(Dear Vywamus,)
I have just started learning about the universe and vibration. My problem is faith and trust. I have neither. How do I fix this? I trust no one. Believe in nothing I can’t see with my eyes.
G.
Dear G.,
Of course, the first thing you will have to do here is decide whether you can trust what I have to say. Perhaps you could take my response as a working hypothesis that may be true, and which can be tested by following my suggestions and observing the results.
Since you mention learning about the universe and vibration, I am assuming you are primarily asking about how to know and trust in the energies beyond the physical senses and beyond the mind. You say you trust what you can see with your eyes, and I assume you mean also that you trust anything you can verify with your physical senses. You probably also trust anything you can arrive at by your reasoning. And I also assume that you trust your own experience. That is an excellent place to start!
My first advice is, don’t believe in or trust anything you don’t experience for yourself. Anything else is merely a hypothesis. You can, however, actually widen your capacity for experience. I will speak more about that in a little bit.
For now, let us go back in time to when you as an infant began to develop trust in using your own eyes, and in using your other senses. Back then, you were aware of visual stimuli coming in through your eyes from the outside world. At first, of course, these had no clear meaning for you, though you probably enjoyed seeing color or movement. Very quickly these separate visual sensations organized themselves into visual images that involved color and shape, and sometimes movement. And soon you also began to notice that other sensations happened at the same time as the visual image.
For example, perhaps someone shook a brightly colored rattle in front of you, and it caught your interest. Suppose you then reached out and touched it. Later you might also learn to grasp it and bring it up to explore with your eyes and mouth. So here you have sight, sound, touch and taste all becoming parts of your experience of the rattle. AS you had more experiences with the rattle you would remember them, and the next time you saw it you would expect the same visual, auditory, taste and touch cues. You would develop a sense of trust that when you saw the rattle, it would make sound when shaken, it could be touched and grasped and brought close, tasted, and so on.
Now, just as in infancy you learned from experience to trust what you could see with your eyes, so you can learn to trust in the existence of a greater Reality beyond the senses and beyond the mind, by experiencing it for yourself.
How do you have experiences of that which is beyond the mind and the senses? You need to learn to use your “inner senses” just as you learned to use your external physical senses. With enough practice you will become just as sure and trusting of what your inner senses perceive as you are of what your eyes can see.
To develop these inner senses you will need to turn inward, and since they are more subtle than the external senses, you will need to bring more attention and focus than you needed for the rattle. I would add that these inner senses are natural human abilities that are part of who you are, and with enough time and attention, many of you have been able to develop them.
There are a number of methods to use to develop your inner senses. You can find quite a few books that cover these methods for training yourself to perceive beyond the everyday world. The following is a simple exercise that may be helpful as a start. It gives you the opportunity to actually experience deep within yourself the higher frequencies (vibrations) that are beyond the senses and beyond the mind.
1. Be in a relaxed position in a quiet place.
2. Begin to notice all the sensations going through your body – warmth or coolness, the places where your clothing touches you, your breath, your heartbeat, and so on. Notice any sounds . Notice the light coming through your eyelids if your eyes are closed.
Say to yourself, I live in a physical body, I feel my sensations and my physical energy flowing through my body, coming and going, constantly changing…
My sensations continually change, yet I am always here. I have and live in a body, but I am not my body…
(Here pause for a time to experience what you have said.)
3. Next, notice your emotions, all the feelings that flow through you: happiness, sadness, anger, fear, and so on. Notice how your emotional currents and patterns constantly come and go, and move through you.
Say to yourself, I have emotions, and many different emotions flow through me, constantly changing. They come and go, yet I am always here. I have emotions – yet I am not my emotions…
(Here pause again to absorb what you have just said)
4. Next pay attention to all the thoughts that constantly pass through your mind. Notice your thoughts and thought patterns, as they constantly come and go, and come again….
Say to yourself, I have thoughts, mental patterns that move through me and constantly change. My thoughts come and go, but I am always here. I have thoughts, but I am not my thoughts…
(Pause again now to pay attention to what you have said.)
5. Now say to yourself, I have a body…I have emotions…I have thoughts.
But I am not my body, I am not my emotions, I am not my thoughts . They constantly come and go, but I am always here.
And if I am not my body, or my emotions, or my thoughts, then who am I?”
Here spend some time listening inwardly. Notice what happens within you when you ask yourself that last question. Who is the “I” behind the familiar daily sensations, emotions and thoughts?
Just receive whatever experiences come…And stay with this for a while.
Once you are in this place beyond sensation, emotion, and thought, you actually begin to experience within yourself the frequencies of the greater Reality beyond the senses. With practice you will come to trust that this reality is always present, below the surface of your everyday activities , that it is always in you, and you are always in it.
You can continue to use this exercise or other methods to find and explore the greater Reality beyond the mind and senses. As you do this, you can automatically develop a sense of trust, based on your own experience.
We guides and teachers and guides do not at this time ask that you take anything we say on faith (which is believing in or trusting something or someone without the evidence of your own experience). Rather, as I said earlier, be open minded, but take everything that comes along as a hypothesis until you test it with your own experience.
Yes, in certain situations you may make an error by doing this, especially if your experience is incomplete. But as you go along this way you will also develop a trust in your own process of experiencing, and begin to realize that if errors occur, you will eventually, again through your own experience, correct them, and find your way again to the truth.
Enjoy your explorations,
Vywamus