Forests of Imagination

Keeping our connection to our inner guide

Talk by Padmayogini from the Inner Guide workshop

Intergrating Mindfulness Meditation

Integrating our meditation practice particularly mindfulness can help us to stay attuned to our intuition or our inner guide Using mindfulness during the day can help us to centre ourselves bringing our awareness of breath ,body and intuition.
This practice helps to lessen the emotional and physical sways that we can experience, bringing us into relation with what is going on inside our emotional and physical being.

When we find ourselves in any particular situation where we are feeling unsure, apprehensive and so on we can use our mindfulness, our awareness to notice just how we are feeling. Is our breath more shallow, are there butterflies in our stomach, what are our thoughts telling us? Then we can check-in with our Intuition ,with our sense of our inner guidance, and we can ask ourselves such things as am I apprehensive because I need more confidence in my own abilities or to trust myself more? Or is it this deeper sense of guidance that is telling me to hold on a minute, asking me to decide whether It really Is the best course of action to take or whether that person we’re involved with really is the person they’re saying they are.

Mindfulness and meditation in general also bring about a sense of wholeness, we are in touch with all of ourselves and here we are making particular effort to include in our awareness that sense of inner richness I mention and trust in ourselves and who we are. The more we can practice in this sort of way the harder it will be to be fooled or to fool ourselves in situations.

Finding Your Own Forest

Taking ourselves out into the forest literally or metaphorically is important. If you can visit a forest or wood great, spend time in the cool dappled shade under the branches of the trees, take in the energy and the atmosphere of nature. Spend time in appreciation and reflection developing a sense of interconnectedness.

If you can’t visit of wood or a forest, then there are the local trees in your garden or park. They will still bring about an experience of that connection if we give some time to really looking at them. Experiments have shown that trees really can communicate with each other and even over some distance, they retain these links even if we’re not aware of them. Perhaps we can sense something of this when we are nearby, perhaps we can sit under a tree in the park, perhaps we can paint or draw them or photograph them. In this way the beauty and energy of trees and the natural world that they’re part of can become a greater part of ourselves and it’s in such cases or at such times that we can feel this connection that our inner world can blossom and out inner guide can venture forth and be seen more clearly.

Stay in contact with the rythmns and cycles of nature

If we can, it’s important to spend more time in the garden or outside, the quality of energy and interconnectedness of the natural world helps to literally keep us grounded and whole. If we can literally walk barefoot on the grass experiencing the feel of the grass and the earth beneath your feet and allowing ourselves to be nourished by our mother earth then we will gradually build up confidence in our connection to the natural world and to the wholeness of our experience.

If you can grow something or look after plants or flowers particularly growing something from seed maybe a few salad leaves or a tomato plant that you can also harvest and eat then you are really tuning yourself into the natural rhythms of life, taking part in a cycle of life and death in this small way.

Giving ourselves permission to play a bit more

Our intuition is activated not so much through serious activities intellectual or mental exertion, but through playing on the swings, kicking through falling leaves, splashing in puddles or laughing with our friends.
But we often need to give ourselves this permission in order to play, so much of the world around us, so much of our conditioning leads us to believe that the world is a very serious place and that adults are adults by the virtue of no longer playing.

Keep an Inner Guide journal or source book

Keeping some form of journal or scrapbook can really be helpful when the first exploring our inner nature, we can write in these books, including any dreams or reflections in meditation that seem relevant. We can put in cuttings and images we find in magazines that seem to connect with us, we might want to put photographs in these books or we might want to write poems, We can also include any of those times when we actually felt this connection with our inner guide when we felt we were being shown something in this less tangible way, something that proved to be correct for us.
In this way we build up our confidence, confidence to trust this in a voice and its Inner guidance more strongly. If you can keep such a journal are even for a few weeks without turning it into a duty or chore that it can really prove to be quite a valuable tool and source of further inspiration.

Take a part of a day when you are free to follow your inner guide

If you can sometimes ,just try and take a part of the day when you have no ties or jobs to do and just follow the way your intuition leads you.. Just walk out on a different road or take a different bus route that you’ve never been on before. Or take a map of the bus or tube routes ,close your eyes and stick a pin in the map and then go to that place. When you get there just look around to see what might be there that is calling to you, that might be making a connection that seems to be relevant to your life.
Perhaps you might be able to go with a few friends to a museum where each of you can choose a particular room that seems to call to you. Go in that room look around ,what was there for you ? Make a note of those things and afterwards share your findings with your friends.
It’s important to keep free without preconceived ideas or worries about whether there is actually an end result something that you have to do or something that you have to find. It’s more about connecting with the richness in the world outside us and finding connections from our inner experience to the outside world

Developing a creative practice

If we can carry on drawing and painting, taking photographs, exploring creative materials writing and so on then this will all feed into our inner dimensions and nourish our inner guidance. It’s important at first and also during our creative life that we can be free to explore materials without worries about our ability or technical expertise.
If you want to develop your art practice more formally then of course you can take classes as well but all artists and creative people need some time to shake free of style and external pressures and reconnect with their inner pool of inspiration.

Honour your own unique understanding and experience of life

Confidence in our inner experience, allowing ourselves to be taught and guided by what we feel deep in our intuitive and heart connection, comes about more easily if we have an attitude of respect towards ourselves. An attitude of harshness and judgemental criticism focusing on our failures rather than our successes will only cause our intuitive sense to sink deeper out of our awareness Allowing ourselves to be swayed too much by others judgment of ourselves or their ideas and suggestions for what we should do also undermines our confidence.
Remember our inner guide especially at first ,will be more like a delicate flower than a comet blazing the trail for us!
Being able to respect ourselves as women with the particular roles that we have and the experiences that we have in the world is also very important. The outward respect and love, metta that we have for ourselves will communicate to that deepest sense of ourselves and support this particular way of working and living in the world.