Cultivating Intuition with Jeffrey Mishlove 001

Cultivating Intuition with Jeffrey Mishlove 001

00:00:00
Right now, Dr. Jeffrey Mishlove. Thank you. I think I'll try and walk around with the microphone here so that I'm not hiding behind the lectern. I'd like to begin by asking a few questions to help give me an intuitive sense of the people to whom I'm speaking and sharing this time with. How many of you are involved in any traditional, conventional religious practice? A sprinkling. How many of you feel that spirituality is an important part of your life? Isn't that interesting? I suspect it as much. I suspect it as much. We live in an age in which it seems as if, if you want to follow a spiritual path, one of the best steps that you could take is to disassociate yourself with the religion of your upbringing.

00:01:21
Do most of you have felt that way? I don't know if that's really a reason to applaud. I mean, in some ways, it's a very sad comment on our age because isn't that the purpose of religion? I mean, it's wonderful that we have a PRS here, but we're like an oasis in the desert if the religions are not fulfilling that function. And, well, I'm of Jewish origins, and so today is not the Jewish Sabbath. Yesterday was. But today would be, for those of you who have a Christian upbringing, today would be the Sabbath. And I want to share a little bit about the Sabbath to begin with because it's become very important for me. I was bar mitzvahed at the age of 13, and I'm 48 now; 35 years, you barely saw me inside of a synagogue.

00:02:29
I mean, I couldn't wait to not be obliged to attend. And now, something happened to me inwardly. I'd just like to share with you briefly. I was in Israel over the summer on a cruise, speaking as a lecturer on a cruise ship, and we had eight hours in Israel. And when I came back, I found that I was different inside. I could no longer just ignore my Jewish heritage. Something had told me, you know, show up. And it was a struggle. I didn't want to step inside of a synagogue. It was the last thing I wanted to do. But I struggled with it. I took Yom Kippur, the Jewish high holy day, and I decided, well, at least I won't go into the office. I'll stay home. I'll meditate.

00:03:18
I'll read Jewish prayer books. And one thing led to another. Now I find that the Sabbath is one of the most precious gifts that God ever gave to humanity. Because I don't know how many of you are like me. How many of you are workaholics? Come on now, be honest. A sprinkling. Okay. A sprinkling. For those of us who are workaholics, who work from early morning to late at night, what a gift. It is to say, you know, for one day a week, I'm going to meditate, I'm going to read sacred texts, I'm going to enter into an attitude of prayer and reverence today. And so I want to honor that this is a Sabbath day today. And when we talk about intuition, That honoring of the Sabbath is very important because in the Judeo-Christian tradition, the Sabbath is a holy day. The reason it is is because God is holy and the Sabbath is a time that we let God into our lives. Now, I'm sure many of you find greater inspiration from the spiritual traditions that are not part of the Judeo-Christian heritage that most of us were educated in in our youth. I would imagine that many of you feel inspired by Buddhist teachings or by American Indian teachings or by Hindu teachings.

00:05:06
Exploration, that there's a common theme that runs through all of these. And that common theme is expressed in Judaism as the idea that there is one God. Hinduism, it's expressed in the idea that there is Brahman, the soul of the universe. And in the Hindu tradition, they talk about the two great principles, Brahman and Atman, the essence of the individual and the essence of the whole universe. And they've come up with perhaps one of the greatest mathematical equations of all time, of all philosophy, that Brahman equals Atman, that the essence of you is the essence of the universe. And in Buddhism, there's a slightly different way of expressing it because Buddhism has the notion of no self. There is no essence of you. There is no essence of the universe, but they are also equal.

00:06:06
It sort of reminds me of the equivalence of modern day. Christians and Jews, such as I'm sure many of us here, what we have in common is that I have a synagogue I don't go to, and you have a church you don't go to. Well, what does all of this have to do with intuition? You know, there are many, many definitions of intuition, and as the director of the Intuition Network, I made it my business to avoid all of them. And the reason I've had to avoid them all is because I want to include them all. And some of these definitions, they exclude other definitions. We have the artificial intelligence crowd, for example, and we try and reach out into the sciences and academia, and they say, well, intuition is subliminal computation.

