releasing the tiller nuts and bolts

Before I continue with my tales from India and more, a fellow blogger asked me if I had any tips or practical examples for how to detect the higher intelligence that orchestrates flow in life; for how to release the tiller, defer to the higher intelligence, and let life unfold and flow. I thought this would be a great topic for a post (albeit a rather long-winded one, it turns out)!

For me, this is partly a process of identifying and eliminating the influence of what is not that higher intelligence; partly a process of observing external signals and patterns; and partly a process of sensing internally from the heart. It is not so simple as just doing the latter, at least not for me at this time, and from what I understand, not for fully awakened beings either. It’s just that the other parts of the process become more and more automatic, instantaneous, the more you get the hang of them and the more you wake up.

Here are my tips based on how I now operate in the world, as best I can explain. This is certainly no bible, just my perspective and experience.

1. Watch and feel, internally. First and foremost, living this way is a process of near-constant watching, internally and externally, but let’s start with the internal part. You must become supremely self-absorbed.  (Aside: If this loaded term gives you hives because you have been conditioned to believe that the purpose of life is to put your own needs aside and serve others, as I was, consider that perhaps serving out of obligation, out of a belief that it is right or an attempt to be good because you fundamentally feel bad or guilty, is no true service. The time you spend in “self-absorption” will eventually lead to your highest form of “service”–waking up to your true nature and living your true purpose, which is beyond any beliefs you have about how that should look. Ironically, as the process proceeds, you might find that you feel no pull to serve or help anymore at all, because you start to see that You are creating everything you experience, and that nothing is actually wrong “out there,” but that is another matter.)

Practice observing your own system internally, your mind and the thoughts it produces, your body and the emotions and sensations that arise in it, and where specifically the thoughts and sensations physically arise. By doing this, you start to be able to differentiate among signals coming from the mind that arise in your head, signals coming from the emotional center around the navel (what Sri Aurobindo and my guru called “the vital,” which is a useful term that I will use here), and signals coming from the heart, the center of true knowing. You might start to notice that there is a loop between the mind and vital by which thoughts feed emotions and emotions feed more thoughts and so on such that you can work yourself into a tizzy (usually of fear–even if it looks and feels like, say, anger at first, fear is usually underneath) that urges you into a “take control” action to alleviate the uncomfortable feeling and the perceived threat. You might also find that your particular body sends you signals in other unique ways. For example, I get chills down my thighs when I hear or say something that is critically important or true for me.

2. Notice that the mind and vital make up stories. From there, start to more closely observe the specifics of your thoughts, what the mind is actually saying, what you are believing that has been unconsciously driving your vital emotions and actions. I suppose some people manage to do this in meditation, but I find it necessary to write it out. By doing this, you start to cultivate the awareness that pretty much nothing that comes from the mind or vital is true. What most of us do most of the time is act and react unconsciously and automatically based on our false thoughts and emotions because we believe them. This takes us totally out of alignment with our higher intelligence, with Truth. The key is to start identifying which thoughts and sensations, which impulses to act, are coming from the mind and vital and stop letting them rule.

When you start actually looking at what the voice in your head is saying, what you believe, you might instantly be shocked at how absurd a lot of it it is, or you might need to deconstruct it a bit, or a lot, to realize it is false. I think it’s important to note that the mind doesn’t stop talking, at least it hasn’t for me; you just get used to how it sounds and listen to it less and less.

The writings of Adyashanti, Byron Katie, Ramana Maharshi and Jed McKenna all provide excellent guidance for this sort of self-inquiry process. Sri Aurobindo’s The Mother is good, too.

3. Focus more attention on your heart and do what it tells you. As you become less and less preoccupied with your mind, there will be more space for your heart to come to the fore, and you will have more attention available to focus on it. Practice tuning into the physical space of your heart more and letting it tell you what it feels and wants–I have found that my most authentic desires and knowing arise from this space in the body. Start doing whatever you most feel like each day, moment to moment, whatever you feel most pulled or inspired or excited to do from the heart. If you don’t feel like you are free to do this (e.g., because of money), then at least notice what you would rather be doing and start carving out some time in your life for it. You might also ask yourself what beliefs you have about why you can’t live your wildest dreams, and deeply investigate whether your beliefs are true (they aren’t). When you start committing to aligning with your truest desires, the flow starts to kick in.

