Verified by 
Our minds sometimes seem to know better than we do. My 2004 Jaguar S Type car is not ideal environmentally speaking, nor is it economically practical, but I love it and drive it around with only minor misgivings.
2004 S Type Jaguar
Recently, I had a powerful urge to check the oil level. The vehicle was running smoothly and the next service only a few weeks away. I usually leave it, but the impulse wouldn't settle. Just as well! The oil level turned out to be dangerously low, taking four litres to top up, so I checked the car in. It turns out that oil had been leaking under pressure through a faulty valve. "You were lucky", the mechanic said. "Any longer and your engine could have been totally wrecked." Where did that insistent prompt come from?
In my twenties, I worked for a time as a doctor in Sydney, Australia. One day an apparently healthy young woman came in, saying apologetically that she had been irritable for a couple of days and weeping a lot. She could think of no reason, and was worried she might be going crazy.
Kelly's childhood had been happy. She was part of a loving and supportive family. Her parents, brothers and sister were all living and well. She had a rewarding job and was earning sufficient money. She also had a loving boyfriend, Brett. She had many friends, an active social and sporting life, so she could think of nothing to be upsetting her.
I can still picture the sunlit room and this puzzled young person sitting opposite me with folded arms. I noticed she was stroking her right elbow rhythmically with her left hand. An idea occurred to me, and I asked Kelly to reflect a little longer on the possibility that she was experiencing some kind of loss.
The room was still and silent for a while. Eventually, she looked up. "I don't think it's anything," she began... I waited. "I was pregnant a few months ago, but Brett and I decided this was not the time to have a baby, so I went for a termination." I asked when the baby would have been born. "About now", she said, clearly surprised.
Kelly was still stroking her arm as if cradling a baby. Suddenly, her irritability and sadness made sense to her. She had given up, and so lost irretrievably, a part of herself: her first pregnancy. She was grieving for what might have been: the prospect of a child. Without realising it, she had formed a powerful, loving attachment with something this non-existent child still represented. Her spontaneous irritability and tears, synchronised with the due birth-date of her unborn baby, were telling her something. What I call her ‘wisdom mind' was insisting that she pay attention to her feelings, acknowledge and adapt to what was a genuine and painful loss.
Cradling a newborn child
It is as if we are inhabited by wisdom minds, lovingly in tune with the universe. This is the essence of the true or higher self, the soul, and contrasts with the more familiar ‘everyday mind' that tends to stay in control.
We use our everyday minds like portable laptops that communicate with each other's on-board computers both directly and via the internet, although the link to the world-wide web, always open, is quiet most of the time. Occasionally, however, messages appear on our screens (to check the oil or whatever) intruding on the programmes already running. We can pay attention to these or ignore them. Often, if we delete them, they seem to go away; but the wisdom mind is persistent, and presents the same messages to our everyday minds repeatedly, sometimes in different guises: as a dream, for example, that stays with you on waking, or through a series of meaningful coincidences.
It makes sense to pay attention to this kind of unexpected communication from the unconscious, especially when the most powerful such messages are transmitted, as Kelly's were, in the form of pure, even raw, emotion. When we pay attention to unexpected emotions they can tell us a great deal about ourselves.
It is possible to develop skills that improve the clarity of communication between our everyday minds and our cosmically attuned wisdom minds. These skills involve maintaining a kind of spiritual awareness. Although, like Kelly, we are likely to experience these as unwanted, painful and negative at first, these communications can reliably be thought of as messages offering both healing and opportunities for personal growth.
Kelly's unconscious was full of grief when she first came to see me, but she was able to grow and mature through accepting her loss and facing the emotional pain instead of trying to ignore or bury it again. A week later, she returned to the office. "I'm fine, now", she said. "I've only come back to thank you. And I want to tell you that Brett and I have been talking. He was feeling bad too, so we've decided to go ahead and start a family. We weren't sure before, but now it's what we both really want." "Also," she added, smiling, "we are going to get married."
Copyright Larry Culliford