00:07:07
You see, the brain is really a biocomputer, and it's always cranking away, even if you're not conscious of it. So while you're not aware, the brain is doing computations, and that's intuition. Then you have people who say, well, intuition is the result of experience. You learn, you grow. It's knowledge that has become unconscious. The one thing we do know about intuition is that by definition it's knowing without knowing how you know. But for purposes of those of us here who are on a spiritual path, who are deeply involved in understanding our own consciousness, I think it's fair enough to say that intuition comes out of the roots of consciousness itself. It comes out of that deep interconnectedness that at some fundamental level we are all one. Consciousness is all one.

00:08:12
And so it's no surprise that our consciousness has access to information that we shouldn't have through our senses, through our normal external means, because of course that's not how we got it. Intuitive knowledge doesn't come by some kind of magical mental radio. It comes because we are it. And yet there's this paradox. There's this paradox that we sure spend most of our time feeling very separate from it all. I mean, how do you drive your car if you are it? I am one with this tree. And it started a long time ago. For each of us personally, it started when we were born. Let's see, can I come down here? It started when we were born, you know. As young infants, we don't have this notion that I'm separate, that this is me and that's mommy.

00:09:15
It's like all one. Freud called it sort of an oceanic state of consciousness, and Freudians today still think of the mystical path as nothing more than a regression to an infantile state of awareness. And yet scientific research in my field of parapsychology, I prefer the term psi research, but it shows that young children are more intuitive. That is, in the laboratory, they can demonstrate this ability more. They're more psychic, you might say. And I think it has to do with they're closer to that oceanic state of oneness. They haven't yet been taught that they are not everything. Even a four-year-old, even a seven-year-old has more access. And the older they get, the less of it. Until by the time we're 13, it's pretty much all beaten out of us.

00:10:14
And then we go through an unfolding. We awaken into adulthood and go; we retrace the mystical path. And it can open up for us again. And the beauty of it is that we can simultaneously live in the separateness of our ego and in the oneness. Although there's a lot of social reinforcement in our secular culture at large to live mostly in the separateness and not in the oneness. I love the great Hindu myth of creation, which talks about in the beginning, in the earliest times, there was the One. It's all that was. And out of that oneness, there arose a heat. There arose a desire, there arose a passion, a ferment, and it was out of that passion for the oneness to know, to experience, to touch, to feel itself, that it divided.

00:11:14
And it was out of that division that the great divide was formed between the earth and the sky, between the belly of the dragon and the surrounding chaos, between male and female. And so on followed the differentiation until here we are, you know, each of us in our chair with computers and automobiles and artificial fabrics in our clothing. And so the interesting thing of these teachings is that all of these states exist simultaneously. The oneness never went away. It's just that our consciousness descended, so to speak, that's the theosophical term, that we descended into this material plane from a higher plane of consciousness, a Buddhic plane, a causal plane, an astral plane, an emotional plane, and a mental plane, which are all there, all of these planes of consciousness interpenetrating each other, and now here we are.

00:12:25
In the physical plane. Here we are in our separateness. Here we are in a mode of being. And I'm sure everyone here is very sincere in their spiritual quest, but each of us spends time feathering our nest, acquiring things, taking care of our family, making sure that we look good. Doing things that reinforce the separateness. In other words, we live in both worlds. And we lose touch with that intuition. We lose touch with our source. The Jewish people have a wonderful way of phrasing it because, you know, they lived in exile for 2,000 years from the land of Israel. And so they said that that was symbolic of our exile from God, that it was as if the Shekinah, the bride of God, had been separated from God.

00:13:31
And the bride of God is wandering throughout the world, longing for reunion with the beloved. And so, in a sense, are we in exile? That's one reason I think why I personally have felt so heartened to leave the exile that I had been in from my own heritage and to discover a newfound spirituality in the Reformed Jewish synagogue that I had never experienced during my earlier years. It's funny how you can go full circle. But how do we awaken ourselves? How do we reunite the Shekinah with God? How do we cultivate intuition? Fortunately, this morning, I had the opportunity to look through the library here and find the answer to that question. The answer is very interesting. It's just as in the beginning when there was the great oneness which grew through passion, through desire.