Just a note that sometimes our authentic heart’s desires are so buried that we can’t access them for a very long time. That was the case for me. It has been over two years since I left my corporate career and I am just starting to reconnect with my true nature in earnest. I thought I knew what I really wanted when I left, but I didn’t, and I tried a lot of other things that also ended up not being right. Just continue to unravel and release what is not true, and feel into your heart in each moment as best you can, and the true will start to arise naturally, in its own way and time (see “Be patient” below for more on that).

4. Be willing to let go and change course. When things are not working out according to “plan,” that is, according to your mind’s idea of how things should go and your vital’s attachment to a particular outcome, be willing to let it all go and trust that something better is in store–even if your mind is screaming at you that it all needs to work out, even if you really, really want it to work out, even if you’re very afraid, even if you don’t have a plan B.  To me this is what the common spiritual concept of non-attachment really means. We miss the point if we’re trying to cultivate some feeling of neutrality through meditation. Feeling detached comes much further along in the process, it’s a side effect of waking up more, not something you can really control. Non-attachment to me is a willingness to surrender to a will higher than that of your fear-driven mind and vital, even when they are shouting at you. Most likely you will feel very attached for awhile. This feeling is subsiding for me some, but still arises and traps me, especially in my remaining sticky areas: love, money and health, which I’ll be writing about a lot.  You need to be willing to feel very attached and very uncomfortable and let go anyway. Then the flow naturally takes over, because you have stopped trying to control. You have surrendered.

Here’s an example. Last year when I got home from India and my life blew up (more on that in future posts), I needed to leave my home in Reno, Nevada. I decided I would go back to New York City to stay with a friend–that was where I felt comfortable and had a community. It was a practical plan and I didn’t have any other ideas. Try as I might, I could not make it work. I could not get my things shipped back there, I could not find a home for my cat there, I would make plans and they would mysteriously fall through. I was starting to panic because I had to get out of my home ASAP, but nothing was working out; so I assumed I was not to go there and let go of trying, even though I had no idea what else to do. Then through yet another series of synchronistic signals and events (see specifics under point 6 below), a home for my cat and a house sitting job in Portland, Oregon (where I had never set foot) dropped into my lap. So to Portland I went. And more incredible and synchronistic things happened there.

5. Suspend judgment. Kind of on the flip side of the point above, but also related to trust, if you have clear inner and outer signals to do something (see point 6 for more on outer signals), a clear indication of rightness about something, you need to be willing to do it, even if  your conditioned mind-of-falsehood judges the hell out of it, tells you it’s wrong, bad, stupid, or crazy; even if you dissolve into convulsions of panic; even if it might cost you something you love or more money than you think you have. This waking up and letting go process has been hideously destructive and painful for me in certain respects, and also expansive, joyful and fulfilling beyond imagination, and I’m not done! The rewards have been worth every loss, but it is frequently emotionally wrenching.

I have often found that what shows up as a clear prompting in a given scenario is what the conscious mind judges as the worst possible option or course, but what turns out to be the thing I most need and want at a deeper level. There is an ironic pattern at work here (seems to be a quality of the lila, the play, of the Universe), so this is a critical point, and vigilance with the mind is required. You’ll eventually recognize and experience it all as perfect, but you have to get beyond the judgment first. For example, the person that helped me to get clarity about my guru when I was feeling so repulsed by him and all things “guru” was another sort of Indian guru–the last person I expected or wanted to encounter for assistance, and if I had listened to my judgmental mind instead of all the other signals (and my mind was definitely a-judging), I would have missed the opportunity. (This is the topic for my next post.)

