Intuitive Guidance
by J. Donald Walters
 The
more you seek to be guided by intuition, which is an aspect of
superconsciousness, the greater success you will meet in every undertaking. The
rational mind can only point to probable solutions. Intuition, rooted as it is
in superconsciousness, will supply you with clear answers.
From a superconscious perspective, all life is a unity. From a rational
perspective, life is disunity -- a bewildering jigsaw puzzle, often, with many
pieces that never seem to belong together.
With the constant increase of information nowadays, knowledge is becoming so
complex that no one really knows how to process it anymore. Even with such aids
as computers and databases, people are overwhelmed by all the new facts
bombarding them. They wonder if they can retain control of their lives, when the
sheer flood of information is sweeping their little boats into a whirlpool.
Rapidly losing sight of their moral convictions, they no longer seriously
believe such a thing as wisdom exists.
But the intellect serves a valuable function. A unitive view of life, reined,
but not motivated, by the intellect is the secret of creativity. Creativity,
like life itself, comes with flowing awareness. It can only be channeled by
intelligence. Intelligence, though useful, is subordinate to intuition. That is
why creative people, relying too little on the intellect, are often not adept at
analyzing their own work, or art in general. Professional critics, on the other
hand, relying too much on the intellect, are not often creative themselves.
For the highest creativity, a balance is needed between intellect and
intuition. To live superconsciously is to maximize our abilities in every
department of life. For the rational mind, with its focus on differences, is
essentially problem-oriented. The superconscious, with its broader, more unitive
view, is solution-oriented.
The unitive view is justified objectively in Nature. Every natural problem
has a corresponding solution. American Indians claim that wherever a poisonous
plant grows, its antidote will be growing nearby. In India I was told that in
the tail of a cobra there exists an antidote to the snake's venom. This isn't a
cure I'd care to verify, but my informant claimed that if a person is bitten by
a cobra, he should bite hard on the tip of the cobra's tail and suck on its
antivenom. This claim, valid or not, is certainly based on a valid principle.
Superconscious living means to trust one's life to the flow of a higher
wisdom. Superconsciousness arranges things in ways that we might never imagine.
I've seen this principle at work on countless occasions. Always it has worked
better than any solution I might have provided, myself.
Years ago, in India, I flew to Calcutta from New Delhi. Friends of mine had
promised to meet me at Dum Dum Airport, but as things turned out they were
delayed by heavy traffic and arrived much later. Meanwhile, finding myself at
a loss as to what to do, I stood quietly for a moment and asked the Divine
Mother, "What do You want?"
Now, I should mention that my one regret on coming to Calcutta had been
that I'd been unable to locate the address of a friend of mine, a Dr. Misra,
whom I'd known in America, where he'd been getting his Ph.D. Since then he'd
returned to India, and was living in Bhubaneswar, some two or three hundred
miles south of Calcutta. I'd been hoping to visit him during this time in
India, but now it appeared I'd be unable to do so.
As I paused silently, offering up my predicament to God, there occurred a
dramatic turn of events. An Indian gentleman on his way through the crowd
toward the exit stopped and took a closer look at me. Then he addressed me,
speaking in the manner of his country "Please excuse me, sir, but what is your
good name?" Surprised at the question, I answered him.
"Ah," he responded, delighted. "I thought you must be he! I recognized you
from your photograph. A friend of mine, Dr. Misra, showed it to me after his
return from America."
"Dr. Misra!" I exclaimed in astonishment. "If it's the Dr. Misra I'm
thinking of, he lives in Bhubaneswar."
"It is just of him that I am speaking. As I say, I recognized you from the
photograph he took of you."
"Why, I've been hoping I could see him! Would you be so kind as to give me
his address?"
"There is no need to see him in Bhubaneswar," the gentleman replied. "Dr.
Misra is visiting Calcutta just now. I've flown here just for the purpose of
meeting him myself. Let me take you to him."
And so I was able to see my friend, who also put me up for the night. (A
fortunate extra bonus, as it turned out. I learned later that all the hotels
had been fully booked that night.)
My other friends, whom I'd tried unsuccessfully to contact from the
airport, arrived long after my departure. We got together later, and my
original program was soon "back on track" again.
Now, just think what would have happened had I reacted as most people would
have to such a situation. They'd have dashed about asking questions, making
telephone calls, stirring up a maximum of confusion, and, at last, taking a taxi
to a succession of fully booked hotels. My brief pause to put matters in God's
hands solved my entire dilemma.
I can imagine the analytical mind objecting, "Well, what if that man hadn't
been there? It was only a coincidence that he happened to arrive in Calcutta
just then, and that he happened to notice you. His agenda was a different one
altogether, and had nothing to do with meeting you." My answer would be that, if
that man hadn't happened to come by, something else would have happened. And
even if nothing had happened, I'd still have been in a better frame of mind to
handle the situation than I would have, had I succumbed to worry and confusion.
