Hi everyone,

I've just been chuckling about how incredibly perfect Hummingbird and Bear was for my week. I held my workshop on KNOWING yesterday (let's remember those famous words from Bear medicine: "If we choose to believe that there are many questions to life, we must also believe that the answers to those questions reside within us. Each and every being has the capacity to quiet the mind, enter the silence and know."). Since the workshop, I have been flooded with that hummingbird feeling, an incredibly deep sense of satisfaction. You see, the workshop itself evolved simply from sitting in the Bear space and then following the knowing I found there. To see it manifest, WOW!

I'm going to put on this post something I wrote for my own newsletter, but I think you might enjoy it also. It details one of the moments of illumination about knowing that occurred in my life.

Lori

A discussion of KNOWING

In one of my college psychology classes, my professor read aloud the following definition of a word:
"a flat-bottomed Chinese skiff usually propelled by two short oars"

He then asked if anyone thought that they knew the word but could not recall it. I raised my hand. Since I felt as though the word were on the tip of my tongue, he asked me to participate in a demonstration.

The experiment involved asking me fifteen questions about the word in question. He asked things like:
- how many syllabi are in the word? 1, 2, or more than 2?
- does the word begin with a hard sound (like K or G) or a soft sound (like S or Sh)?
- does the word end with a hard sound (like K or G) or a soft sound (like S or Sh)?
- how many letters are in the word?

I answered EVERY question correctly. That day, I realized that we know more than we are aware of. It amazed me that my brain could access such specific, accurate and precise facts about a word that I could not recall. I wondered what might be the implications.

What might be the implications? How might our days be different if we assumed that we know more than we typically access?

I have been curious about how we might better tap into all of knowledge (well, at least more of it) to serve our own lives and purposes. In that interest, I've been practicing the art of tapping into knowing with the use of various intuitive tools, including dreamwork, body awareness, meditation, prayer and kinesiology. I've also been learning how to ask questions, just like my professor did, that help me focus on what I know rather than what I do not know.

These practices have helped me simplify my life and my decisions. By asking the correct questions and using intuitive tools correctly, I more easily gain clarity about both big questions (e.g. should I take this job or not?) and small daily choices (e.g. will turning right or left at this corner bring me to an empty parking space?). The applications are everywhere in life!

Oh yes, and by the way, the word the psychology professor defined was "sampan". : )