00:14:57
The universe unfolded and so it is for us as we are, you might say, trapped in this physical realm that's not necessarily such. such a prison. We have wonderful things. Look at the beautiful artwork in this room. The wonderful music that we listen to. It's through desire. It's through desire that our soul awakens its own yearning to return back to the source. And that desire can start out as sexual desire. Let's see if I can swing around here. Not really. I could jump, right? It starts out as, you know, the love of a husband and a wife, the love of a parent and a child. It may seem like this is my wife or my husband or my child, but that's the beginning of a love that expands out to encompass everything, to encompass everyone's wife, right?

00:16:04
Everyone's child. And I think that in our age, one of the fullest expressions of what I'm trying to get at comes from the poetry of Walt Whitman. How many of you are familiar with Whitman's poetry? Practically everybody. Isn't that something? You know, they say his great poem, Song of Myself, may be the greatest American poem ever written. Some people find it long and tedious, but he had what the critics call an earthy mysticism. I mean, he had wonderful lines like, 'Boy, I just love the smell of my armpits.' And he must be the person from whom we derive the phrase, 'you know, have you hugged a tree today?' Because in Whitman's poetry, he loves everything. He loves the ocean. He loves the trees.

00:17:05
He loves people from every walk of life and every age, whether they are trappers or Indians or working-class people or dying soldiers. Old and sick people. And he looks at people and he says, 'I recognize you.' I see your yearning. I know that you, scurvy-ridden leper, that you long to be hugged and nurtured and nourished. I love you, air and trees and the crow.' You know, it was love bursting out of everything. And there's that wonderful line in, in Whitman where he goes, he says, 'You can hear my barbaric yap over the rooftops of the world.' It was like bursting out. Bursting out of everything. I love the carpets. I love the flowers. I love the chair. I am that. There is nothing that I am not.

00:18:09
And he would then wax into metaphysical descriptions of the cosmos and the heavens and the realms of astrology and Pythagorean philosophy, and then he would bring it right back down to some smelly canvas sail on a sailboat and say, 'I love that too,' and savor its essence. That there is nothing, there is no molecule. And of course, you know, his great book, Leaves of Grass. I think what he's saying by titling his book of poetry, Leaves of Grass, is even in the most simple, most mundane thing, a leaf of grass, a grain of sand, is a universe, is an infinity. But it's not just the intellect. You know, we all know this intellectually. But to reach out with passion, to reach out with the fullness of our hearts is how we open our consciousness to reclaim the world that we are. Because it's just fundamentally an illusion to think that we are these separate, skin-encapsulated egos sitting in these chairs. That we have been conventionally taught to believe. You know, if I want to see who I am, I just look in the mirror, right? Wrong. That's just the tip of the iceberg.

00:19:46
And as we allow ourselves as mature adults to appreciate that our identity, who we are, extends out beyond this suit and tie and shirt. It extends out beyond the room, extends out beyond the city of Los Angeles or the political culture of Southern California or out beyond North America or out beyond the oceans, out beyond the planet, out beyond the solar system, out beyond the cosmos, and even inside, inside ourselves. inside our organs, inside the molecules that make us up, that we are part of every virus and every bacteria. And at the same time, embracing the dark side, that we are part of that which we conventionally label evil. There are murderers walking amongst us and here in this metropolitan community, and we are they. We are they.

00:21:00
There are thieves, and we partake of that. That's part of who we are. There are rapists, and that's part of who we are. There are people who are cheating on their wives, people who are cheating on their employers. We are they. We have all of that. There are animals living in the woods who live by hunting and killing, and we are them. And certainly at the cellular level, there are amoebas who go around swallowing up other amoebas, and that's part of our consciousness too. Everything that we fear and find loathsome and disgusting and abominable is part of our consciousness, the light side and the dark side, Christ and Satan. Our consciousness embraces it all so that we can feel compassion for all of that. That's the unfolding of intuition.

00:22:08
You know, who is one of the greatest intuitive geniuses of humanity? If I had to put on my list of the top ten, I would put very close to the top, William Shakespeare, of whom Manly Hall wrote. Because in the plays of Shakespeare, we see a couple of things. We see first the Renaissance embodiment of the ancient Celtic mystery traditions, but also we find in Shakespeare a consciousness who extended into the superconscious, but also he could write. From the inside of everybody, a drunkard, a beggar, a king, a lover, male and female, he knew them all. He loved them all. He wrote with great love for all of these figures. And some of his greatest characters are distasteful. They're the villains. Or they're the simple people.

