Trusting our Inner GPS

In this episode I use the metaphor of GPS as it similar to our own inner guidance system.  I’ll illustrate how and why we get off track in life, and I’ll give some encouragement for getting back on. And then I’ll share a practice we did in a recent group gathering that uses the GPS idea. 

Life or God or our inner intuition is like GPS. When you turn the wrong way it gives you some repetitive indicators to redirect you. You may think that the repetition means it’s telling you you’re an idiot, but we make that up in our heads. 

GPS sees where you’ve headed off and course corrects from there. It takes you from where you are now, and says, OK now try this.

Our inner GPS, as in “what do I do now,” can only be heard from inside ourselves. Our outer circumstances point us to it, sometimes repetitively until we listen. The reason we don’t always listen to outer circumstances is because we either ignore our inner GPS or we want to follow it, but it feels like it isn’t working. 

The GPS signal is always working, but for most of us, our system of receiving it is not functioning properly. Our system has been programmed wrong so we hear garbled messages or we literally hear the opposite of what it’s telling us. 

In this analogy we’d have to take our system in to a technician to get it rewired or retooled. We’d tell the tech “this voice is not getting me where I want to go.” 

We want what teacher Christopher Wallis calls “predictive efficaciousness,” which are long words to mean, we want to count on our guidance system getting us where we want to go. 

We all want that.  We want to know that we are headed in a good direction, to phrase it simply.

So why do we avoid taking our faulty GPS in to the tech? Most of us are practically blind to the road. Most of us wait until the pain of driving in circles gets ridiculous before we give in and reach for help. Sometimes we wait until we’ve run into a tree. 

Some of us avoid getting assistance because we think we can rewire a complicated computer-like set-up by using our head. We think we can use the same faulty system to fix the faulty system.

Some of us distract ourselves with addictions so we don’t have to face the fact that we’re driving in circles. 

And some of us delude ourselves into thinking this same circular road is eventually going to deliver us. 

The reason we don’t stop is because we don’t want to find out the truth that our system is ultimately and fundamentally faulty. We don’t want the tech to say, this whole outfit needs to be scrapped. 

We don’t want to look at what we think is the truth, that our little individual self and the world around us is predictively not efficacious. It’s not going in a good direction. 

We think that if we hear that GPS signal clearly it’s going to confirm that this driving in circles is our fault, and that all roads leads nowhere anyway. We’d prefer to follow the garbled or wrong messages, anesthetize ourselves to cover up the frustration, and never end up anywhere than have to face the big fear. 

At some point, the boredom of the endless roundabout or the pain of crashing into trees makes us ready to reach out for help. 

We are not a lone wolf. GPS stands for Global Positioning System. We are of and in and on this Globe of resources and help. We have access to a broader sense of self that has all the guidance it needs. Just because we’ve been out of touch with the GPS signal doesn’t mean it went off line or was not accurate and true. It never slowed or stopped.

We can reach out and find the technicians, meaning other people and organizations, who know how to tune in and know how to help us tune in. You want to find one that is the most predictively efficacious for you. 

Almost every wisdom tradition has some way of saying, “Knock and the door will be opened.” No matter how unsurmountable that fear I mentioned seems, we will not find that it’s our fault we’re off track, nor that the road goes nowhere, nor that our system needs to be scrapped. We will find, with perseverance, the clear, true, inner Global Positioning System. And it is positioned right here, right now. 

In one of our recent gatherings we did this practice. We played around with using a different kind of positioning system than we’re used to. This practice would be so beneficial for your mind and body if you did it often. 

Listen to the prompt first if you’re thinking about doing it.

With eyes closed, you’re going to explore your environment with your body, probably mostly your hands or your feet, but it’s open for interpretation. 

You can either walk around with your eyes closed, feeling your way, or sit somewhere and feel the things around you. Use common sense. If you feel you might break something or hurt yourself walking around, maybe do the sitting practice. If you walk around you can open your eyes once in a while to make sure you’re not running into things, but if you do open your eyes, notice how it interrupts the flow a bit.  

Before you get started, sit and close your eyes, and listen inside to your body and your breath. Get yourself centered and grounded inside and see if you can carry that inner awareness as you do the practice. 

As usual, our goal is to notice what it feels like to “see” with a different kind of GPS than sight. As always the prompt is not just about what you noticed, but about what the act of exploring is like for you. 

If you’re going to do it here, either wait until the end of the episode for some safety tips, or pause the audio here be careful. 

In our gathering, after everyone had walked around blindly, we had some interesting responses. Everything about this practice led to us being much more immersed in a type of GPS that was not normal for us. 

Some people noticed their other senses were heightened. Of course touch was a big one, and people described with much more detail than they usually would how things were hot or cold or what texture they had. But smell was the sense that surprised everyone. It seems to pop out in hi def. 

The general consensus about what was interesting about the exploration itself is that everyone could tell how good this would be for you if you did it often. We all agreed it would open up a whole new GPS system. It would strengthen your non-visual systems.

Our group was a Zoom gathering, and we surprised ourselves at how well we could walk around our own homes and know where things were without opening our eyes. We became less dependent on sight for stability, and had to find other ways to keep balance and navigate. 

 We all talked about feeling present in our bodies. 

It was interesting to observe that when we opened our eyes at intervals, the narrative about things around us started up immediately, but with eyes closed there was no story coming up. Just observations of the felt sense of the present moment. Anything like a busy mind stopped because we were too busy navigating this new space, which was the dark.

We all reported that it heightened our awareness and focus. We couldn’t possibly be distracted. Our other senses were too curious and careful because they are usually so underused. 

The people that study this stuff say walking around with your eyes closed helps with balance and (I love this idea) proprioception. They call proprioception the body's unconscious "sixth sense" which means you intuitively know about the position, movement, and force of your own body parts without having to look at them. It’s like if you wrote with a pen on paper with your eyes closed, you’d know how much pressure to use without looking. 

We recognized that balance was called upon quite a lot. The body relies on three main systems for balance: the visual system, the inner ear system, and the body’s overall senses and proprioception that I just mentioned. By removing visual input, our bodies are forced to rely more heavily on the other two. 

I learned that stroke victims sometimes walk on treadmills with their eyes closed to recover gait and balance abilities. Athletes and dancers use eyes-closed training to improve balance and something called dynamic stability, which is a system’s tendency to return to its original equilibrium after a disturbance. I could see how football players could use that. 

This practice was a proverbial eye-opener, and I know that I for one am going to play around with it more. If you do decide to try it, start small: Begin in a familiar, obstacle-free space, A hallway or an open field are good ideas. Take it slow, and have support if your balance is in question at all. Stop if you feel dizzy or disoriented. Lastly, don't overdo it: if you want to make a habit of it, build up your other senses gradually. 

This practice is one more implement for our toolbox of learning to see differently. We don’t have to see tangible, measurable results from it to recognize that it broadens our GPS capabilities and heightens our awareness.