In our very exterior oriented, high technology world it is easy to become isolated from your inner life. Information overloaded is no longer in question. We are barraged with TV radio and magazine ads suggesting how we should live, drive, eat, dress, play, work, dream, brush our teeth, shower, blah, blah, blah. The amount of information produced in the world is a staggering 250 terabytes per year. Over 100 million pages of text information per person are generated annually.

To keep pace with this we get up in the morning and… we have our coffee or tea (stimulate) special blend, special pot and special filters. Then we check the morning TV news which tells us how to drive to work while drinking our special coffee/tea. We get into our cars turn to the radio station we always listen to tell us how more information and where to go and how sensational the world since you have to raise above the noise level to be heard. Newspapers, Internet, or Mobile devices feed our now caffeine style addiction to information. We spend the day with telephone calls, cell phone calls, email, text messaging and voice mail even after we leave the office. Our off hours and recreation, in many cases, are filled with mental stimuli such as online gamins, chat rooms and computer games. Our mind is so full of thoughts that even in the middle of the night when we barely wake up we discover our mind is still running. Our mind doesn’t shut off. It continues running.

We sort and filter this flood of information so we can be selective about what occupies our conscious mind. There is also a phenomenon known to psychologist as “deleting”. Not unlike spam filtering for email our mind selectively deletes information in order to capture what seems most important. We don’t want to store all the information that comes in and so we begin deleting. It is like reading this sentence with certain words deleted to save room …like…sentence …words…deleted.

With this entire overload we lose touch with our intuition and our self awareness becomes external awareness. Looking outside of ourselves we search for feedback that gives us another message that makes us feel OK. Our intuition has trouble surfacing through this barge of thought streaming all the time, stimulated by our senses.

Intuition is such a powerful tool. It is the ability to tap the flow. It is in the ability to know without reasoning. Intuition “pops in” or “thinks you.” But it needs “space” to do it: Space between thoughts that is. You need awareness of the space between your thoughts to begin opening up to this almost magical ability.

Perhaps, like many people, you don’t believe your have intuition. Then you have been feed nonsense. When you read books about intuition, and there are many, you discover everyone has it. But, not everyone has developed it. So, you have to spend time practicing intuition. Learning what it feels like. Noticing if you receive through verbal thought-auditory or through images. All are various modes of intuition. Usually, your most developed mode of operating (auditory, visual, kinetics) will be the mode through which intuition operates.

Almost all of our rational knowing is based on our experience, meaning memory, emotion and interpretation. Therefore, we process our world through our memories, sorting matches and filtering data until we arrive at the answer that appears to fit the data. If we have no match we begin the process of locating similar experiences or the experiences we know that others have had that are similar. If this fails we ask someone we think want is the answer

Here is an exercise that will help you develop your intuition as an alternative resource to the rational mind. Not a replacement, mind you. Although this exercise is contrived to give you a safe environment to focus your awareness in a quiet space to receive intuitive answers, you do not need any special environment or circumstance to use your intuition. In fact, having it available when you are in trouble is a great tool.

Exercise
1. Find a place where you can sit comfortably and relaxed but not where you will most likely go to sleep. Therefore, don’t do this in bed or at night in your easy chair. If you can find a place where you won’t be interrupted it will keep you from feeling tense about someone walking in or bothering you.
2. With your eyes closed take a deep breath and focus your awareness on your feet. Notice if there is tension in your feet and where it is. Then consciously relax any spots that are tense. Focusing on any spots in your body and saying to yourself relax allows your muscles will begin to loosen up.
3. Focus your awareness on your calf muscles and do the same thing as you did for your feet. Continue this until you reach your head. Once you are at the top of your head allow your awareness to wash over your whole body back to your feet.
4. Next sit and allow your mind to slow down. To do this you allow your awareness to follow your breathing rather than your thoughts. As you notice your mind slowing down bring your awareness to the space between the thoughts.
5. Play with this exercise until you can create more space between your thoughts. You will not be able to force this. You have to allow it to work.

After going through this exercise several times you will find it easier and easier to do. In the space between your thoughts will come your intuitive insights? Although, this exercise is only one of many used to develop your insight try it for a week and then check your progress.

Now what about prayer?

For thousand years we have been trained in the art of praying in an inappropriate, incoherent and haphazard way: to get something from an entity that is beyond the clouds and beyond our rational understanding. This type of prayer is not always answered and the usual response is “then you didn’t deserve it.”

Many Saints have come into the world and illuminated just what prayer is all about: St. Teresa of Avila, St. John of The Cross, St. Augustine, Buddha, and many others. I don’t believe we will ever understand Jesus’ real words if we don’t understand the basic premise that God is “within us” not outside of us. As Jesus says the Kingdom of heaven is within.

Mental prayer is different from spiritual prayer. Mental prayer is a verbal thinking in the mind, more a mental discussion with Ego than true prayer.

Teresa of Avila wrote in her book Interior Castle in 1579 “As far as I can understand, the door of entry into this castle [soul] is prayer and meditation: I do not say mental prayer rather than vocal, for, if it is prayer at all, it must be accompanied by meditation.”

Therefore, we must first enter into the state of being that opens the pathway to our soul. We need to know the truth of who we are. We need to understand our inner world as the path to real understanding beyond the mind. We must discover the Temple within and go there to pray. Dust away the material from the Temple and go within to the most High Place.

“A short time ago I was told by a very learned man that souls without prayer are like people whose bodies or limbs are paralyzed: they possess feet and hands but they cannot control them. In the same way, there are souls so infirm and so accustomed to busying themselves with outside affairs that nothing can be done for them, and it seems as though they are incapable of entering within themselves at all,” wrote St. Teresa of Avila.

Prayer, then, not only requires us to find the quiet place within, i.e. our temple, but to come in the manner fit for such things. God is spirit and therefore to come to God we must do so “in spirit” not in mind and body. We come not to have a mental/verbal communication but a communion with God.

As we go into our sacred meditation we can come with clear intention. What is our intention? We come with the “feeling” of what we want and from the feeling/intention we shall discover our goal.

How different this kind of prayer is from ordinary haphazard rambling done without understanding! Prayer must have intention and feeling till it becomes higher aspects counterpart of the creation itself.
Instead, how much time, money and energy are frittered away in useless prayer in the middle of the night or the anxious moments of the day!

Larry De Rusha is a Master Intuitive, workshop facilitator and author of three books. He is a former senior executive in venture capital and leads the Millionaire Within workshop and the Seven Dreams Mystery School.

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