Lightly edited transcript Filler words and caption errors removed by machine; the meaning is unchanged.
Delson describes a simple exercise for developing intuition: pose a question to the mind about a meditation block or a life decision, then leave it and go about the day until an answer comes. He explains siddhis, the abilities the Indic traditions describe, as emerging from unconditional, intuitive living rather than as things to train for, and he reads experiences like mind-reading as empathy and attunement with others.
Key points
- Delson's intuition exercise: put a simple question to the mind about a meditation block or a life decision, then leave it and go about the day.
- Answers may arrive after a day, a week or a month, often as a sudden flash, and may not be the answer one wants but are meant to fit the path one is on.
- Writing the question down before bed is another approach, and the answer often comes in the middle of the night.
- Siddhis (such as seeing past lives, reading minds or levitating) come from the Sanskrit root siddh, meaning to be accomplished or perfected.
- Delson says these abilities emerge as a result of unconditional, intuitive living and are not something to train for directly.
- Reading another's mind can be understood as empathy and emotional attunement, as when a group member says 'you read my mind.'
Themes
Transcript
Practice intuition with simple questions
One of the exercises, for example, I give to people is: you want to try to practice your intuition. Let's say you're dealing with a situation, maybe a problem in your meditation, you're having some certain blocks, and it's difficult to deal with that. What you can do is just very simply ask the mind the question, what is this block, right? Or sometimes people have these life decisions to make, and they're kind of confused by these two or three or four choices. Just come up with a simple question of what seems to be the most appropriate and effective decision to make. And then leave it at that. Just feed it into the mind and then go about your day.
Maybe it might take the rest of the day. Maybe it might take a week. Maybe it might take a month. But then, like a flash, a Eureka moment, the answer comes to us. It might not be the answer that we're looking for or that we want to hear, but it definitely will be the right answer for the journey that we're taking in this life. I love that. I have a similar practice. And also another one I'd throw out there is I love writing those questions down before I go to bed as kind of like planting a seed in the garden. And without a doubt, the information comes often in the middle of the night, which I think is fascinating.
Siddhis and unconditional living
There's just a kind of clarity at that point. One question that I would be curious for you to talk about is in the vein of inspiring others, there's this notion of this path and these practices can result in this level of unconditional living and well-being. I'm just feeling good all the time, which is great, but it also opens us up to new potentials for things that we can experience, intuition being one of them. I've heard you talk about past lives, understanding our past lives, understanding kind of the building blocks of our reality, time dilation. Just all of these different things. And I know that those are not necessarily things that in many traditions, the siddhis, if you will, are not things that we intentionally seek out, but they're more kind of emergent.
I'd be curious to understand just to have you talk about some of those experiences, mostly just to have people be aware that there are potentials and capacities for humans that are available if you would like to experience them, but are probably things that you might don't hear often talked about. Yeah. Especially, I think, it's there definitely in the Yoga Sutras. It's there in the Buddhist texts. It's definitely there in some of the other Indic or Indian philosophies, this concept of Siddhis as you brought up. And we have to first understand what the word siddhi actually means. Siddhi comes from the root word 'siddh' in Sanskrit, which essentially means to be accomplished at something, to be perfected into something.
So I look at these different, the ability to see past lives, for example, or, like you said, these experiences of seeing the building blocks of reality, time dilation and so on. But then there are other siddhis like they talk about it in the different ancient texts about being able to read another person's mind or being able to levitate and some other very outlandish kind of experiences. I think the utility of these siddhis comes about once you do come from that unconditional living. In other words, they're not something necessarily that you have to train for, you can. Some people do that, they train for the siddhis, but they come about as the icing on the cake or the cherry on top as a result of being in that intuitive state.
For example, the ability to read others' minds, you could see that in different ways. You could see that as literally being able to pick up the thoughts of others. Or you could just see that as being empathetic and understanding what the other person is feeling and being more attuned emotionally with the other person. Oftentimes, there come situations, and I'm sure a lot of people will identify with this, where you're in a group setting and you come up with something and the other person says, I was just thinking of that. Or they might say, it's like you read my mind. And that's because you're becoming in an alignment with the rest of the group or with that person in that sense.