Forests of Imagination

Finding Our Inner Guide

Talk by Padmayogini from the 2006 Inner Guide workshop

How have we lost touch with our inner guide our intuition our lost potential as women?
generally we have lost heart with the rhythms of life, we have lost touch with the cycles and rhythms of nature and the cycles and rhythms of our own bodies.

If we live in the city we may have lost touch with nature, the sky with its stars and the moon may be hidden from our view, we may not have the chance to walk on the grass or lie under the sun just feeling ourselves to be part of this world and the elements that make it up.

Even the cycles of youth middle age and old age are blured at the edges, our society, our conditioning leaves us with the idea that we must never grow old , fat, sick or ugly.

And where do we see the value of women’s skills and abilities? Where are the lineages and the traditions that we once had and were part of as women?

How do we see ourselves as women portrayed in the outside world? And how does this relate to what we feel and experience of ourselves as women?

Do we have any positive images of ourselves our bodily cycles and our life as women?
Or do we feel that we somehow have to disregard what our body or emotions are telling us?
when we look around in the world of advertising of television of theatre or art,how do we see women portrayed?
Are we supposed to pretend that we are not experiencing our hormonal flushes as menopausal women? Or our premenstrual or menstrual hormonal changes? Are we supposed to just carry on as though no day were different from the next, trying to appear as though we had some sort of mechanical body and mind.?

As women we need to reflect on all these questions, we need to know what our experience is rather than being told what our experience should be.
we need to find our own positive associations with our life and experience as women, so that we can affirm ourselves and our life in the face of challenging advertising and conditioning.

In order to find out inner guide, our inner strength ,we need to reclaim first of all our positive image of ourselves as women. How can we value that sometimes very quiet voice inside of ourselves if we do not have some sense of value for ourselves?
We need to regain trust in ourselves, in our understanding and our evaluation of the world, we need to trust our experience, trust what our heart says to us and we can do this, we can work on this and we can build up our confidence faith and trust.

So what are the benefits of being able to find our inner guidance and our Inner strength? How does that help us and how does it help others?
well we will find that this inner voice senses the directions in which we need to go in life. It can show us the way that most benefit s our growth and development, it gives us an underlying grasp of motive and intention ours and other peoples. Our inner voice our inner heart ,what might be called our intuition gives us confidence, we find we can rely on it more and more. It can become our guiding voice in the complicated and chaotic modern life which we often lead.

Findings our inner guide enables us to become more whole, to become more integrated to become happier and to become more in tune with the cycles and rhythms within ourselves and the world outside.

one of the most damaging ideas our culture perpetuates is the idea that we cannot trust ourselves or our perceptions. We are often raised to doubt ourselves especially as women. And to look outside for validation of our perceptions and to assume that someone other than ourselves can tell us what is true. Or that others can see us more clearly than we can see ourselves. Rather than being allowed to learn from our mistakes we desperately don’t want to make any mistakes at all we want to be perfect, we see those images of perfection all around us and we can feel shame or guilt at not living up to that Idea of perfection.

When we first begin to listen to ourselves, to listen to our inner sense, it’s only natural to feel some anxiety until we’ve worked in this way for a little time we need to have faith in ourselves. As our experience develops we will have confidence based on this experience.

so we need to step outside of these collective voices, for this work we must step outside being guided by consensus and start to listen and pay attention very closely to that inner voice that says “I know they say……………“ but my intuition is telling me this.. We need to learn to trust not to do something when it feels wrong to us.

we will become clear through close listening ,paying wise attention to the inner process, what really is the inner guide we can rely on and what is our ordinary ego mind at work.

We are contacting our heart and mind it’s not the opposite of the rational mind it’s not sentimental nor irrational, it is a deeper whole felt sense of the world ,our relationships and our connection to the whole.

It’s paying attention to our creative experience and expression, listening to the voice that asks us, what about writing something, what about buying these paints or pastels, how about putting on a CD and dancing, how about singing? It’s about contacting our inspiration about finding out what we enjoy, what gives us satisfaction, what is really fulfilling in our lives.

It’s about being brave enough to ask these questions, to sit in reflection or meditation and ask ourselves if these things are true and what we should do.