Hi Danielle

I like how you phrase the question "How do you know what you do?"

That has been always the basis of my own self-analysis in this adventure, which began in my childhood.

Everything of spiritual nature that I have tried to understand has been based on some event that began within my own consciousness or was initiated by a real event in my life that did not fit the standard explanations.

I remember when I first heard someone trying to explain to me the idea of "coincidence" as an explanation for something that just happened to me.

It occurred to me that we tend to use these words as a form of explanation for the unexplainable.

If you think about it, coincidence, simply states that 2 simultaneous UN-connected events coincided. But it didn't explain the phenomenon, as to how it happened that way. I know I know we have this other wonderful word called "Random" to pick up the slack in the UN-explainable "gap" that exists in the explanation.

But they are all words to fill in the gap where no tangible explanation exists.

That is the problem with theoretical philosophy in the absence of first-hand experience.

You can always string together words and even invent new words to fill in the gap of the UN-known.

In my opinion, the UN-known is not somehow hiding from us. It is always present in our daily existence. We have been trained to ignore much of it, and we have been provided a large library of pre-packaged explanations so that we are in a constant state of "DE-focused" consciousness.

You have spoken of meditation often, and it seems to me that you are probably not influenced by this distraction any more.

Just to clarify, however, I'm talking about things like: - reading the newspaper everyday (Programming the same information into everybody's consciousness, creating the same common denominator of information),

:- Watching TV, where the scene changes every few seconds, causing your consciousness to mimic this behavior, therefore being unable to reach the deeper levels of intuition, causing the individual to depend on explanations from outside of their position of attention and manifestation,

: - Internal Chatter of the mind like a dripping faucet; constantly shifting attention from the reality in front of us to the reality that exists in our imagination.

I started to realize that the starting place for curiosity is to begin to notice the pre-programmed dialog that drapes itself over everything we see and experience.

And to do that, the approach I use is to silence the dialog while fully awake and participating in reality.

You can try it right now where you are sitting.

Keep your eyes open and quiet the mind completely.

If you do it right, you will find that you have also stopped breathing (holding breath) so you have to remember to breath and still maintain the stillness without thinking about your breath.

OK, now look at something, anything.

If you look at a word, you will find your mind reading that word to you, and it is too distracting.

So to reduce that distraction, look at something that has no meaning attached to it.

Keep looking at it but drop any movement in your mind trying to give meaning to that experience.

You will find a tension building up in you

It will build and build and build until finally you will have to let go. And allow the drip... drip... meaning...dialog to resume again.

You will find that you are far more relaxed in the state of mind where there is a constant dialog within you telling you what it is that is happening within you.

Now why is that? How is it that we are so comfortable in the pre-programmed chatter of our own hypnosis?

Who decided that this is what is normal?

What will happen if you try to go about your business participating in life, but refuse to participate in the internal dialog that drapes itself over everything that you experience?

This is my current obsession and because of it, I have stumbled on various sources that reflect that approach as a “Path to Awakening”. You will find that the everyday environment that is around you right now is very mysterious and magical. There are much more coincidences when the pre-packaged dialog is shut-off.

You will suddenly find yourself standing at the point of “how do I know what I do” in the absence of the pre-programmed script of “this is how you do this, and this is how you do this other thing”

You will realize that all these years, what you thought of as your own intuition, have for the most part been actually what you “learned” or what was taught to you.

But with this dialog shut off... the curious mind is still wide awake, still asking questions, and is starved of the usual source of guidance (AKA Chatter, Chatter, Chatter) and now begins to panic (that's when you feel the tension)

If you can survive this panic induced within your mind and still maintain your stillness you will observe that the mind searches for explanation where it can find it, almost like trying to fill the vacuum of meaning that has usually accompanied the incoming data.

What is this incoming data? It is everything that is around you that you experience through your five senses. What I'm talking about here is not meditation in the usual sense where you shut off your five senses. I'm talking about Meditation while fully awake and fully utilizing your 5 senses while being completely silent in your mind.

So where does the mind go to find meaning when you refuse to allow the Chatter, Chatter of Logic to consume your attention?

It seems to reach into intuition to find its frame of reference.

It's not words or feelings. It is the thing that has always been hiding underneath the words and feelings that are usually associated with everything.

It is the energy that you are looking for everywhere and not finding it anywhere.

Our own internal dialog is not allowing us to find it anywhere and everywhere.

And as long as we try to find it by asking questions and questions and more questions we will not find it.

All that we will do instead is try to impress each other by the answers we give each other (that includes this long winded answer as well)

The energy cannot be found by the thinking mind.

Because the thinking mind is a construct of this energy.

I think the purest version of this energy that is available to a human is “intuition”

No though, no words, no feelings, just intuition.

The rest (thoughts, words, feelings) just jump upon this intuition and run with it, constructing our day to day experience.

I think our eventual Awakening will probably happen within intuition, not analytical thought.

I have always asked the question, how does a baby knows how to cry when he/she enters this world? Because this is the first noise he/she makes in their life purpose to announce their presence, and arrival as a human being in our society. How does this baby know that is what he/she is supposed to do? So, I have come to the conclusion it is mostly from within. Let us think about first man, and woman, who did they had to learn from if not from their own spirituality within, because there was no one else for them to compare too. They are the ones that have made it easier for us to learn from their history, and life experience, and to have access to a collection of information we would otherwise not have.

Now I will change my point of view here simply because: since looking at our origin from the past to the present, we are now living in the time of information overload, and it is at our finger tips, we really do not have to do the thinking, and figuring out for ourselves any more, because most likely someone else has already done it for us. Given the fact, that anything you can think of already exist, and you know that for a fact, I would now conclude that we tend to use the information more so from the outside, because we know that the question is already asked, and the answer is already given, and it is easy access for all. Therefore, there is no reason for us to go within for the answers.

But on a more personal level, we always have to use the within to tell us when to wake up in the morning, and what we need to do on a daily basis, and how we should go about doing it, if not we would be lost!

So, in summary I would say that I used both the within, and the outside equally, as per need!

The world is our playground, a canvas on which we paint our ideas. We made this world so that we can learn from it, to exercise our will and creativity, to see if the world agrees with our ideas, and share them with others so that they can learn from them in turn.

Within each of us is a compass, a "felt sense" by which we can identify those ideas that seem worth pursuing. We call this felt sense intuition. We use this intuition to decide what to do next as we pursue our ideas.

The work within primarily involves shaping our beliefs; deciding which beliefs we want to keep, and whether we want to adopt new beliefs. Our beliefs ultimately determine what is possible for us, and how we pursue those possibilities.

I use the net to gain differing aspects and ideas. Then i use inner percetion to filter out the wheat from the chaff.Or more fairly what i consider wheat from chaff.That doesnt make it so just because i think it is.

For example im not a massive believer in the whole Ester/Abraham thing BUT there are things that she says that do resonate with me. Not everything mind,but some things.To be realistic i may not have come across her teaching without the internet and probably wouldnt have studied Trine,Troward or Holmes either.

Ultimately you must decide what you perceive as right from the within ,but with information often gained from the without.

Graham

Before I started researching it was always from within, on my own based on my own experiences. I kind of miss those because then I knew for sure that it was true. Recently, I read different external material and see what rings true with what I have personally experienced in the past.

the truth is inside of us, not hiding but usually under layers of dust.
outside sources prod us to think and can be used to measure against our hunches.
depending on how fine one has tuned their ability to percieve what is going on around them,
sets the direction of dusting.

I get my clues from the outside to help me with my truths on the inside :)

Michael