Living the “Intuitive Way”— Embodying Your Soul
mind stops trying
and knows
I pause in my rendition of Me
and am Us
in this moment, all time
here, a sphere of surprising awareness
linking every life on earth
when I know this way, no mistakes
when I act, just joy
when we meet, all heart
and when I stop again:
a tiny Buddha smile
I continue to deepen my understanding of how intuition, in its unitive function, can transform perception and reality, paying attention to as many of its subtle mechanics as I can observe and experience. I’ve become more aware of the shift we are all making, in our various ways and at our own speeds, from an older, linear way of perceiving that uses the logical “egomind,” to a more holographic, direct, inspired way of knowing that relies on intuition as its vehicle. It’s clearer to me every day that we’re undergoing a profound change in our “inner perceptual geometry” — the way we conceptualize and pattern ourselves mentally and energetically. As we restructure our awareness this way, our understanding and the very rules of reality change. And, too, in these past years, I’ve seen many new people drawn to the spiritual path, watched business executives and CEO’s open to how intuition can benefit their organizations, and observed that many longtime seekers are now approaching levels of enlightenment. Evolution is more evident than it’s ever been and the study of intuition is perhaps even more timely.
Intuition and Your Authentic Self
One of the main trends I see is that we are hungering for a deeply real, authentic experience of self. We’re soul-searching as never before, coming closer to the possibility that we actually might become enlightened — and in our lifetime. Books on life purpose and finding ourselves are sailing off the shelves. Underneath it all — the key that makes it possible to have a personal experience of the soul — is intuition. So much comes back to intuition. Intuition allows us — whether we are man or woman — to shift from our linear, busybody, “enterpriser mind” into the softer, more all-knowing, allowing, “feminine mind.” And it is through this nongoal-oriented perception that we become saturated and convinced about our true inner nature and are able, not only to love ourselves, but to BE the love that we are.
Intuition is direct knowing. It is the incredibly effortless perception that connects us via our body to everything in the physical plane, and through our heart to our soul and all other souls — even to the core consciousness of trees, rocks, birds, and toaster ovens. Intuition is immensely useful in the world for practical purposes but where it becomes luminous and priceless is as the vehicle for knowing, becoming, and creating from the soul.
Living “the intuitive way” has had a profound impact on my own identity, as I am guided year by year through the process of soul embodiment by that master teacher consciousness that resides inside every one of us. I think I know who I am, then I’m tripped up and shown that I stopped and described the process too soon. There is always more. And similarly, just when I think I’m clear, another layer of clutter rises from the depths, screaming for attention. It is, in fact, the clarity we achieve that magnetizes our remaining confusion, as well as the next layer of our truth — because above all, the soul wants a totally unobstructed path into and through matter. So I, like you, no doubt, am both more of myself, and less of myself, these days.
If I could talk to each one of you over a casual lunch, I’d want to share some of the insights I’ve received about living “the intuitive way” in today’s internally and externally accelerated times. So, my message now is that there do appear to be some real, effective methods for smoothing your opening process and allowing your soul to “have its way with you.” And then to allow the soul to flow through you into all your expressions, be they your work, spiritual practice, family life, or avocations.
Forgetting What We Know to Know Anew
So much of knowing ourselves as our soul comes down to simply letting go of what is false, dissolving old habits of perception, and the ideas we cling to for security’s sake. I remember having a powerful dream early in my own personal process of ego death and soul birth. In it, I vomit up my heart and as I hold it, beating, in my two cupped hands, it splits down the middle and falls apart. As it lies there helplessly, the beating weakens and slows. I scream for help. Paramedics outside the windows of the house I am in can’t find me. I am panic-stricken. Then, suddenly, in front of me appears an amazing being, a man seven feet tall and blue-black in color. He has long shiny black hair hanging well past his waist and radiates the indigo-black beauty of the night sky. I know instinctively that this black is not that of evil, but represents the essence of the universe, the absorptive healing power of the Divine Mother. His presence is infinitely calming. His eyes, like still, deep lakes at night, glow with the black fire of outer space. He is an Indian brave, a samurai at rest, an exotic messenger from the far reaches.
“I am the Angel of Healing,” he tells me, without speaking aloud. He bends over me and looks into my eyes. I am transported into universes beyond anything I can know or remember and am reassured beyond measure. He is showing me who I am as he takes me into his fathomless eyes and he is talking softly all the while to my scared and scattered mind. Lovingly he wraps his huge long hands around mine, gently reuniting the halves of my broken heart. As the heart knits itself back together, he talks: “This is not your heart, Penney. Did you know this? It belongs to God, and has been given to you on loan. It is God’s force that makes this heart beat and God’s truest impulse that makes this heart love. Give your heart back to God now, and it will once again be whole, and happy, and light as a feather. And God will give you the gift of a full life, and you will give God the gift of living as You.
