Focusing Tip #745 – “I can’t seem to quiet my thoughts enough to sense what I deeply know.”

March 24, 2021 Ann Weiser Cornell

Focusing Tip #745 – “I can’t seem to quiet my thoughts enough to sense what I deeply know.

Does listening to your inner knowing get hijacked by your anxious thoughts? Read on…

Eve writes:

I’ve heard you say it’s possible to sense what I deeply know and be guided by that, but my thoughts are such a jumble. I can’t seem to quiet them enough to see through the murky water to what I deeply know.

If I think I have heard what I need to hear, I immediately doubt myself.

Can you give some guidance on that?

Dear Eve:

What you are experiencing is very common, and yet it touches my heart. Those parts of you that you call your “thoughts” are trying to help… and they don’t seem to be able to calm down enough to allow you to sense the quiet whispers of your inner “knowing.”

I remember a time when this happened to me. I was trying to make a decision about whether to cancel a workshop or to go ahead with it. I didn’t have much money in those days, and whether or not one workshop happened would make a big difference.

But if I didn’t get enough people and also didn’t cancel, I’d have to pay for the rooms I’d reserved… and I couldn’t afford that either.

I sat down to listen to “what I really know,” inviting the body sense of inner knowing to come forward.

And instead, all I got was anxious thoughts about what I could try to get more people, and what my credit card bill would look like if I paid only the minimum for another month.

Just like you, I couldn’t quiet my thoughts enough to sense the “inner knowing” that would come if I could just get quiet and trust.

So I turned toward those parts with anxious thoughts. I said, “Hello, I know you’re there.” I acknowledged every one of them… and that took a while!

I became the compassionate listener to those parts… to what they were worried about, and what they needed. Slowly, they began to feel that I was there… me, the listener, me Self-in-Presence. That’s what finally calmed them down.

Sooner than I would have imagined, a quiet space came… and in that quiet space, I “saw” the workshop happening. I even saw the number of people there were! And I felt… the connecting, joyful energy of that future group.

When I opened my eyes after that Focusing session, I knew what I needed to do next… and after I did it, I could see the next thing… and two months later, that workshop that I saw happened.

So the only way I know to quiet the anxious, doubting thoughts is to call them “something in me” and be their compassionate listener… without having to agree or disagree. And that allows the deeper knowing to emerge.