Let’s grow: inner knowing

I’ve been procrastinating writing this post for a while. It’s been an interesting, albeit gorgeous (as you can see from the photo) fall. The irony is I’ve had more margin and time to write since I’m job searching and not going to work everyday, but the words have been just tumbling around inside me, unable to to express anything coherent. So, please bear with me this month!

When I say interesting, I’m referring to the interior field trip I’ve been on and how it has played out with some experiences in my exterior life. The opportunities to strengthen my inner knowing have been relentless and persistent. So I’ve been paying attention. 

Richard Rohr has explained that we live ourselves into new ways of thinking, rather than thinking ourselves into new ways of living. I have pondered what that means. He recommends “voluntary displacement” – get out of your routine, your group, your comfort zone, your little world. Any little effort that perhaps makes us uncomfortable and gives us new ways of seeing and helps rewire our brain. This is probably why I love traveling, especially to foreign countries, so deeply. When we sailed on Semester At Sea it was an endless string of discomforts along with the adventures, but I have never felt so alive. Alas, international travel doesn’t happen much these days, so I try to look for other avenues to “live” myself into new ways of thinking. This includes my inner knowing.

How do we cultivate our inner knowing, which guides our faith and intuition? Everyone’s practice will look different, but I wholeheartedly believe that we have to clear the decks of distraction. To constantly and intentionally set aside our addictive preoccupations. We all have them. When we voluntarily displace from our comfort zone, we interrupt those addictive tendencies. And when we cultivate quiet time to be “alone” without our addictive preoccupations, that’s when we can access our inner knowing. 

Years ago when I was commuting to a job in downtown Portland and spending hours and hours on the road, I tried driving in silence a few times per week. No radio, podcasts, audiobooks, phone calls. Just me and my thoughts. At first it was hard and I felt antsy, but over time, I grew to savor this quiet time. More “ah-ha” moments than I can count managed to bubble up from those non-auditory drives. 

Now I have the luxury of accessing quiet times more easily: COVID wiped out a lot of time-sucks with all the shut downs; I have only one kid living at home; and currently being unemployed is affording me loads of spare time. Now I prefer my quiet time on foot, my bike, or rollerblading. I try to remember to look up (not biking or rollerblading – ha!) and savor the fall colors. Maybe I’ll try meditation again this winter, but my impatience generally has hijacked previous attempts…

Something else I have tried recently to help me “clear the decks of distraction” is setting screen time limits on my phone. The goal was to keep me in solidarity with said kid who needs help self-regulating screen time, but these parameters have certainly helped me cut down on mindless scrolling. Thank you, Apple, for creating these helpful tools!

This practice of cultivating my inner knowing, faith, and intuition has helped me through some challenges recently. Challenges where I felt scared, uncertain, moorless. I circled back to asking the “I wonder” questions I wrote about several months ago. My inner knowing kept nudging me to do the thing, what I felt in my bones was the right thing to do… but other forces (rooted in fear) held me back. 

Finally, I knew I had to choose courage and bravery. Be brave and do the thing. Being brave means to honor your inner knowing, even when it feels opposite to what the culture is telling you. Glennon Doyle talked about this on one of her recent podcasts: the bravest moments can feel like lonely clarity. That’s exactly how it went for me. I did feel lonely, and I did feel fear, and I did gain clarity and I did summon bravery. All of it. I had to muddle through those tensions and contradictory feelings and convictions.

The only way out is through.

And what about now? I am on the other side of the thing. There is no happy ending (do those even exist?), but there is progress. Hope. Inch by inch, growth And that’s something we can choose to do in this complicated life adventure – keep growing in our inner knowing.