6. Watch the world around you like a hawk. This to me is the most fun part of living this way, and it’s good that some of it is fun at this stage, because the sifting-through-all-of-your-mental-vital-muck part is very un-fun. Watch your external world closely, always–keep your eyes and ears wide open because it is speaking to you loudly all the time, showing you what to do and confirming what is right. Look for patterns. Pay attention especially to things that repeat (numbers, names, themes), striking “coincidences,” things that strongly “hit” you at a feeling level, or oddities (things that make you say, “Huh, that’s weird”) because they may be especially important. Per point 5 above, also note seemingly ironic signals or events. Track things in a journal if you need to at first until you get used to remembering and tracking naturally, all the time. Life becomes a scavenger hunt, an adventure and a puzzle to be solved; and when a bunch of threads culminate in a realization, action, or resolution, it is very exciting! Not just because you solved the puzzle, but because you find you are doing what you most deeply want to do, even if you didn’t know you wanted it until it showed up. (Aside: I find that you generally don’t know what you most deeply want until it starts to show up, at least that’s how it’s going for me so far. This process is not the same as manifesting specific desires like a Lamborghini or a million dollars from your mind a la The Secret, which is actually another form of mental control. That process can work, too, and if you think you really want a very specific thing, go for it!  But this is not that. This requires letting go of mental control at all levels and letting an intelligence that knows infinitely more than your mind take over and deliver in ways you cannot imagine.)

Here’s an example of external signs and patterns from my Portland story above: First I met a mother and daughter at a nail salon who looked familiar but I didn’t know them. They thought they knew me too and we had a bunch of odd things in common. We got to talking over our pedicures about places to live and, even though I told them I was moving back to New York, they said, “You should live in Portland. You would like it.” Then my ex-partner, with whom I was still living, suddenly started watching Portlandia obsessively. Then I was looking for something in my car and came across some old Oregon maps. Then my friend Brenda in Portland voluntarily took up the cause of finding my cat a home and found her a home with another woman named Brenda in Portland, who also happened to need a house sitter for the summer. (Incidentally, my cat communicator’s name is also Brenda and I had consulted her about a home for the cat. We all know that almost no one is named Brenda! And yes, I have a cat communicator). Finally, I said to my uncle, “Guess where I’m moving to?” And he replied “Portland, Oregon. I just had a feeling you were going there.”

It all still amazes me, but it’s starting to become normal that this is how things unfold, and how I know what is right.

7. Sit in silence.  Sitting in silence and noticing that there is a neutral presence there, behind all the madness that might be going on in your mind and vital and body, is very helpful. The more you start to recognize this real You, the more you will start to let it come to the fore and rule the day instead of obeying your terrified mind.

8. Be patient. Life often unfolds much more slowly in flow, when you release the tiller, than our fear-based, controlled version of life does. You have to get used to not thinking something is wrong if nothing is happening for longer than you are used to, and to not doing as much as you used to. The key is to wait until something authentic arises (either a heartfelt impulse or a clear external prompting) and respond, and if nothing is arising, then nothing is arising. Let yourself relax and do nothing when it is indicated. You can pull yourself back into control and off track if you try to force action. Take simple, enjoyable, self-nurturing actions, as your heart suggests. You probably desperately need a long, long rest after a lifetime of control and stress anyway. I know I did and many days still do.

I want to be clear that there is no set order to all of this–I practice most of the above simultaneously now, but if you’re just getting started, you might focus on one thing at a time. I also want to be clear that, as I’ve said before, I still struggle with all of this, especially emotionally. My attachments to people and things and outcomes get triggered and I have a lot of emotion come up sometimes. The difference between me now and two years ago is that I know these are just conditioned emotions based on false stories and I am getting better about releasing them and not letting them guide my actions (though I still act on them sometimes, too).  And if I don’t know which part of me is talking (e.g., my vital or my heart), I try not to take action until I know what is right, based on both inner and outer signs. I’m getting the hang of it all and finding that it is actually difficult for me to take back the tiller now, at least with the big “decisions” in life. More often than not, things flow like my New York vs. Portland scenario did–even if I try to pursue a mental plan, I can’t; it seems “I” have let go enough overall that the higher intelligence has more control.

So there you have my tips, but there is no one way to go through an awakening process. The bottom line to me is to practice doing what feels right to you, in each moment, in this process and in life–even if you’re not sure, do your best to feel into it on your own. That’s what leads to flow. It sounds so simple, but it’s not at all, because most of us are operating based on a million outer influences all the time, without realizing it. Even if the truest You doesn’t seem to be inside, it always is. Go back in again and again and eventually you will realize it.