My Australian friend Susie Surtees and I were talking about intuition and meditation one day and she took these notes and put it together in a really clear way. I just found the document and thought I'd pass it on.
There are two worlds that offer many kinds of perception.
There’s the "outer" world with your eyes open where you see objects and space: we generally become aware of 90% of this world through vision — you know this one well.
We’ve become used to thinking about vision-based perception as the major way of perceiving.
When you close your eyes, though, there’s a different world — an inner reality of energy, imagination, and many levels of nonphysical experience and awareness.
What happens in these inner worlds often determines the way the outer world looks and functions.
There are also three parts of your brain and perception feels different and behaves differently when you’re in each of those parts. Every kind of perception is legitimate and useful, and provides different things.
The lower brain (brain stem/reptile brain) controls automatic functions like breathing, heartbeat, and digestion. It is very connected with your body consciousness.
It’s also about survival and safety, causing the fight-or-flight reaction when we feel threatened.
It can provide you with immediate "energy information" via vibration, in the form of expanded or contracted sensations and feelings.
The mid brain (limbic system) is the center for sensory awareness — vision, hearing, touch, taste, and smell. It influences long-term memories, motivation, appetites, and sleep cycles. It’s also where you experience similarities, love, affection, and belonging.
Vision is closest to the upper brain functions and smell is closest to the reptile brain functions.
In the upper brain (neocortex) there are two hemispheres.
In the right hemisphere we experience patterns, direct knowing, conceptual awareness, and process experiential learning.
In the left hemisphere we make choices, control lower brain impulses, anticipate consequences, organize thoughts, plan, set goals, and practice critical thinking.
It’s also the center of language, analysis, definition, and meaning.
When you operate in the left hemisphere most of the time, you limit other modes of perception, which limits your potential, and your reality.
You block your ability to know intuitively, through direct knowing. Direct knowing saves time, is accurate, and efficient.
Meditation moves you out of the left hemisphere into the right brain, then drops you into your midbrain and reptile brain, and further into your heart.
It helps you become more conscious of other more expanded ways of perceiving. You realize your body, your cells, and the field of energy around you are all conscious! Together all your ways of knowing form a giant nonlocalized brain.
It helps to tune in to what you’re experiencing physically in your body to develop intuition so that when you’re confused you can cut through the mental chatter and confusion to the core truths.
You’ll learn to do this during everyday activities and to stay consciously aligned with your personal values during times of stress and in all of life.
You’ll become better at regulating your emotional and thinking landscapes and be in a place of calmness and ease during unpredictable times.
Meditation can be active — guided and purposeful, or passive — no thought, just direct experience.
Copyright by Penney Peirce 2011