What I've learned in life is that, if you place matters with complete
trust in God's hands, things always work out for the best. Sometimes all you
gain is the calmness to make the best of what might otherwise seem a bad
situation. That does happen, for many of life's problems are "solved" by simply
changing our outlook. Often, however, the change is objective also. Events turn
out so amazingly well that people later refer to them as miraculous. And yet it
isn't really a question of miracles. It is simply that this is how the
superconscious works: It ties things together. It dissolves difficulties. It
offers practical solutions, where the rational mind sees nothing but problems.
Where people see disunity, the superconscious mind sees the expression of
Oneness in everything. To superconsciousness, everything is related. Not
relative, merely: related. You don't have to be in superconsciousness to
think superconsciously. All you have to do is train your mind to adjust
your thinking to superconscious modes of perception.
Think more unitively, less analytically. Concentrate on finding the
relationships between things; don't dwell at length on the differences. See
others as your own greater Self. They are not alien to you. Look on them as
friends, even if they appear outwardly to be strangers.
Years ago, I received a beautiful demonstration of the practical merits of
this unitive view. It was in Paris, France, and -- as it happened -- on my
birthday. I wanted to attend a concert as a birthday present to myself. I
arrived at the church where the concert was to be held, but found about fifty
people being turned away by an official, with the explanation that there was
no room left.
"Mais c'est mon anniversaire!" I cried out ("But it's my birthday!"). I
couldn't believe I'd be disappointed on this special occasion. "Alors,
monsieur, bon anniversaire! Entrez, s'il vous plait," he replied ("Well in
that case, sir, happy birthday! Please come in."). He opened the door for me.
The main seating area was completely filled, so I was given a seat on a
folding chair behind the altar, where a handful of others were seated already.
We faced an audience, on the other side of us from the orchestra, of about
seven hundred people.
It was a joy-filled occasion. In addition to the beauty of the music, I
felt a sense of expansive love for everyone present.
Later, on the Metro (the French subway), an old woman approached me. "Don't
you remember me?" she inquired. No, I said regretfully, I didn't. Surprised,
she cried, "But I was in the audience in the church this evening!"
How could I have noticed her in that throng? But somehow she'd felt a
connection with me. She went on to confide in me a problem she was having with
her daughter, as though I were a close friend of the family.
See oneness everywhere, and the universe itself will respond to you in kind.
Be solution-oriented, as I said, not problem-oriented. To do that, approach your
problems with perfect confidence that their solution is already there, waiting
to be found. The intellect will try to discourage such faith, whispering,
"Caution! Common sense!" But I've found that strong faith brings better results
than any I could have imagined, myself.
What is particularly needed is to give one's faith the motive force of
willpower and energy. Energy generates magnetism, which attracts the
inspiration.
Can we really attract inspiration at will? Yes indeed! Strong energy, powered
by confidence (which must be rooted in faith; it must not be ego-confidence) can
attract inspirations, opportunities, solutions to problems -- anything.
This is a delicate point for me to clarify, and for others to get clear. For
instance, it isn't a question of wanting anything, personally, but of wanting it
because it is right. It is important to exclude ego-motivation as much as
possible. It's also important that faith not become an excuse for
irresponsibility. To live superconsciously means to cooperate with the
superconscious flow, not to expect that flow to do everything for you.
It's a question of energy in cooperation with faith. You must be wholly
focused on whatever you are doing, without seeing yourself as the doer.
Many highly creative people rise to certain heights of creativity, then find
it impossible to rise any farther. Why? Many of them actually begin, at a
certain point, to lose their creativity. Again, why? Always, it seems to me, the
loss follows an increase of egotism. Their thought "I'm doing it all myself"
blocks the energy-flow to the superconscious, whence they derived their highest
inspiration. The energy then, blocked in the seat of ego in the medulla, is
prevented from flowing on toward the seat of superconsciousness in the Spiritual
Eye.
A number of artists, composers, and other creative people have even become
mentally unbalanced -- enough of them to inspire the popular saying that only a
fine line divides genius from madness. Interestingly, this doesn't seem to have
been so much the case prior to the Romantic Era. With the dawn of Romanticism,
creative artists -- in reaction, probably, to the "soullessness" of the
industrial revolution -- began to be praised for their "exquisite" sensibility.
Look at the nineteenth century. Why did so many artists -- Hugo Wolf,
Nietzsche, van Gogh, Scriabine, to name a few -- lose their sanity? Many others,
though not certifiably insane, gave every evidence of instability. Such
imbalances don't seem to have been so much in evidence previously, when artistic
creativity itself was rendered less homage. It is as though the high energy
required to create a masterpiece, if that energy is blocked by a growing sense
on the artist's part of his own importance in the scheme of things, resulted in
disturbances to the brain.
