When I meet people I am excited to know what magic they experience in life.
I am excited to share essential experiences.
I am excited to feel what has moved them to a state of wonder.
When theories or beliefs are presented as conversation I am left empty having hoped for essence.
We have all learned through standing on the shoulders of those before us.
Teachers, guides and mentors are important sources of wisdom. Religious traditions and spiritual systems are equally enlightening. These methodologies detail habits of perception, thought and behaviour which can ease our way and deepen our experience. I have valued these methodologies through-out my life.
When is it time to insist on more?
When we follow a system or someone, sometimes that’s all we do.
We just follow!
We follow prescribed thoughts. We accept an entire body of thoughts and beliefs.
We make these beliefs, thoughts and feelings our own.
Initially this shift can be profoundly useful.
We experiment with perspectives.
We experiment with behaviour.
New understanding likely emerges.
Life is easier to navigate. There are moments of insight.
Mind and Body
In many ways our mind is like a computer. It has its own template or system. The mind-body-system has a tendency, and a specific bias, to filter out experience, thought and insights that are not in accord with the framework of the system we have chosen to live our lives. When we believe a given set of beliefs the mind sorts incoming experience into what fits and what does not fit. What doesn’t fit is ignored or named as ‘other’.
The result of deeply engrained mental belief systems is we stop experiencing direct insight, direct knowing.
There comes a point when following a tradition or another’s thoughts, accepting only these insights, even if they seem profound, limits us.
Each of our human lenses is slightly different. The way we see, think and feel is impacted by our unique lens.
To experience our own lens and our own form of knowing we move out of thought and we move out of thinking we ‘know’. This movement opens the door to direct experience.
What happens with Direct Experience?
There is a profound joy and a specific release of energy when we experience an insight for ourselves. The release of energy has a feeling of pure creative radiance.
If we accept the perspectives and stories of others, and leave it there, we forgo the direct experience of creative energy birthing through us.
Direct experience has a permanent impact. It changes us at a cellular level. We know from the inside out, not the outside in.
Each of us has benefitted from way-finders in our lives. And yet for each of us there comes a time when it is profoundly useful to draw on the principles we’ve learned and also hold space open for something profoundly new – direct experiences and insight that may even differ from excepted norms of science, theology and mysticism.
Great leaders, way-showers and scientists insisted on pushing beyond the accepted.
Historically it is the people who have continued to hold space for direct insights that bring new ideas, energies and proofs to our world. These individuals, whom we venerate, learned from others. They also continued to seek a greater understanding of truth.
Take a look at the books you have on your shelf.
Are the books from people who have gone beyond the confines of their tradition at the time? Were often rejected? Yet did they bring new perceptions and perspective to our world? My shelf has books from multiple disciplines. Each of the authors cultivated inner terrain beyond existing collective consciousness.
Deep discovery, deep scientific questions and new ways of understanding, experiencing and interpreting this human experience, come from opening beyond the walls of the accepted collective wisdom.
We ‘know nothing’ as we ask to see something new. We rest inwardly on the experiences of our life without letting experience limit us.
When is it most appropriate to step into newness?
The time for this work is after a solid foundation is established.
Maturity is needed.
In the work I do, I love holding space open for people to step into the habit of looking for their own insights; a habit of experiencing directly the wonder of our planet. It is exciting to feel new ideas birthing.