(psych central) -- I had a very intriguing experience just the other morning in my usual morning meditation.
Lately, these morning meditations have felt somewhat more like morning wrestling matches as various aspects of me have been duking it out for the honor of having the last word.
With all of us in training to learn how to tune in and follow our vibes, instinct, intuition, whatever you want to call it, we are clearly making progress at differing rates.
My body wants to tune out the rest of me entirely, jettisoning logic, emotion, et al in favor of that old classic – the gut-level hunch.
My mind thinks that is just ridiculous. It favors logic, analysis, sound and rational reasoning in order to weed out “intuition” from all the rest.
My heart swings back and forth between feeling weepy and incensed, open and shut, trusting and intensely fearful about it all….so much change! How will it ever recognize “real” intuition in the midst of it all?
My spirit just sits there patiently, waiting for the rest of them to either get bored and go find something else to do or just call it a truce already.
Underneath all the ruckus, there I sit, attempting to not empty my mind, but rather focus it sufficiently to tune in to our collective highest good.
This is a technique my newest favorite mentor, intuitive author and teacher Sonia Choquette, recommends that we do first thing in the morning and anytime guidance is needed (which is pretty much 24/7 in my particular case).
She says to first breathe in deeply through the nose and out through the mouth using the sound “Aaaah.”
She says this sound – “Aaaah” – is not only a sound the mind finds quieting but is also like giving your spirit a heads-up that the rest of you is heading down into your heart to await further instructions.
This morning, by some miracle, in spite of all the chaos going on inside and around me, I remembered these instructions and commenced to breathing in and out, in and out, in and out – three times just like Sonia tells us to do.
Then something marvelous happened.
My center shifted. Suddenly the mid-point of me was no longer stuck in my head but had somehow drifted right down, oh-so-gently, into my heart.
All was calm. Quiet.
I could hear myself breathing, even over the hum of the window unit a/c, the neighbor’s lawn mower, the other neighbor’s barking dogs…..in and out. In and out. In and out.
Then I quietly prayed in the way Sonia directs and asked for the gift of inner guidance.
As I lay there, continuing to listen to my own breathing, to the silence beneath the ambient outside noises, to the quality of stillness that somehow blended all those noises together into another sound I found not at all distracting, I realized this was my guidance – this space, this place, this lovely inner oasis that simply isn’t worried about any of the stuff all the rest of me is perpetually worried about.
Even as my mind was issuing alert after alert, even as my body produced its usual repetitive morning series of aches and pains, even as my emotional self confronted the misty dreams from the night just prior juxtaposed with the harsher reality of this waking day, inside my heart, all was calm.
All was – truly, believably, trustworthily – okay.