00:23:16
And why I mention Shakespeare, I know that probably nobody in this room has his writing talent. But you see, we all have his consciousness. We all are Shakespeare. We all have the capacity to enter into, to unite with realms of consciousness everywhere. Because our consciousness is a drop in the same ocean. of consciousness that was Shakespeare, that was Beethoven, that was Mozart, or Plato, or Manly Hall, or Obadiah Harris, or Urbindo. Every being, whoever existed, whose life entered into that super-conscious realm, or whose life was an expression of genius, has left their mark in what the theosophists would call the Akashic Records, which is just another realm of consciousness. And had we more time, I could demonstrate this to you. Obadiah talked earlier about the mystery school traditions.

00:24:31
I have had the good fortune of being associated with one such Mystery School run by Jean Houston and I remember over 20 years ago attending one of the first sessions with her and she took a young woman who had some musical ability and she put her into a hypnotic trance state for about 30 seconds and she said, 'now go into the realm of consciousness that is Vivaldi' and come back out with a Piano concerto. Thirty seconds later, that woman came out of the hypnotic state, sat down at the piano, and played a piano concerto in the style of Vivaldi. One that had never been played before. See, she was trained to go into that state. And of course, we can't all play piano, we can't all write, we can't all act, but we can go.

00:25:35
Each of us has a place where we can go. We don't all do Vivaldi or Mozart or Shakespeare, but we each have our own very special channel into the supraconscious realms, into the archetypal realms, the realms of genius, the realms of spirit. Maybe we resonate because of our training in a particular profession or trade. Maybe we resonate because of a past life resonance. I have a past life resonance with the Roman philosopher Seneca, who actually was a playwright and a philosopher and ran the Roman Empire for five years because he was the tutor to Nero. For each of us, it's different. But we get in touch with it through our longing, through our yearning, and through an acknowledgement that that yearning is important. Maybe the most important aspect of our whole life, that yearning for the beloved, that yearning for oneness, that yearning to return to the prime evil source from which we came. That yearning for union with the divine, with the absolute.

00:27:12
I think this would be a good point for me to open up the floor and I'll be happy to field any questions that you may have. Yes, sir. I want to thank you for talking to us as if we know, opening the door of your mind much more so that we could also receive and recognize it. You're welcome. I'm thanking him. Yes. He's talking to us as if we know. He opens the door for you to receive and give us more. As if we may not know. We may offend someone. Did everybody hear that? He's thanking me for talking to you as if you know. And I guess I do feel that way. I don't like to set myself up as the expert on intuition because I run the intuition network.

00:28:01
I happen to feel that every one of you knows something about intuition that I can't quite yet grasp at all. That I can learn something about it from everyone of you. And one of the things that we say in the intuition network, if you want to cultivate your intuition. All you have to do is get together with a small group of people, five or six or ten, and share with each other what you already know. Because every one of you is an encyclopedia of knowledge. If you begin to probe what you already know and have someone to listen to you. Are there other questions? Yes. Hi, Sandy.

00:28:53
Facilitator. And I'm more unconventional. There are three who are really corporate people. And I sat around the table and I tried to show love. They hardly acknowledged me. I mean, not being the victim. But I would feel a happiness if I said there's a reason why I'm there. And I tried to play it through. But I went home and I couldn't wait until I got home and played with my dog and felt more centered. I didn’t want to feel a separation, but the lesson I got, and I want to ask you about it, was that it’s still about nobody out there is going to fix me. It’s still about going within. But I really wanted to be part of these three people who were like the corporate, and it was such a heaviness.

00:29:39
So I know that we’re all one, and we’re all one conscious mind, but I couldn’t seem to do it. I couldn’t wait to get home at night. I mean, I called out and went to dinner with someone, but I could feel joy again. So how do you? Thank you for the question. Did everybody hear that? Okay, what Sandy was saying is that she was in a situation, a business situation, with people with whom she wanted to feel one with, but she didn't feel that. She felt excluded. She felt separate. And she's saying, what can I do to break through? to reach that feeling of oneness. And I have to say that, first of all, what you need to do is accept the separateness. The separateness is there.

