Instinct

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 WINTER 2013 ~ LIVING AS BEINGS

A Two-Thousand-Year-Old Baobob Tree at Dawn

A Two-Thousand-Year-Old Baobob Tree at Dawn

What if the Mayans were predicting, not the end of the world, but an end to the way we live our lives?

I’ve long been awed by the number of people in the last fifty years who’ve been seeking a spiritual path and practice. Surely, this inner migration is amazing. Something has been drawing us beyond the confines of thought toward a new way of being. So when a friend’s New Year’s greeting began, “Happy New Era!” it seemed the Moment to say, “It’s Time.”

If we were to step up to that challenge, to take responsibility for entering the New Era in each moment and in each day, what would that look like? Might it lead toward a new way of being? To a new identity as Being? To speak from Being . . . listen from it . . . live from it? How could we establish ourselves in that new way of life?

What if in each moment, we simply practiced one thing: we came to rest in our own Presence—our own Divinity—and didn’t judge or resist what that moment offered? It would not be easy. But each time we dropped down into our bodies, fully Present to the moment, to ourselves, and to each other—that would be a true letting go. For that moment, the old would pass away. Perhaps, in time, we’d come to realize that we are indeed, Beings—that what had dawned in this New Era is a Living Light—and that Together, we are a Shining. We manifest it, unabashed and unashamed, and pour ourselves out: our lives, our gifts and our passions. Our Light.

Photograph by Anne Hillman

See more in “Taking Root: An Unbroken Intimacy with Life” in the Fall Kosmos Journal

2013 Three Upcoming Retreats:

Toronto area, April 19-21 An Unbroken Intimacy with Life, A Weekend Retreat

Madison WI, 3 or 5-day options: April 23-25 Taking Root ~ A Depth of Intimacy with Life or with additional days, April 25-27, Depth Perception ~ The Sensation of Light

 

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Readers have been sending such wonderful questions.  Here’s one that really helped me to get clearer in my own mind about awareness and its relationship to instinct and intuition, the wisdom of the body:

I’ve been reading Chapter 5 in Awakening the Energies of Love, ‘Mind and It’s Evolution, The Foundations of the Soul’. Where in the three levels of the path to your soul, physical, heart and intellect, do you include instinct/intuition in the physical? Thank you, Nancy

This is a wonderful question, Nancy. Here are a few thoughts that have occurred to me. While your question has to do with which area of self houses instinct/intuition, I’ve had to split them apart to make sense, but really they are only a part of the soul process.

A friend said to me long ago that the more time you spend living and walking the Tao, the more likely you are to have synchronous experiences. I think that holds true for intuition, too. First comes discipline and practice. My experiences of intuition over the years, tell me that it is/and is more than instinct. Surely, Aboriginal lore has long hinted at a root connection to other members and to the earth that goes very deep. Sometimes called the Aboriginal telegraph, it is a way of knowing about something that may be occurring on the far side of the continent of Australia. I would call that an instinct, built into the body’s way of knowing. Intuition itself is often so subtle, we don’t notice it, but it offers a nudge, be it a push a pull, or an emphasis that can take us in a different direction.

But to me, the greater Awareness is larger than instinct, larger than intuition. It is a gift, and comes through the entire instrument that we are ‘our bodies, hearts, minds and soul’ yet this Consciousness is more than all of them, and we will never understand it, nor can we find its location or its source. Awareness like this transcends and incorporates them all. It is infinite, eternal, and has no constraints.