“Relax your throat, open your mouth, make the long sound of the universe: AHHHHHHH.” And he slips a now-perfect heart back down to its rightful place. With one hand on my chest, he slowly passes the other over my head. The dark, absorbing indigo-black light penetrates skin, bone, brain, and beliefs. “Here, now. Let me help you forget what you know,” he whispers. I sigh, and released from my prison of limited thinking and old memories, free from perceptions that are no longer appropriate for this day, I float in the dark peace of the cosmic mind, fresh and clean, like a baby waiting to be born, and grateful for the chance to know, and to love, anew.
Ever since this profound experience, I have been systematically letting go of what I know, of my attachment to who I think I am, of my linear, logical history — every time I can remember to do it. The more I clear the clutter from my tissues and from the field of my personal energy, the more intuitive I become. These days, this clearing work has taken a more prominent position and serious tone — as though I’ve reached the nitty gritty, bottom-of-the-bucket stuff and something in me wants these last remnants GONE!!
The Intuitive Process Below the Surface
I regularly tune in intuitively to the energy under the surface of ordinary reality to check on the process occurring in the inner realms. When I did this recently, I noticed my body felt both calm and excited at the same time. I always check my body first, as I’ve learned it is a microcosmic representation of the larger environment, and gives me an accurate read of whatever I include inside my “personal bubble,” be it the physical environment or a larger bubble of time. It also turns out that if I’m experiencing it, then many others are too.
Now I sensed a quality of resoluteness, like “I’m prepared and ready for whatever may come,” as well as a stirring of spring fever about a new level of creativity, a new kind of involvement with life that seemed likely to emerge in spite of any big dramas in the world. I was excited because it seemed that “real movement” was at hand, like “the real part” of life was now beginning. Yet I had no concrete conception of what I meant, just a feeling that a “training period” was nearly over and an experience I’ve known but can only refer to in these quote-unquote phrases, was about to occur. Certainly we’ve all been living, learning, growing, creating, and expressing our soul’s purpose all along, but it’s as though there’s been a filmy coating over our view, and we’ve been cleaning the lens for the whole of our life thus far.
Not long before this, life had seemed difficult and compacted and I mainly wanted to hibernate. During that time, a voice in me kept saying, “Just go about life as usual, do what’s necessary, and stay as quiet and as ‘in the flow’ as possible.” My mind would pop up regularly and scream in panic because I wasn’t materializing my reality at the level I was used to, but the other voice was calming and overrode the panic with an unflappable persistence. My mind thought the other voice was really crazy some days — it was SO illogical. I watched many other people going through major changes — making advancements in their careers, moving across country, going back to school, marrying their soulmate. I TRIED to catalyze change in my own life but my will power just banged up against an invisible wall. My life was moving at a pace independent of my mind.
In retrospect, it feels like there was a reorganization going on in my deeper self, perhaps in the circuitry of my subtle bodies. In the absence of distracting hyperactivity, I was drawn to do smaller, more invisible things, like dissolving ideas that were like wet blanket overlays or ones I was unconsciously holding and patterning myself with. These were ideas and pronouncements from people I had defined as authority figures, opinions I had internalized that weren’t actually mine, or even more subtle decisions, “vows,” and “contracts” that limited my range of behavior and life experience.
I dissolved, dissolved, dissolved, and faced the blank space — and often terror — that appeared in the absence of my busy thought habits. I practiced converting the emptiness to an experience of pleasurable open space with room to move and breathe and rest. I allowed the possibility that nothing might ever fill me up again, and practiced not going into grief over this thought.
Don’t Even THINK About It!!
As I turned my inner eye hopefully toward the future to see what might come, my inner voice said, “NO. Don’t look for it. Don’t project ahead. Don’t plan.” Don’t plan??? Are you nuts? “Just engage with what presents itself to you from the unified field. Everything you need will come.” Arrrrgh! “A thought about creating an event may present itself to you, or someone may call, inviting you to do some work. It doesn’t matter whether the source is the internal or external self, the ideas are all coming from the soul, from the Us. Engage with what comes.” But, but, but . . . “And next, you are to keep your attitude and energy field at a frequency that makes you feel the most content, cheerful, enthusiastic, generous, and cooperative.” That’s all? “That’s all. Build faith in this new way of living.”
So I practiced keeping my worry, even my good-natured grumbling, to a minimum while keeping my mind firmly in the moment. I noticed the details of what was within arm’s reach. I took myself up on all my good ideas, and responded positively to phone calls. And indeed, there were a higher than average number of unsolicited offers to do talks and network with new groups. I was witnessing the magic of synchronicity.
