LISTENING FOR INNER WISDOM WITH EVOCATIVE IMAGES

Sometimes an image or phrase can help us connect with our inner wisdom.

There are lots of ways to engage with imagery contemplatively. I’ll give you one idea here.

Clear a space

This practice is an invitation to be present to yourself for 10-ish minutes. What do you notice about your breath? What do you notice about the space you’re in?

When you are ready, spend as long as you’d like with this collage.

Notice Resonance & Resistance

Both resonance and resistance give us doors to open to listen to our interior.

We are often conditioned to question or hide our resistance and our resonance with things we have been conditioned to perceive as wrong or bad.

Here are some questions to guide your curiosity:

Did you notice an immediate felt sense of YES or NO when you looked at the image(s)?
Did a felt sense of YES or NO rise over time?
Did your experience seem neutral?
Did you notice both YES and NO?

Is this felt sense familiar to you?
What sensations in your body help you differentiate between YES and NO?

If your body feels open to it, see if you can spend more time with that felt sense. Feel free to return to the images to see if the felt sense deepens or changes.

Did the same felt sense return as you spent more time with the images?
Is there anything new that you notice?

Allow What You Noticed to Deepen

Consider recording what you noticed in a journal or exploring it in a conversation. The noticing itself is the practice, yet our sense of it might be deepened and contextualized as we open to mystery and wonder, sometimes in the presence of another.

Would you like some company as you listen for wisdom? I’d love to bear witness to what’s unfolding within you in a spiritual direction/spacious accompaniment.

Interested in making your own “wisdom collage” like the one above? Here’s a post that will guide you in the process.

I’d like to give credit to four sources. I trained with Tara Owens of Anam Cara Ministries and Dr. Shannon Michael Pater of Notice the Journey and I see their influence in this practice. Eugene Gendlin’s book, “Focusing,” and this video by Ann Weiser Cornell deepened my grasp of the concept of opening to a “felt sense.”