Guidance for the Journey [updated]
...via the step by step unfolding of intuitive wisdom
An earlier version of this post was missing several links. This UPDATED version includes those links and other edits.
As each sentient life unfolds amidst rapid change and uncertainty, how might a more optimum path be discerned? How might the many small and large decisions be made so as to minimize discomfort, distress and suffering? How might one know how to take action and reach for a better future, albeit momentary and ever changing? These fundamental questions often arise as each life unfolds.
Rational analysis offers a common and logical approach. Rationally predicting consequential outcomes may seem systematic, but it can also be filled with uncertainty. How might one know which option offers a better course of action?
Consider the intersection between quantum science and the metaphysics of meditation. This space might be characterized as the intersection between observation and knowing.
Quantum science has revealed vast emptiness within what seems to be solid matter, as well as the surprising impact of observation on sub-atomic particle pathways. The famous double slit experiment illustrates remarkable observer impact. This has been repeatedly confirmed in multiple demonstrations and experiments.
The metaphysics of meditation has established that intuitive knowing can arise in critical moments that are pregnant with opportunity. This knowing can be refined and deepened through meditation. The different forms of meditation can be placed into two primary categories: 1 insightful mindfulness and 2 one-pointed concentration. Both forms of meditation cultivate practitioners’ capacity for observing their thoughts, feelings, breath and behavior. These observations enhance the unfolding of personal wisdom about how to improve the quality and satisfaction of one’s life.
A common mindfulness meditation technique involves passive observation of the breath as it enters and exits the body. When mindfulness practitioners notice their mind wandering, they bring their awareness back to the breath. Regular practice of this technique develops breath awareness. It also enhances recognition of habitual patterns of thoughts, feelings and behavior as they arise. This awareness brings the practitioner from unconscious habits to moments of conscious choice. Choices are eventually guided by a more sophisticated understanding of how life works that arises from enhanced powers of observation.
A common meditative concentration technique involves repetition of a goal, affirmation or mantra. This is typically done while sitting, but can also be practiced while engaging in repetitive movements, such as walking or jogging. Using such a technique during movement requires intense concentration. The need for focus is increased by observational monitoring and regulation of the depth and rate of breathing. This is required to accommodate variations in pace and stride necessitated by variations in the jogging path. Visually staying on the jogging path can become an experiential metaphor for staying on the practitioner’s life path as it unfolds moment by moment. The repetition of this practice develops an individual’s capacity for focused observation. This observation enables the practitioner’s consciousness to evolve from states of unconscious habit to conscious choice.
Experienced mindfulness meditators can attain states of emptiness, sometimes described as the complete absence of thought. Meditative joggers can attain experiential states that integrate movement and breath into a holistic ever changing flow. During these flow states the complete absence of thought is more likely to arise, similar to the states of emptiness reported by mindfulness meditators.
Intuitive Wisdom and Guidance
These different states of being can enable intuitive wisdom to arise. This may be characterized as a momentary, subtle and nuanced recognition of the factors contributing to current and past suffering. This recognition enables practitioners to better understand the dynamics contributing to what’s happening in their lives, as well as how to increase their life satisfaction.
As meditators develop heightened awareness of thoughts, feelings and the breath, they are more likely to experience unexpected coincidences. Psychiatrist Carl Jung was the first to identify and name such occurrences. He called them synchronicities. He theorized that synchronicities were evidence of a connection between a person’s lower egoic self and a higher self that permeates all that is. He considered synchronicities to be messages from the great beyond. These messages could be individually interpreted as guidance, as well as confirmation of decisions taken or being considered.
Lifelong adult learning can beneficially include meditative practices that enhance the perception of intuitive guidance. Eastern spiritual disciplines, especially Buddhism, believe this intuitive guidance contributes to the arising of personal wisdom. This is because regular meditation develops insight into the causes and conditions that contribute to a wide variety of life dissatisfactions and suffering.
Insights about the origins of life dissatisfactions enable an ongoing dissolution of ignorance about how life works at the level of practical reality. A key personal awareness can emerge from these observations. It is a recognition the higher order metaphysical domain can influence what is experienced in everyday reality.
The Emergence of Kindness and Compassion
Personal insights about this recognition can yield an increase in the experience of compassion and the expression of kindness. The increase in kindness and compassion can be commensurately accompanied by a decrease in anger, hatred, greed, envy and other unsatisfactory emotions. Recognizing this relationship reveals the connectedness between thoughts/feelings/behavior and each practitioner’s experience of living in the world.
Disciplined contemplatives in a variety of spiritual domains, as well as regular meditators, are more likely to recognize this connectedness. Accepting the fact of its existence can yield a deeper clarification and expansion of intention for the benefit of all beings and the world. When that intention is repeatedly expressed aloud it becomes more solidly embedded into the practitioner’s being.
The awakening of this wisdom through meditative practice is a potential embedded in the human species.
May these words be of benefit for all beings and the world.
🙏💕🌎
ib
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Such a thoughtful and concise reminder of why we benefit from dedicating time to be present with oneself in meditation or walking in nature or jogging.
It gives me pause: why don’t I do this more often? The jungle I must traverse before reaching the starting point of sitting on my meditation cushion or lacing up my hiking shoes includes the myriad responsibilities of daily life and the unending invitations from my smart phone to lose myself in another way—in emails and multimedia stimulation.
And yet my past experience of discovering the sweetness of emptiness, the balm of dropping quickly and deeply into that space of infinite wisdom, calls me and beckons me to return.
And thus I am so grateful for the timing of your post — a synchronicity? — that coincides with a new morning schedule I’ve just put in place that blocks out an hour each morning for my spiritual practice. Thank you for this timely inspiration and affirmation!