mike puts it perfectly.

One thing that I recently realized about this is that flowing with the river is not only flowing in the same direction as the river, but also at the SAME PACE with the river. You don’t try to hurry your way through life or make anything happen ahead of schedule. There is only the flow of the river itself, no being in the river floating with the river.

It is a complete and total abidance with Life itself as it is, Now.

Nature does not hurry, yet everything is accomplished.

Experientially, it literally feels like everything happens perfectly on its own. There’s no thought about doing anything that is the driving force of our actions. It’s more like an inner knowingness of what is happening.

It feels like being the very river of life itself, the flow of the universe in its entirety.

Externally it may look like a person is doing much the same as anyone else, but “internally” (which is flawed because there is no internal or external), it just feels like there is only the experience of the flow of Life itself, displaying the perfection of Life in every moment.

Really, the point I don’t understand is “the illusion of free will”. I assumed it was the exercise of the lower will when we are disconnected from the Higher Self, or God. Some systems aim to align the personal will with the Divine will, so you “swim with the current” rather than against it.

It can be looked at that way from the perspective of separation and it is definitely a valid perspective.

As above, so below. As below, so above.

A higher point of view presents the recognition that these are really One and the same.

Instead of trying to align yourself with the river, BECOME the river itself!

The way you become the river is by letting go of all mental beliefs in and identifications with any separate being.

It’s impossible to be disconnected from God’s will. It’s only possible to not listen to it, to push against it, or try and grab it towards you, at least from the perspective of the of the ego.

The ego is always trying to play God, to control Life. That’s exactly what it does.

Life will flow perfectly when you stop trying to control it and allow it to do its thing, as you have probably noticed in certain situations.

You, too, will always “just know” what to do because you are the very flow of Life itself. It is not separate to you, happening to you, or being observed by you. The “you” doesn’t exist.

Experientially, there is ONLY the flow of Life, and an attempt to resist it.

God’s will is not separate from your will, for you ARE God. I recognize that on some level there is the fear that God’s will will guide you to doing something you don’t really want to do. That’s just a fear and has no basis in Reality.

The idea is that when you become whole, when you realize who you TRULY are, decision making still happens, but decisions become much easier because they are being made from a higher aspect of yourself. Experientially we could say that it feels like life just naturally continues to fall perfectly into place because decision making “just happens” perfectly.

Life itself then becomes an expression of the flow of perfection.

Thanks for your question.