BLOWING THE LID OFF INSIGHT
“Your potential for insight is the most valuable gift you possess – the most valuable, bar none”
Your potential for insight is the most valuable gift you possess – the most valuable, bar none. Only insights can pull you out of living an unconscious life and wake you up to what’s important in life and what will make you happy. Did you realize this? Given the useless crap society teaches us, probably not. What would happen if the sheep were to gain insights capable of shattering their limited view of themselves and the world? God forbid they get exposed to anything that might help them grow up, wake up and evolve to higher states of BEing. What would change if we learned that insight doesn’t just occur between the ears but from much deeper levels of hidden knowledge within us? Everything would change, that’s what. You would access subtle realms within and around you, states of consciousness that would disabuse you of your tiny mad ideas. Your life would become richer, deeper, more connected and more alive. This occurs quite naturally when you pierce the veil of truth with your own insights. INsight means you have this power within you, in dimensions of your being far beyond your thinking mind. When self-knowledge is revealed in insights from the heart and soul, it is recognized, re-cognized as a deep knowing that has the feel of coming from a transcendent energy, a remembering of the awareness that we were before we were separated from it, before we dis-membered ourselves. This is the knowing that is not confined within us but stretches out into and connects with a common field. Aha moments of insight open the gate to this field of intelligence.
If you are serious about personal development, you’ll start tuning in to your own innate wisdom. Only when you commit to an inward gaze can insights reveal their secrets and in so doing expand your consciousness. The alternative is to mindlessly accept what is presented to you as true, to be a victim of a culture that bombards you with half-truths and lies. You either find out truths for yourself or you become complicit as a sheep. The problem with sheep is that they believe what they’re told. Like anything else worth knowing, insight is either sidelined in our society or corrupted by minds that don’t understand it. The only way you can know it is to know it up close and personal. You must be a light unto yourself.
Shedding your sheep’s clothing means becoming your own authority. It means trusting your own ability to test things out for yourself. All you need do is open your mind, examine your beliefs objectively, think and feel for yourself. You will begin to realize how indispensable Aha moments are to your authentic personal development. And by this, I mean knowing yourself, forgiving yourself, loving yourself, living and expressing your highest values and deepest passions in the world. For many, that’s plenty, but there may be some among you who want to take personal development all the way. You might agree with me that opening up to and experiencing the Truth of who we are is the pinnacle of insight, the apex of consciousness, the greatest human achievement possible. My research found that awakening to who we are entails allowing the unfolding of the whole spectrum of potentials within us. These potentials are there, they’ve just been covered up by the ego mind, the false self that we take ourselves to be. The biggest Aha moment of all is experienced when we discover, in the still and silent core of our being, a place of deep and abiding happiness and peace.
There are 3 major considerations when blowing the lid off insight:
1. THE ‘EXPERTS’ KNOW ZILCH ABOUT INSIGHT
Academic research into insight shows that academics are hopelessly limited in their understanding of the whole subject. They generally don’t even know the difference between insight and intuition, using the terms interchangeably. In a very real sense it doesn’t matter because when you’ve had your own Aha moments, you have no further need of theories. As Krishnamurti says: “Learning implies authority…with insight there is no authority”. Only YOU can know your Aha moment because it happens IN you. It’s IN-sight, not OUT-sight. It doesn’t come to you from an outside source through osmosis. There is no book you can read or expert you can consult to absorb the true meaning of insight. It is a visceral experience that happens in you, through you and for you. That’s why no conceptual ‘understanding’ of insight will ever substitute for the real thing.
2. DEEP INSIGHTS ARE NOT A BRAIN THING
Like everything else in our culture, experts try to research insights within a scientific world-view, a materialist perspective where ‘things’ are primary, The assumption is that all the laws of the universe can be figured out by observing and measuring these things. Within this limited paradigm therefore, the ‘thing’ we call the brain is primary, and consciousness is just a production of the brain. The intellectual capacities of the brain are taken to be the crown jewels of consciousness, haha! I laugh because this is like saying that your television is responsible for producing the programmes you watch on it. The brain is just a receiver through which consciousness flows.
Consciousness understood at its deepest level is limitless and eternal, an understanding that science can never reach. Within its own scope of measuring stuff, science is fine. The problem arises when science sticks its nose into internal experiences, phenomena over which it has no dominion, no useful tools of exploration. What we know depends on how we know. We need to be clear on the means by which we can attain knowledge. The understanding of anything under the sun, whether objective or subjective, depends on the lens through which we view it. In the case of insight, science is self-designed to fail. It is not equipped to understand what is interior, i.e. insight, consciousness, personal resonance, but only what is exterior, i.e. objects in the world. Science might be able to measure electrical and chemical activity in the brain but that says nothing about the phenomenal experience of insight or how it can transform your life. Insight can only be known through the heart, the gut, the soul and all the other subtle realms of our being which mainstream science fails to acknowledge since they don’t believe in anything beyond the physical world. Anyone might think they’d never heard of quantum mechanics!
You can become your own scientist by inviting your own insights*. With insight comes true knowing, knowing that can be owned because it has been experienced by you. In a world of endless opinions and theories, here is something you can truly trust because you have felt it in the core of your being. If you keep turning your attention inwards you discover intelligences that reside in a rainbow of consciousness from body to mind to soul to spirit. All of these dimensions of your being are capable of offering up their gifts of insight. And the further along the spectrum you experience your Aha moment, the deeper the insight. So, insights at the soul, or intuitive level of consciousness resonate throughout your whole body and mind, they pulsate with an uplifting energy. This clears up the academics’ confusion over insight and intuition. Insights are the fruits of Aha moments, the information received. The intuitive dimension is a soul level of consciousness from which spring insights that produce deep and life-changing self-knowledge.
3. INSIGHTS REVEAL THE PARADOXICAL NATURE OF REALITY
Nearly everything in life that’s worth knowing is paradoxical. We might kid ourselves that things are clear-cut, that the setting of clear rules and boundaries and distinctions will ward off evil, make us feel safe in an unpredictable world. But when we examine our belief systems we gain insights into the childish nature of this kind of thinking. We realize that ‘our’ beliefs are infantilizing us, that they are mere second-hand theories, stories developed through tradition and habit. We adopt these stories to build defenses against a scary world. Aha moments help us to grow up and take responsibility for our lives by facing up to and relaxing these defenses. Growing up is about going beyond the fears of our ego mind and accessing our inner wisdom, our intuitive guide. Waking up is about integrating all the paradoxes we observe and experience in this world, instead of trying to make life black and white. We open to a way of thinking that makes room for apparent opposites. We start to think in terms of both/and instead of either/or. Life can be both wonderful and painful, I can be in a state of not knowing and be relaxed about it, I can let go of control and trust the outcome. Learning to feel comfortable with nursing ambiguity and uncertainty is a sign that we’re evolving. Indeed, there is a great relief in conceding the fact that we know nothing. Letting go of any concepts or beliefs opens the space for special insights. When we give up the need to know, when we admit our ignorance without feeling anxious about it, when we surrender to a higher Mind, then we can substitute stories in our heads with a growing trust in our inner knowing. We accept uncertainty, doubt, paradox and change as part of life.
Insights can never be guaranteed but they can be invited, they can be welcomed in. They tend to sprout in minds and bodies that have provided fertile soil in which they can take seed and blossom. So, give up your certainty, sell your cleverness and buy bewilderment! In this state, you will receive life-changing insights.
