Hello

What is instinctive is a natural state of understanding ones sensory guidance system information.  Your sensory guidance system is your 5 (+1) senses. Seeing, hearing, feeling, tasting and smelling are the 5 and the +1 is intuition.

Learned behavior is often not instinctive although it may be referred to as such or as a reaction.  This type of behavior takes us away from our center, by not allowing a direct connection to our sensory guidance system.

Sometimes one learns to deny what is instinctive due to circumstances and belief systems.  This is learned behavior that moves one away from his sensory guidance system.

To return to an instinctive way of being in the world one must understand his inner working belief systems and then shift away from those that are inaccurate or unhelpful.

It requires a natural and responsive relationship with ones sensory guidance system and ones inner landscape .  It’s thinking and feeling plus knowing that results in being.

The first step in developing this relationship has to do with trusting oneself and knowing oneself.  A knowing is something that is informed by your sensory guidance system and your intuition.  It is something more than book knowledge it has a connection to spirit.  In example, people who believe in god, do so through a knowing; they have a set of facts or information that give them a theory of a higher power and then they have an intuitive or spiritual or faithful experience they refer to as a knowing.  It is thinking plus feeling and intuition that results in a sense of knowing.

Think of what you know.  It is more than something you have read in a book and learned, it also has a component of reality through your own experience or inner feeling.  I know I love someone not just by my thoughts and mind but also my heart.  Careers are this way too – people know they are meant to do something by a connection to their sensory guidance information, book knowledge and something intangible that connects it to them – a knowing.

This is something that is important to develop early in life so that individuals can find where they are meant to be – whom they love and what they want to spend their life doing.  When I work with people who are unhappy or unsure of their choices, often it is a result of them having chosen career paths or life-paths to please someone outside of him/herself rather than from their own interior knowing.

Developing a knowing once you have disregarded it for a long time takes patience, understanding, compassion, listening, and development of attention to ones senses.  It is a process of opening or re-opening a portal to ones sensory guidance system.

One needs to increase ones awareness, perceptions, and connections to the environment around himself as well as the inner landscape of his being.  It requires a slowing down and evaluation of things that are accepted as truth but not really known.

This requires patience because it seems tedious to re-view aspects of our belief systems that seem obvious and true.  It’s an interpretation process.  Re-viewing what something means instinctively rather than interpreting different circumstances with the same reaction.

Integrating the knowing and the learning is a process of interpretation of paradigm and paradigm shifting as well as listening to our sense(s) of things.  We are spirit-human beings which is to say we have direct access to both the physical and the spiritual or intuitive.  If we choose to access and pay attention to both then we are being instinctive.

Breathing is a way of accessing and clearing out energy.  Meditation, both moving and sitting still, and yoga incorporate a stilling internally through breathing and focusing on ones center.  This helps us to gain access to ones sensory guidance system.

There is a tendency among energy workers to make an assertion that the ego or self is negative.  This is not my experience.  We are physical, psychological, and spiritual beings.  Our work is guided by both the ego and the spirit and each need, and are informed by, the other.

Historically in psychology, the ego mediates between the needs of the super-ego and the wants of the id. The super-ego is made up of introjects of the rules (belief systems that were swallowed whole without internal interpretation or evaluation – swallowed with an i-dent of truth) laid down by ones parents and society as well as ones stern experiences.  The id is pure desire.  It is like a young child – completely narcissistic and unfeeling toward others.  The ego mediates between these aspects to make choices that move the person forward in their goals as well as center them within the needs of a community.  The ego utilizes empathy and reasonableness.

Empathy is a necessary tool in developing ones connection to ones instinctive sensory guidance system.  Empathy places us in our center and in the center of our lives and relationships.  Empathy is not sympathy.  Empathy is having the ability to understand another’s perspective from their view; it is what assists us with paradigm shifting.

Often individuals will refer to the ego as power grabbing or wanting only to have power unto itself.  This is an uninformed understanding of the ego.  The role of the super-ego or id more accurately represent this kind of action.  Fear is often related to these roles and it causes an imbalance in how information is interpreted; it leads to reaction rather than instinctive action.

It is important to reorient yourself to the tool of using the ego as mediator to negotiate the space between physicality and spirituality.  If you are in a fear promoting situation and you have to trust your gut or spirit you need access to the ego to evaluate, using both your mind and your sensory guidance system, what aspects of the situation need your attention.  This is to say that fear presents itself sometimes as something that is an emotion not based in reality and sometimes as an emotion based on sensory information.  The ego in conjunction with intuition and spirit help you evaluate which is what.

The role of the ego is to move one to neutrality and then in that space be informed through ones spirituality, cognitions, and ones sensory guidance system.

The ego has a neutral feeling to it.  The id and the super-ego both have strong emotional attachments to them.  Super-ego feeling/thinking sense is stern and negative; it serves to keep you from changing or keep you in line.   Often the super-ego is Don’t or you must.  The id feeling/thinking sense is selfish and ownership; it serves to keep one connected to ones passions and desires but has no limits or boundaries.  Often the id is Mine.

Instinctive action is allowing your knowing to chart your course.  There is a natural sense of trust and peace that goes with this.  Navigating the environment of your inner landscape and the world around you requires a solid connection to your sensory guidance system as well as intuition and knowing, 5 (+1) senses, book knowledge, and an understanding of your self.

Instinctive knowing and being is thinking plus feeling and intuition. You will find more joy and success in your life if you allow yourself to be guided by your sensory guidance system.

Being is, I am, which centers you fully in yourself as a whole. Thinking and feeling are parts of the whole and more distant in their energy.  To test this say:   I am happy.  I think happy thoughts.  I feel happy.

Which of the three statements center you and are the fullest expression of your being?

See you tomorrow.

Beth