Intuition is Becoming What is Happening

I wanted to write a bit about intuition.  And through that explain how becoming what is happening right now is a way to live in a much more connected way.

Why are some people more intuitive than others?  How can we be more intuitive in our daily lives?  And how can a certain orientation to life create a byproduct of intuition?

I grew up with some natural intuitive leanings.  But they were random, unpredictable, untraceable.  Sometimes I would know what someone was thinking or I would anticipate meeting someone at the grocery store before I went in.  I even had a sort of vision of my wife today years before I met her.  Standing in our dilapidated college animal house on Toole Street in Missoula, Montana, staring at the broken gas stove in the dead of winter, I knew I’d meet Teresa one day.  I saw her somehow.

Later, always interested in deepening this intuitive ability, I looked for it in the University, in traveling to exotic places, and in drugs.  This opened some doors for me.  But I felt like mostly my experience of life was filtered through the chaos of my internal world.  Like trying to experience reality through a really dirty, thick, warped window.  This window would open at random times.  I knew a world of freedom was available, and realized that this untethered joy was all that mattered to me in my life.

Spending several years with the Roshi, I found a true guide for opening and crawling through the window of my internal world.  He was so incredibly immersed in reality, at all times.  Mostly we think of someone coming into a room and adjusting to the circumstances of that situation.  The Roshi was so smack dab in reality, with his whole body and mind, it appeared as though reality was trying to follow him around, trying to keep up with him.  I saw that he could read all situations instantaneously.  Or we would all be sitting down to eat lunch and only the Roshi would know that the a burner had been left on the stove.  Not to mention is ability to read everyone’s mind.  Or to never miss a train, even if he left way too late to reach the train station.  Such was the power of his great broad samadhi.  And this is all because he was becoming reality right now.

In the great osmosis that is Zen training, spending so much of our time in the energetic transmission of the master disciple relationship, one gradually knows how to become the Roshi’s state of mind.  As I have written before, it is like two soups meeting in mid air, or two rolling balls meeting and meshing.  Such is the transmission of consciousness.  And learning to become the Roshi’s state of mind then allows one to become everyday reality in a much deeper way.  That is the gift he gives.  He gives his consciousness, which of course is really just our consciousness, we become it, and then walk around ripening it for the rest of our lives.

When we learn to become what is happening, right now, instead of reality being something over there, and us trying to interpret it from a distance, we feel reality as our consciousness.  So, we see the flower, we become the flower, and we feel that the flower is ourselves.  Or we are walking along the shore, and we hear an eagle cry, and the cry is not far away, but is inside of our bodies.

When this begins to happen, naturally we begin to feel things which would seem to be outside of ourselves, things which should be far away, we feel them as very close, very intimate.  So the air around us we feel as ourselves.  The person we meet on the street, we begin to sense their internal world as our own.  The meeting of our consciousness and theirs becomes second nature.  The moment becomes something to sense into, rather than something to be figured out.  We feel the moment as ourselves.  We become the moment.  This is not an idea.

In the monastery, we learn to sweep by using our whole body to sweep.  We are only sweeping when we sweep.  We are not sweeping and thinking of something else.  And in this, our whole being learns to focus.  This focusing is a way to bring the chaos of our internal world into clarity.  It allows us an energetic point to shatter this thick foggy filter between us and our lives.  And so, we stand right on top of reality.  It is not abstract.  It is not vague.  It is not intellectual.  It is right here, right now.  And we learn over and over, day by day, to master this ability to become the moment.

Intuition is a real byproduct of becoming reality.  It is not even the most important gift that comes from standing on top of reality.  But it is a truly nice perk.  And over time, we begin to trust ourselves in this way.  For some reason, when our awareness deepens, broadens, at first we almost don’t feel worthy of the gifts that come.  But we gain confidence.  We trust more and more. Day by day.  Decade by decade. It is a wonderful ripening.

Everyone is naturally intuitive.  As we remove the false separation between ourselves and everything around us, we naturally become aware and connected.  It sounds simple, but it is true.

My advice is to follow that little spark in your consciousness that knows wonderful things are possible.  The one no one knows about.  It is often there with great inspiration, like a great secret.  Hold it precious.  Don’t let it die in a world which does not know it exists.  If given time to mature, it is like a superpower.  Please realize it.  The world needs you to.

Thanks for reading.  Good luck!