This magical connectedness penetrated into subtle realms as well. In a meditation or dream I’d have an insight about my process of growth; the next day a person would visit, speaking about the same themes, mouthing the same phrases, and presenting clues for my next step. I’d be frustrated doing a task at my computer and within hours someone would suggest the solution or a new kind of software that eclipsed my antiquated way of working. I was learning to notice the synchro-mesh way that life functions when you don’t get in the way with immobilizing thoughts. I saw that the prior difficult time had been the beginning of this present-moment-be-in-the-flow practice — when I was teaching myself to do it without realizing what I was doing. Now I was honing the skills of living in the moment and sharing responsibility for the direction of my life with the collective consciousness — which arises from each particle of light, in each atom of the physical plane, in each moment.
So far, my instructions went like this:
• Stay in the moment, don’t project into the future. Keep your intuition open.
• Engage with what comes; everything you need will be provided by the unified field.
• What comes will either look like a thought in your head or an event coming from the world; do what produces the greatest happiness and be happy about what you do.
• Monitor your moods, your internal state; prefer a level of awareness that is closest to your soul frequency and thus allows guidance from your soul to flow to you. Enthusiasm, even mild enthusiasm, cheerfulness, sincerity, innocence, and curiosity work best.
After several months of living this way, the opportunities were definitely showing up, but without much increase in income. I sat back down to have a talk with my inner voice. Was I missing something? I’d been following instructions faithfully.
“The opportunities you receive are filtered through your ‘state,’” my voice informed me. “The first step in improving your state has been to eliminate negative thinking, raise the frequency of your personal energy, and maintain the consistency of higher thoughts. So far, so good. Now you must be able to distinguish between what your mind has been programmed to want and what your soul really wants. You’ve been attracting opportunities that embody the partiality of you being in the middle of this learning process — they’re not the old opportunities that come from what the mind thinks it wants, and not yet what the soul truly desires. This is why life seems ‘sort of good’ and not outrageously fabulous.
“By your state, which is the quality of energy in your personal field, you are giving the greater unified field, which is the collective consciousness of all souls, instructions. You may think you’re asking for opportunities, but actually you are telling the Field what you want and will accept. To know what instructions you’ve been giving to the Field, look at what you already have. So the next step in your practice is:
• Appreciate and use what you have right now; digest it and get all the food value; this is what you told Us you wanted and needed. Nothing new can come until you use what you have.”
I realized how often I was dismissing with the wave of my hand the gratitude others expressed to me or the kind things people did for me. I saw how I wasn’t really stopping to register the successful completions of projects or the underlying usefulness of periods of high intensity busyness or relaxing downtime. I’d create a new experience, manifest a new baubble, then be on to the next thing, not taking the time to sink into the experience that the beautiful necklace or the talk to women entrepreneurs had facilitated for me. I realized pleasure was a big part of the soul’s motive.
I’d complain that I wasn’t busy enough, then remember that the previous week I’d wished fervently for some time to myself. Obediently, the Field had brought me a string of empty-ish days. Instead of treasuring them and using them to deepen my connection with life, my mind would jump ahead and worry that if this continued, I wouldn’t be able to pay the rent. Then the projected lack of money became the new set of instructions I was giving to the Field. And it obediently brought me more scarcity. When I sank into the experience of emptiness and lack of financial flow, and asked what the gift in this was, I understood it did not relate to my self worth at all, nor to the foundering economy. I was showing myself what it felt like to squeeze off the flow, how harboring complaints and anxieties left no room for creativity. I was also showing myself how important it is to allow a “lying fallow time” at the end of long periods of productivity.
So I developed the habit of asking “Why did I, the soul, bring this moment together in just this way?” And I was able to glimpse my greater intent. Sometimes it was the desire to remove judgments and ossified thoughts by bringing them to light. Sometimes it was to direct me into silence, or into my senses or cellular awareness. My inner voice had more to say, however.
· “Learn to be extremely quiet and deeply attentive on a regular basis and often during the day, to listen for the soul’s urges. How do they differ from the mind’s shoulds? Hint: Listen for a difference in tone; notice if there’s tightness — if there is, the idea probably originates with the mind.”
Doing a Reading for Myself
So I practiced using my intuition to discriminate the difference between my various inner directives, making it a priority to choose actions that allowed a greater experience of soul. Then, on my birthday, I got the bright idea to sit down and do a reading for myself — something, in all my years of doing in-depth life readings for others, I’d never attempted. I imagined my body and personality sitting in the chair opposite me and “I” began to talk to “her” out loud, recorder going. I share some of it here, because it feels like The Healing Angel may have returned and might be speaking to you, too.
