When Information is NOT Enough

It is easy in our times, to think that information is all you need.  Just look it up on the internet.  Just pull out your phone for an easy definition, the how-to video or the article explaining a particular political position.  But when is information not enough?  Information, you could say, is only one kind of information.  What else could you be informed by? Your gut, your experience.  But, what if you have no prior experience of your situation? What if everything is new?  Information is not enough when things are constantly changing.  We need more.  Information is not enough when you have lost your power of choice.   

And things are always changing.  This is true even in the information flow, on the internet.  In fact, things are changing so fast in cyberspace, that they can appear to be sitting still. Meanwhile, you can feel bewildered, overwhelmed, stymied, stuck, weighed down by the seemingly limitless amounts of information that often do not clarify what the best choice might be. 

So, where do you go to find something besides information? What is there, anyway, that isn’t information?  There is knowing.  Heart knowing. Belly knowing.  Eye knowing, ear knowing, even feet knowing.  Your body is an amazing library of knowing.  In every moment, your body is right here, vibrating with knowing, with a kind of “information” that isn’t really information at all, but direct communication about what is happening. 

The body does not use words to communicate.  The body uses sensation, pain, vibration, resonance to communicate its knowing. Your body speaks the language of sensation, perception and intuition. Words sometimes eventually pop up as you listen in to the communications from your body, but the knowing precedes them. 

Our perceptions are often barreling in at top speed, [information, in fact, would say, that at least 10,000 bits of information in every second are pouring in to our eyes, ears, and nose] that it can really be challenging to make good use of them.  That is the reason that even eye witnesses to a given event can differ so drastically in how they describe what has happened.  It isn’t that anyone is wrong, per se, but only that each person noticed a different one of the 10,000 things that poured in at that moment.  How then can we choose?  How then can we know?

I have a way that I use to listen in, to slow down.  I place my hand on my heart.  I place my other hand on my belly.  I stand or sit still.  I relax my muscles, feel my feet on the ground.  And I listen.  You could do this for any amount of time, until something pops in.  Something could be a word, a thought, a feeling, anything really, but after it shows up, you know.  You can do this anytime, anywhere, to bring forward your own knowing.

There is only one reliable source of information of any kind; your experience.  I like to say the only news you can use is your own.  When it comes right down to it, no amount of information can actually give you what you need to make an informed decision.  A truly informed decision has to include both information that you can find on the internet and the knowing that you can only find inside yourself.