00:30:25
It can't be denied. It's part of our condition, living in this world of exile. But once you accept the separateness, there is a whole art to the oneness. One of the words for that art is tantra. It's a practice of oneness. And sometimes it involves things that would be considered socially taboo and things that can even be a little risky, in fact even dangerous, if they're not practiced sometimes with a teacher or in a context where you have some social reinforcements so that you can feel that it's okay, you can understand that it's okay. For example, a tantric practice in this situation might involve letting yourself really enter into an imaginal world, a world of images, in which you are loving those people, even physically. Breaking through that barrier.

00:31:27
There are tantric exercises to that effect. I don't necessarily recommend that you just go home and try that, because it's; The tantric path is considered a path that you really do need a teacher to do it with. But that's one method. And in general, though, you can, if I didn't want to do that, and if I were you, what I would do is I'd take a long walk in the woods, you know, and I'd talk to the trees, not out loud necessarily, but from my heart. I've been very influenced by one of the rabbis of the Hasidic Jewish tradition. One of my favorite prayers is, O Lord, please make it possible for me to walk in the woods every day and let it be possible for me to see the radiance of the plants and the trees and understand the pulse of your spirit that flows through me.

00:32:30
Through them, and let my heart open up and radiate with them, so I can pour out my soul to you in that environment. That's where, you know, you have to find sacred space, moments of oneness, and you can take that situation, for example, to which you just referred that felt so isolating, and when you're in that state of oneness, however it is, if it's in a bathtub for you or if it's in the woods, or if it's in meditation or reading poetry. And from that place of wholeness and oneness, send healing to the place that needs healing in your life. And there's a wonderful secret about healing. I got it out of A Course in Miracles. At the end of A Course in Miracles, there's a lesson on healing, and it's this.

00:33:19
Healing can take place in an instant. It just takes about an instant when you send healing. And the thing that you need to do is always trust that once you've entered into that state, that you've focused on the situation or person which you believe requires healing, enter into a state of healing consciousness, send it, and then let go. Trust that the healing will be accomplished, that the Great Spirit will find a way to heal that situation. Does that help? Oh, great, thank you. You're welcome. Yes? Do we all have the same capacity for intuition? I know we all have that certain part in us, but can we all achieve the same capacity, such as yours? I know it takes years and years and years. Is there a certain time?

00:34:14
The question is, do we all have the same capacity for intuition? And actually, it's very funny because You say it takes years and years and years, and yet I can tell you I don't think I'm as intuitive today as I was when I was born. We all do. We're all born totally open. We're all born totally intuitive. No one is more intuitive than that young baby who can learn how to speak and how to walk. Look at all the things that a baby learns intuitively in their first years of life. The differences between us have nothing to do with our capacity. We all have infinite capacity. The differences between us have to do with how we block ourselves, how deeply we have bought into the illusion that we are separate, that we are not intuitive.

00:35:10
And some of us are much more attached to that illusion than others. But it's still nothing more than an attachment to an illusion. And some who are the most attached can let go the quickest, too. So please don't think that I'm setting myself up as being more intuitive. I'm just a person who's spent more time focusing in on it. On that question, can I read a line from Manley Hall? Yes. Here. Do you want the microphone? Oh, you've got yours. I've got it here. I'm just going to read a line from Manny Hall on that question, if I might. Can you hear me? Yes. Why don't you stand up, Obadiah? I'm just going to read a line from Manley Hall on that question, if I might.

00:35:53
All things derive their life from light, and this light in its root is life itself. This indeed is the light that lighteth every man who cometh into the world. Everybody's got it. Was that, you know, Browning who said, 'there's a divine spark in every person, though he may desecrate it, he cannot quite lose it?' Yeah, I think it really is like that. It's not quite like the skill to be an athlete or the skill to be a great pianist. Intuition is different. Intuition is fundamental. It has to do with the fact that we are part of the oneness. Of the universe. That's where it comes from. That's the source of intuition. And we all partake of that equally. But we all have differences in terms of how we block it.

00:36:50
And we have differences in terms of what talents we have with which we can express it. I will never have the talent to express my intuition the way Shakespeare or Mozart did. Then again, they didn't have the talent to express it the way Jeffrey does. So each of us is unique, and each of us is totally connected to it. One more just short question on the intuition. Are females more intuitive, or are they just more open than males? Well, now, based on what I've just told you, the question is, are females more than males? And actually, everyone's different. I don't think, really, that females are more open. In fact, I recently did a television interview with a spiritual teacher who said it's just the opposite. It's the men who are more intuitive, not the women.

