The KNOWING Technique
(Note that this class is now lesson 8 of Freedom Practice – 2 and will be updated shortly, but the main content will remain the same as it has been in the previous versions of the Freedom Practice. Once updated, this message will be removed)
“These days, when I’m coaching someone, and they don’t know what to do I ask them to go into the QUIETNESS and have them drop a question into Pure Awareness and simply wait for an answer. The answer usually surfaces as a kind of KNOWING, fully formed and clear.
Frequently, as an alternative to their asking the question, I’ll drop a question into Awareness on their behalf. That means I just tell them something that they then just allow Pure Awareness to respond to.
Sometimes, if we’re both stuck, the best question is, “What is the optimum question to ask?” The thing I love about the KNOWING Technique is that the person who is doing it is getting the answers from within themselves, not from some outer reference or authority (such as me).
It’s great when the sense of what’s right for them comes from within them! Then their own inner KNOWING guides them, and it couldn’t be more perfect or authentic than that. I just love the Pure Awareness Techniques!”
– Steve Straus
Checking Your Cosmic Email Inbox
The KNOWING Technique originates with a practice that comes from Yoga. Now most people think that yoga is just a form of stretching and bending the body. But yoga is much more than that. The word yoga means “union.” It means the union of inner and outer experiences.
A great man named Yogi Patanjali is said to be the “father of yoga.” Patanjali created the main writing about yoga in his work called The Yoga Sutras. In the Yoga Sutras, Patanjali describes a process called SANYAMA. This is a practice that starts by taking your awareness into Pure Awareness. You then allow your awareness to quietly have a thought and then surrender that thought into the quietness of Pure Awareness.
When done properly, this can bring insights and clarity. It is, after all, your own awareness. It is where your KNOWING comes from.
Even not getting any response is an answer. It means that it’s not time to know yet. It means that your cosmic email inbox is empty.
Practicing the KNOWING Technique is essentially like learning how to check the inbox of your emails from the universe.
One of the definitions of Pure Awareness in the ancient Vedic texts is that it is “consciousness that knows only truth.” It is, after all, our own awareness. This is the level of life from which we know things. It is where our KNOWING comes from, and it is that which allows us to have all of our experiences.
When you surrender a thought into Pure Awareness when practicing the KNOWING Technique, you will typically experience some kind of response. The response maybe an insight, a confirmation of something you already know, an idea, or more clarity about something.
Whenever you are unsure about the response, then it may be that there is too much internal emotional or mental static or noise inside of you. Or it may be that it just isn’t time to know yet. It also may be that the way that you formulated your inquiry needs to be modified or improved. The nature of the universe is to be very efficient. It doesn’t bother sending you an email until it is appropriate for you to know something. But sometimes, it can be worthwhile to just settle down and check your cosmic inbox by practicing the KNOWING Technique.
When you have a thought and gently release it into Pure Awareness, it activates the laws of nature—the full power of the infinite potential that is latent in Pure Awareness. Practicing the KNOWING Technique is a powerful way to bring yourself into alignment with the laws of nature. In the KNOWING Technique, one does not command the laws of nature but learns how to become one with them.
Being Present to What Is
To allow yourself to let whatever comes from Pure Awareness to arise during the KNOWING Technique, you have to be willing to be present to whatever it is that is there. This means not editing what comes to you. It also means not having any attachment to the outcome of your inquiry.
The ability to be present to what is gets cultivated by the Freedom Practice by using the IN and the OUT Techniques. By doing the Freedom Practice regularly, you cultivate a confidence in your ability to handle any emotional experience that you might have.
Getting good at doing these two techniques develops a kind of emotional mastery within you. You become a kind of black belt master of handling emotions. This is not the mastery of suppression or making feelings go away. On the contrary, it is mastery of completing incomplete experiences with the IN Technique and mastering the ability to extract your awareness from being lost to your identifications, expectations, projections, and reactions using the OUT Technique.
This is a great skill to possess. It will set you apart from most of the people on this earth. The ones who don’t have this kind of emotional mastery can’t be present to what is. They run from their feelings like a three-year-old child. They are afraid of being overwhelmed by feelings as you used to be. No wonder the prisons are filled with people, 70 to 80% of whom have committed drug or alcohol-related crimes. These people have been trying to self-medicate the best they can to escape the fear of being overwhelmed by their unresolved emotional pain. What they really need is education in how to become competent at feeling. This is what gives us the ability to be present to whatever life brings us.
The practice of the KNOWING Technique also helps you to be present to what is, present to the perfection that is present in every moment.
How to Know that You Know
The vast majority of people on Earth live primarily as the product of their conditioning. Personal decisions and actions are based on what they “think” they should do or are based upon emotional reactions or moods.
When you live from your conditioning, it appears that you have choice and that you are consciously being true to yourself, but typically you are not. You are living from a false sense of yourself. You are unable to see that you are living from your conditioning because you are so identified with it that you believe it is actually you.
The problem is that living this way results in struggle and suffering. But there is another way. Rather than making decisions from your conditioning, you can make decisions from a deeper knowing, from a place of congruence and authenticity from deep within you.
Have you ever had the experience of having a desire and then forgetting about it only to have it manifest almost like magic without you having to do anything to bring it about? Pretty much everyone I’ve asked this question of has said yes.
Isn’t it great when that happens? How would you like your whole life to have this kind of effortless “in-the-zone” quality to it? Well, it’s possible through learning and practicing the KNOWING Technique and the CLARITY Technique. Here’s how and why they work so well.
The universe operates based on a natural law that can be called the Law of Least Effort. Sometimes you may appear to have a role in making something happen, or it may seem like it happens without you doing anything to bring it about. But whether your body, mind, and personality seem to be involved or not, these two Pure Awareness techniques give you the tools you need to align yourself with the Law of Least Effort.
Many people have also had the effortless experience in their lives when they just “know” something, or they are certain about something without the benefit or logic, or reason. This kind of knowing or certainty comes from deep within you. For most people, this kind of experience doesn’t happen very often. If it does happen, you may not have been able to distinguish between this kind of inner knowing and your thinking mind due to your conditioning of doubting such experiences.
We have a form of conditioning called Suppression and Avoidance. This is one of the 12 Causes of Human Problems that is an important part of Inner Greatness Optimizing. Our preverbal decision to not allow ourselves to fully experience intense experiences is something that we learn to do to attempt to avoid being overwhelmed by our emotions. ‘
We develop the habit of using our intellect to attempt to understand things with our minds. Most of us become so habituated to relying on our intellect that when we get an experiential “knowing” from deep within, we may not really recognize it. We will likely override it with thoughts or doubts about it. This causes a lack of clear distinction between thinking and knowing.
Knowing comes from having a direct experience of something not from thinking about it or figuring it out. It might be that you have had a kind of inner knowing about what kind of career you would have, and later in your life, it turns out pretty much the way you knew it would.
Or perhaps you meet someone, and your sense is that you will have some kind of relationship with them, and you do.
This is sometimes referred to as having an intuition or a premonition. If you’ve had this kind of experience, you know what I am talking about. It is as if you are seeing into the future. Perhaps this is precisely what is happening. I refer to this as Remembering the Future.
Read more about – How to Remember the Future