You hold a contraction in your body, as do most people, that comes from early shocks and disappointments about the extent to which fear makes people cold and hard. By holding it, you unknowingly create a false meaning, or identity, for yourself. This is old thinking, and unnecessary. You are not sad. You are not unloved. You are not invisible. You are not overwhelmed by negativity. And you are not so undeveloped as to be thrown by the blind behavior of others. It’s important now to stop pretending, once and for all, that human fear, human ignorance, and bad behavior are wounding. These things have been here in every lifetime you’ve lived and you’ve always dealt with it. There is a part of the mind that likes to stay in darkness, that clutches at these shocks and holds onto them tightly to keep its small identity alive. The last of this clutching is to be released now. You are to take no more identity from being a wounded person.
In the silence you are being fed. In the silence you are being loved. It is in the silence that everything you think you’re not getting is actually being given and received and enjoyed by all parties involved. To partake of that enjoyment, simply quiet your mind and drop IN. Enter into faith that in this period of quiet and lack of directionality, there is a much richer experience than you have ever had. Seek it, feel it. It is the precursor to the time when many gifts will be given, unbeknownst to your mind at this present time.
So it is time now to be fully available by releasing every contraction, every concave posture in your body. Adjust your posture so your head is up and level, your eyes are open and shiny, your chest is wide, your heart is soft, your feet are on the ground, you’re breathing evenly, your spine is tingling, and you are receiving like a magnet.
You are drawing to you, up out of the field, many things, many people, many molecules, which would respond to the force that you ARE in the world, to the place that you are. As you exist the physical plane, you are a field, and many particles of consciousness want to arise to come visit this place, to discover what it’s like to be physical in a way similar to yours, by matching the resonance. So create an environment and extend it, and welcome others into it, even if the guest be one molecule, or the tiniest fairy or minuscule being. This is the next work — the stabilization of the frequency of that which you are manifesting, which starts with the level of energy you manifest, the kind of body, mind, and emotions you manifest, the kind of house you manifest, the kind of social relationships you manifest.
Watch your reactions now. Every day you react to stimuli, to different people, to colors, to sensations. Allow those to bring you data. What’s being communicated? Allow yourself to choose to change your reaction if you notice you don’t like the first gut reaction you have. If you notice you contract for the wrong reason, take a breath, recenter yourself, bring the stimulation back in again and re-act to it the way you want to. Go deeper, stay open.
When anxieties come, do not hold the waves, but let them impress you briefly, feel the subtle postures they cause you to assume, how the breath changes. Feel the resulting apathy, the anticipation of a negative outcome, the disappointment or readiness for disappointment. And then move your body slightly, as though to shudder mildly, and the posture with its thought habits will be carried away by the ripples in the pond. Return to the vibration of your own field and an aligned posture. Only by holding vibrations that are lower than your own energy do you attract beings who are interested in self-sacrifice, who glory in sacrifice. And these tests are unnecessary and a waste of soul force.
Let yourself forget what you’ve been doing all these years, how you’ve been doing it. You don’t have to remember how things happened to you, how you reacted, what you did that worked or didn’t work. Let all those memories go and float up and out of your tissues, out through the aura. You don’t know if it ever happened now or not, or if it happened to YOU or not. And all the people who were associated with you in those memories, let them go to a different place in the aura and find their own place of floating. You don’t have to hold them or remember anything about them. Be unconcerned. You’ll know what you need to know. Holding personal history takes too much energy. And now, there is a bubble wanting to puff you up and flow out through you. And now, it pops! And you are new. Like a baby, you are new and your eyes are educating you about now, right now.
Rest and be happy in yourself, in your place, in your vibration, and allow it to increase at the rate it wants to, to the level it wants to. There is plenty of space in the place that is you. You can have privacy simply by placing your attention inside your own body. You can have social activity by expanding your aura to include others. It’s in your mind. So move as you feel and want to move, in your own imagination, as you please.
The dammed up waters are now ebbing out onto the long wide flat plain and they are sinking into the earth.
The internal process of experiencing more of our true self and the external acts of creating the stuff of the world from the soul’s genius, are both parts of the same process of evolution. Personal growth is intimately tied to societal innovation, corporate transformation, and career success; the inner and outer can no longer be disconnected. Yes, we need our logical minds to grasp ideas, describe them, and make them conscious and physical, but it is only through intuition that what’s important, our vision and directions, are revealed in the first place.
I can’t emphasize enough the power of “being with” the intuition development process. It is in this way that the process integrates into the fabric of your being, and it is how your intuition will become the fuel for the new you — the you who may be a great visionary thinker, a transformer of outworn systems, a motivator of psychically exhausted workers, or the one who heals with presence and truth, or leads others with love. Perhaps, with open intuition and skillful perception, you will be one of the ones who helps build a new world made of light.
I’ve dreamed of heaven — the full and perfect bliss
That waits the spirit in a larger sphere;
And, looking up, have found enough in this
To realize the rapturous vision here!
— Alice Cary, from Heaven on Earth
www.penneypeirce.com