If you are creating something, or even if you are seeking guidance in
anything that you do, relax the consciousness in the medulla of personal "doership,"
and direct the flow of energy onward to the point between the eyebrows. Keep
your thoughts uplifted while you work. Don't accept an initial inspiration, then
snatch the ball from Higher Guidance and run with it yourself.
The melody of many a song, as just an example, begins with a beautiful first
line, then rapidly loses inspiration. Such a song may achieve fame purely on the
strength of its first line. How much lovelier it might have been, had the
composer not tried to work out the rest of the melody in his mind, but instead
continued to hold his energy up to superconsciousness for further guidance.
Don't let the labor involved in dealing with the mechanics of a creative work
tempt you to relax your grip on superconsciousness.
TUNING IN TO HIGHER GUIDANCE
Whenever you need special guidance but find none forthcoming, try following
these suggestions:
1) Ask for guidance from superconsciousness at the Spiritual Eye.
2) Wait for a response in the heart center. Be completely impartial. Don't
intrude your personal desires into this process. Pray, "Thy will, not mine, be
done."
3) If no guidance comes, propose several alternative solutions at the
Spiritual Eye. See if one of them receives special endorsement in the heart.
4) Guidance often comes only after an idea has been made concrete by setting
it in motion. If, therefore, you receive no answer in meditation, act in
whatever way seems reasonable to you, but continue to listen for guidance in the
heart.
At a certain point, if your direction is right, you will feel the endorsement
you've been seeking. But if your direction is wrong, suddenly you will know it
is wrong. In that case, try something else, until the endorsement comes.
To refuse to act until you receive inner guidance is good only if you can
keep your level of energy and expectation high. For it is high energy and high
expectation that attract guidance. If you must act because you have no other way
of maintaining that level of energy, then go ahead and act. Often, it is better
to act, even in error, than not to act at all.
5) Even if you feel inner guidance, never presume on it. That guidance may
tell you, metaphorically speaking, to go north, but if you cease listening you
may not hear it when, at the next corner, it tells you to turn east.
6) A problem is half solved already once it is stated clearly. In seeking
guidance, form a clear mental picture of what it is you need. Then hold that
picture up to superconsciousness at the point between the eyebrows. People often
struggle for a long time to find the inspiration they want. No time at all is
needed: only sufficient mental clarity, and energy.
Never use the claim of inner guidance as an argument for convincing others to
listen to you. The flow of superconsciousness is always humble, never boastful.
It doesn't cooperate with attitudes that discourage others from seeking their
own inner guidance. To tell a person, "This is what my intuition tells me, so
this is what we must all do," is to say, in effect, "God will speak only through
me, not through anyone else." Such an attitude sooner or later gets its
comeuppance. The divine law does not endorse pride.
SUPERCONSCIOUS ATTITUDES
Every quality that flowers naturally in superconsciousness should be affirmed
by the conscious mind, and transferred by the conscious mind to the
subconscious. Divine joy, for example, is a fruit of deep meditation. A person
of scientific bent might decide to test this truth with a "controlled"
experiment. To prove the reality of superconscious joy, he might determine to be
as grim as possible during meditation. But the way to attune yourself to divine
joy is to hold a joyful attitude, even though the true experience of divine joy
is -- to use Paramhansa Yogananda's words in his poem "Samadhi" -- "beyond
imagination of expectancy."
If you're expecting someone to visit you, you won't wait for him in the
basement. If you're expecting a phone call, you won't drown out the sound of the
telephone by turning on the electric blender. If you keep a grim attitude during
meditation, you won't be prepared for the experience of joy even if it comes to
you. It won't be your grimness, so much, that prevents you from experiencing joy
as your essentially anti-superconscious attitude of skepticism, your resistance
to the inner flow.
Be joyful in meditation. Be peaceful. Bless all the world with your love.
And, even walking down a city street, secretly send divine love and blessings to
everyone you pass. You'll be surprised how many strangers will treat you as a
friend.
This
article was excerpted from:
 Awaken To Superconsciousness
by J.
Donald Walters.
Reprinted with permission of the publisher, Crystal Clarity Publishers. ©2000.
www.crystalclarity.com
Info/Order this book
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About the Author
J.
Donald Walters (Swami Kriyananda) has written over
eighty books and edited two books of Paramhansa Yogananda's which have become well known:
The Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam Explained and a compilation of sayings of the
Master, The Essence of Self-Realization. In 1968 Walters founded Ananda, an intentional
community near Nevada City, California, based on the teachings of Paramhansa
Yogananda. Visit the Ananda website at
http://www.ananda.org
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