One Instrument:

A friend of mine told me about a client of hers whose mother, blind and deaf, taught him to live by his senses the way she did. His sensitivities became so highly attuned that later while in the Navy, he became one of the highest-ranking officers with the ability to feel the waters far ahead—beyond instrumentation and forecasts—to know if it was safe to traverse them. His senses would sometimes defy the instrumentation and he was accurate.
 
That level of wisdom-of-feeling inspires me and intrigues me. Imagine looking at the radar, the forecast, and all the instrumentation on the bridge telling you it’s safe to go. Then going to your bunk, lying down to feel the water, getting a clear sense that it is not safe and trust what that says above the external instruments, with all those lives in your hands?
 
We are each getting a gut feeling, a sense, an intuition, a knowing, about what’s happening in our lives underneath the surface, all the time. A mechanic fixing a car that doesn’t match what the manual is telling him. A doctor getting a hit on what her patient needs beyond protocol and they heal. A realtor finding an off-market house to match her buyer. A writer being written. A grandparent sensing the unspoken need of a grandchild. Lovers having the same dream. An inspired carpenter. A corporate executive strategizing intuitively and profiting. A feeling about a new friend.
 
That’s what the inner-driven life is like. Inspiring, risk taking and yet peacefully knowing. Bringing all of you together as one. (The illusion is that they are separate in the first place.) When it becomes deliberate, to live this way, it becomes conscious. You don’t have to declare a “conscious life” to live that way. Some of the wisest people don’t say a word about it. They just are.
 
Most people, however, at least in western culture, learn to turn the dial of their feeling down in some way early in their lives. We do it as a way to shut off what hurts, what won’t be understood, as a way to get needs met, to tow the line, to gain forms of approval and please, to fit in to the environment we’re in and avoid punishment. 
 
You’ll need that feeling, however, as you mature or want to live a truly unlimited life, beyond conditioning, because the lines of feeling are part of the instrumentation your humanity uses to guide your unlimited life. 
 
I’m not talking simply about the ability to cry, feel sad, angry, or happy, though our emotions can play a role as well. It’s even different from pure intuition. I’m referring to the ability to tune in from your inner awareness—that isn’t governed by fear or seeking an answer with our brains, encumbered by past patterns, or even what’s happening in the physical external world—to feel what is going on beyond the surface happenings, and live in both worlds as one.
 
This is the power of feeling, it unifies the physical and nonphysical worlds. The body is an instrument of consciousness, an instrument of being unlimited. To make it personal, your body is an instrument of yourconsciousness and your limitlessness. 
 
Whether your body is simply moving a feeling through you for information, or communicating pain, agility, silence, warning, or bliss, it’s giving you a readout of what is going on, what is out of balance, what’s in balance, of potentialities, and guiding you and it can tune in to the seas ahead.
 
If you tune into yourself in this moment, how much of your ability to feel are you actually utilizing? Can you drop deeper into your body and feel even more? How much have you shut off? If you knew you were unlimited and that this feeling was necessary for navigation, would you allow it to turn all the way on? 
 
These are the feelings that remind you that you are not alone in this world. That you can’t not have purpose. Your life and breath are their own purpose and you can dig deeper for more self-discovery and specific purpose from there. 
 
Feeling along these lines is part of your infinity. The finite part of you (body) as an instrument of the infinite part of you, navigating this life as one instrument.

Here’s to more of You in this world, 

Shelley