Whether you’re feeling stressed and overwhelmed by a hectic world, or simply want to spend more time focusing on your own spiritual growth, one of the best skills you can master is to learn to think and act from a space of centered, intuitive knowing.
Unfortunately, in our culture we almost always subjugate the intuitive mine to the rational, logical thinking mind. We like to plan and analyze everything that we do. This tendency is especially true when it comes to reading: we often have an unconscious bias that we must think about what we read, in order to understand it.
In this post, I want to share a great exercise that will help you to step back and find your center, through a simple insight reading technique. This process will help you to quiet your mind and teach you to notice subtle intuitive callings that originate from within.
What Is Insight Reading?
Insight reading is a process of reading that enables you to tune in to an intuitive source of knowledge and understanding. It is a process of disengaging from the rational, thinking mind and learning to listen to the emotional resonance of the words you read.
When we read, we have a tendency to analyze logically the words on the page, searching our intellect for meaning, while neglecting our intuition. This exercise will help you to counteract that tendency, open you to new realms of knowledge, and help you to increase a feeling of peace and inner joy.
This process requires you to read more slowly, opening yourself to a source of knowledge that comes from the energy and intention behind the words, rather than the words themselves.
I encourage you to experiment with this technique using the phrases provided here. Then, apply it to any passage you choose. Any writing that deals with personal or spiritual growth, or higher truths and wisdom are perfect for this technique.
With practice, you can learn to process any information you read by keeping an eye on your intuitive response.
How To Access Your Intuition While Reading
Begin by relaxing your breath and taking a moment to focus your point of awareness. As you do, draw your attention to the subtle sensations that move throughout your body. Notice how these sensations move alongside your breath. When you feel centered, read slowly through each of the following statements. As you read, focus not on any thoughts you may have about them, but on the feeling that each creates within you.
Take your time. Repeat each sentence two or three times, pausing for at least 30-60 seconds for each line before moving on. To increase the impact, you may want to read each statement aloud first, and then repeat it silently.
Then, without judging your response, without worrying about whether or not your mind agrees, ask: how does this statement feel?
1. Joy is. Joy is light, love, energy, consciousness.
Allow yourself to rest with this idea for a moment. Do not yet decide whether or not you agree with it. You do not, in this moment, need to worry about its meaning. Simply give the sentence space. Joy is. Joy is light, love, energy, consciousness. As you sit with it, begin to pay attention to how you feel. Do you feel calm, open, joyful, or at ease? Do you feel tense, angry, fearful, or closed off? There is no right or wrong answer, and your own response may change with time. The aim is simply to read, and to observe. Joy is. Joy is light, love, energy, consciousness.
Repeat this process for each of the following ideas.
2. This joy-bliss-love-light energy is the energy of existence.
3. Joy has many names: bliss, presence, God, Ananda, Brahman, Is-ness, All That Is.
4. This energy exists across all things. Everything is energy. Everything is consciousness. Everything is joy-bliss-love-light.
5. Joy-bliss-love-light is, right here, right now.
6. It is behind your breath, between your thoughts.
7. It is formless, and yet fundamental to all form.
8. Joy is beauty, abundance, passion, ease, peace, warmth, bliss, and love.
9. It feels simple, empty. Like nothingness, spaciousness, the space between.
10. It feels vibrant, full, radiant, rich, complex, and complete.
11. Joy-bliss-love-light consciousness is All That There Is.
12. Joy simply, profoundly, is.
Did you like this exercise?
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I don’t think I particularly LIKED this exercise. I don’t think I enjoyed it. I read the statements aloud, I read them silently, I breathed in between telling myself Now I am breathing in, Now I am breathing out. It seemed a lot to do. I did read all the sentences. I did not feel joy or bliss. And I usually don’t write comments. I am allowing myself to participate since I am doing the 30-day Abundance Meditation Series.