Ananda Sangha of Portland--Intuitive Guidance by Swami Kriyananda

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Intuitive Guidance
by J. Donald Walters (Swami Kriyananda)
Excerpts from Chapter 18 of Awaken to Superconsciousness

You will attain superconsciousness more quickly if you seek to attune yourself with it in your daily activities, and not only in meditation. The more you seek to be guided by intuition, which is an aspect of superconsciousness, the greater success you will meet in every undertaking. For 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.

The Greek Sophist Zeno presented an interesting paradox, which, whether he intended it so or not, illustrates the inadequacy of logic. An arrow’s flight, he said, viewed at any point on its journey, is stationary. Since the arrow’s flight consists of innumerable points, each of which is stationary, its movement is an illusion.

Zeno’s error, of course, lay in trying to analyze that movement instead of viewing it as a phenomenon in itself. Analysis demands separation and categorization. It demands that what it studies be motionless that it may be analyzed further. Logic is like a sentry, commanding life: "Stand, and deliver."

One problem with logic is that if the premise is wrong, the syllogism will be wrong also. Zeno’s premise was that those imaginary points were stationary. He imagined them that way because it is the way of logic itself to "freeze" reality in still poses.

The Greeks were, as far as we know, the first of our Western breed of rationalists. Zeno, of course, may only have been showing the absurdity of trying to understand things by seeing them as numerous non-functioning parts—by analyzing motion into motionlessness, and freezing living forms into lifeless, but controllable, "exhibits." Herein lies the weakness of logic. The intellect, with its analytical tendency, is more naturally attuned to static than to living realities. Logic finds difficulty in seeing unity everywhere—in seeing life as a flow, and the universe as living and conscious. The intellect, working from facts and definitions, cannot readily grasp the truth that the material universe is only the outer shell of life and consciousness.

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....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....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 will power 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:

Ask for guidance from superconsciousness at the Spiritual Eye [the point between the eyebrows].

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."

If no guidance comes, propose several alternative solutions at the Spiritual Eye. See if one of them receives special endorsement in the heart.

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.

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.

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.