00:37:49
That this is one of these cultural myths, and there's a way in which men are more intuitive. I mean, like, you know, when a man sees a woman he's attracted to, he just goes for it, right? Like, gut level. Whereas a woman, when a woman's looking for a mate, she's thinking, hmm. can he support the kids? So women are more logical in some respects. Yes? You pointed out that we all basically have the ability to be intuitive. Don't you think an important key note is focus? If we don't focus on it, if we don't reach up for it, we don't develop it. If we focus on it, whatever our interests are, then we're going to pull down the intuitive knowledge.

00:38:43
And of course, what she's saying is, we can all be 100% intuitive, but if we don't focus on it, so what? And that's the paradox of all spiritual training. That's the paradox of living in a world where we're separate, and yet we're one. It's like, The Zen people who say, you know, there's nothing to do to get enlightened. You're already enlightened all the time. You just have to kind of appreciate that that's the case. But, you know, that appreciation is a subtle thing. It's a very subtle thing. It's a very special thing. And I've found in my life that it has to do with, like, if I tell you to relax, if you're really tense. How many of you are feeling tense this morning? A couple of you.

00:39:32
See, if I tell you, okay, hey, relax! Right? It's not going to work. What's the matter with you? You can't relax. But, you see, there's an art to relaxation. If I tell you, for those of you who are tense, and many of you are tense and you don't know it, because it becomes so chronic. In fact, all of us, we all walk around with chronic tension. It's true. So if I tell you, you know, squeeze your shoulders up to your neck. Go ahead. It's okay. Do it. And squeeze your fists, right? And tighten your arms and hold it tighter and tighter and tighter and tighter and squeeze your back and your other fist and tighten up your pelvis and tighten it. Tighten your legs. Curl your toes and tighten them.

00:40:21
Okay, and now relax. Right? See, that's how you relax. You tighten. You tighten beyond the level of the chronic tension that we all walk around with. And chronic tension is almost the same as chronic separateness. Because when we're relaxed, then we open up. We breathe and we feel that oneness. It's an equation. Sort of tension is equivalent to separateness. But sometimes it's important to get even tenser and tenser and tenser. And then when we relax, we really open up. So that's part of the striving. That's part of the discipline of spiritual practice, of opening up to intuition. And then there are many tools. You see, there are an infinite number of tools for intuition. Here in this room, there are a thousand intuition training devices, if we care to use them.

00:41:25
Every object can be a device for intuition. You know how Walt Whitman found that he could love every grain of sand and every leaf of grass. He could see God in each, the infinite. With God so near at hand, every manifestation of God is a teacher of intuition. You can, for example, I'll just give you one simple example. How many of you have a problem? Right. I mean, we all have at some level of our life a problem. Whether it is, what am I going to have for lunch? What am I going to do at work? Or what am I going to do with my house? Or with my primary relationship? You can take any little object. It could be a pen. It could be a thread. It could be a flower, a picture, any item. In fact, let's just do it for a second. Focus on an object in this room. It could be something personal. It could be something in the room. It could be anything. It could be a person. And just mentally, to yourself, tell your problem to that object. And in your mind, just wait and see if the object won't speak to you and tell you its answer. How would it advise you with regard to your problem?

00:43:25
Okay, how many of you felt that a message came? About, it looks like about a third of you, and I know I kind of rushed through it and did it spontaneously without much preparation, but if you take a little more time, if you put yourself into a receptive state, you can find answers everywhere. You know, the native peoples called that; let me rephrase that. The anthropologists notice that native peoples do this all the time, and the anthropologists call it animism, which is the idea that everything is filled with spirit. Everything is alive. Everything can speak to you. My wife, who teaches creativity programs, calls that ability holographic thinking. That the holograph of consciousness is everywhere and every image, every shape, every object has its own message. Yes.

00:44:39
The question is whether you can use this method of holographic thinking to predict into the future. And I guess the question depends on a couple of different things. Number one, it depends on the state of awareness that you are in. I do think that we have access to the future just as much as we have access to the past. But it does require you to be centered and really open to that. So, how well you do at any given moment depends on how busy your mind is with other things, how focused you are. And also, with regard to the future, there is a certain amount of uncertainty regarding the future.