Background 2: Dowsing?

[I'm excerpting posts from a four-year-old blog that I never promoted called "A Dowser's Diary: An Experiment in Intuition." I'm going to erase the blog but figured I'd share some of it here.]

In late April [this would be of 2009], right about the time I cracked my skull, I ordered Dowsing: A Journey Beyond Our Five Senses by Hamish Miller, from Amazon.com. I must have seen or heard or read something about dowsing, but for the life of me I cannot recall what it was that prompted me to place the order. Why dowsing? Why that book?

The little book arrived several days later while I was recuperating from my fall and then – along with a hundred pieces of paper and stacks of historical research books – sat neglected for weeks on my desk as I wrestled with a mind blurred by pain, snake venom and sulfa pills.

A New View

When in June my mind began to clear after taking myself off of the blood-pressure pills, I picked up Hamish Miller’s book and read: “So dowsing has undergone a paradigmatic shift from the useful but relatively mundane science of finding water sources, lumps of metal, and old drains to that of a spiritual search into the mysteries of human consciousness and its relationship with the earth. There is a practical, exciting journey waiting for everyone interested in the skill. It can lead by progressive expansion of thought to perceptions far beyond the normal restrictions of our five senses.”

This was great stuff. This was what my mind thirsted for, another tool to continue my search, my “re-enchantment.”

True to my usual form, I spent the next couple of nights researching on the Web and scanning the related books on Amazon.com. I was at a book store in Portland and bought The Divining Hearth: Dowsing and Spiritual Unfoldment by Patricia and Richard Wright and immediately ordered a couple more books from Amazon: The Diviner’s Handbook: A Guide to the Timeless Art of Dowsing by Tom Graves, and The Divining Mind: A Guide to Dowsing and Self-Awareness by T. Edward (Terry) Ross and Richard Wright.

Avoiding the Mistake

I now had enough books to last me for a summer’s worth of research. And then, one day last week, I reached for one of them and – in a moment of luck or guidance – happened to select Tom Graves’ Diviner’s Handbook and turned to Page 16, where I read:

“The great mistake people will make when studying dowsing – or any practical subject for that matter – is to learn about it instead of learning it. I made that mistake myself. I spent years reading about the theory of dowsing and getting confused by the various writers’ conflicting and self-contradictory statements, before it dawned on my that the way to learn it was to go out and do it.”

He was absolutely right. He had just saved me countless hours reading about dowsing and delaying for weeks actually trying it.

Background 1: Re-enchantment

[I'm excerpting posts from a four-year-old blog that I never promoted called "A Dowser's Diary: An Experiment in Intuition." I'm going to erase the blog but figured I'd share some of it here.]

My period of re-enchantment began one year ago with a phone call from a woman in Missouri asking my wife if someone close to us had just died. Our young daughter-in-law had unexpectedly crossed over less than two hours earlier. That phone call launched my exploration of aspects of the other side, which continues to this day.

My re-enchantment deepened on January 1(Note: this would be 2009) of this year when a renowned astrologer in Michigan gave me a reading – over the phone, the two of us never having met – that stunned me in its accuracy and insight, both about me and about the members of my family.

The Crises Begin

Within a month I was nearly laid flat with a progression of unusual health conditions that persist to this day. My lifelong propensity toward hypersensitivity flared up while I struggled against crippling fatigue. My hearing became more acute, food flavors more vibrant, the daylight sharper even in Oregon’s heavily overcast spring. My dreams grew intricate, vivid and memorable.

On April 19th I fainted for no apparent reason and struck my head against a sink and bathtub as I fell to the floor. I was admitted to the hospital for the first time in my life for two days. I am still trying to sort out the effects of the fall – a solid whack on the head, cracked cheek bone, facial nerve damage – from what happened next.

As part of a medical follow-up related to the hospitalization, my physician said my blood pressure was high and wanted me on blood-pressure medicine. I resisted – figuring the elevated reading was due to white-coat syndrome – but then relented. I was prescribed Lisinopril, derived from the venom of the Jaracaca, a Brazilian pit viper. Perhaps worse, the diuretic component of the medicine contained a sulfa derivative. I've been allergic to sulfa medications since I was an infant, suffering extreme visual and mental disorientation.

I lost the month of May due to snake poison and sulfa. It was difficult to keep track of days. My dreams turned chaotic and ugly. My creativity withered and I could not write. I work as a writer, from my home. If I were more conventionally employed, I’m sure I would have lost my job. My body can no longer tolerate a number of foods and my senses of taste and smell are damaged. I took my blood pressure at the end of May and found it dangerously high, as was my heart beat. I stopped the medicine right then and there and waited for my heart to slow down.

Enchantment and Emergence

My life during these past six months has been held together by the love of my wife, my daughter and son, their children and spouses. They are wonderful people, each and every one. I have a good acupuncturist and a gifted cranial/sacral therapist who are helping me. The Missouri psychic who was helping to guide me has gone her separate way but left me with some valuable tools.

Earlier I used the term “re-enchantment,” borrowing it from Morris Berman’s 1981 book, The Re-enchantment of the World, tracing the cultural and scientific shifts from Cartesian and Newtonian science into the far more magical world of quantum mechanics, holism, systems thinking and other contemporary influences.

My personal world is being re-enchanted by all that’s happened in one year. And continues to happen.

That's where dowsing enters the picture.

Image is the 1888 "Flammarion Woodcut" from a volume by French astronomer Camille Flammarion.

On Intuition, #2

[Here's another post from my dowsing journal.]

Medical intuitives are people who can diagnose ailments in trances ~ such as the renowned psychic Edgar Cayce and his thousands of medical readings ~ or even over the telephone as is sometimes done by people such as Mona Lisa Schultz, author of Awakening Intuition: Using Your Mind-Body Network for Insight and Healing.

Aside from her psychic abilities, she’s a neuropsychiatrist with a degree from Brown University, and her M.D. and a Ph.D. from Boston University of Science and Medicine. I read Awakening Intuition earlier this year and a few days ago went back to it for her thoughts on intuition in general. (I should mention that the book title is a bit misleading ~ there's a lot about mind/body medicine, but very little on how to awaken one's intuitive abilities.) Here’s one thing she wrote:

Some people are visual intuitives, receiving mental visual images. Some people are auditory intuitives; they hear thoughts, sounds, or message that carry intuitive information. Some people are somatic intuitives, receiving somato-sensory input, or body feelings about themselves or others. When people say to me, “I’m not intuitive. I can’t see things,” I ask them, “Then what do you hear?” or “What do you feel?” It’s important to discover your own particular strength and to use the connections you do have instead of becoming blocked by the thought of the ones you don’t have.

In getting in touch with their intuition network, people have to understand how they’re already using intuition, perhaps in very subtle ways. Once you recognize what you’re already doing without being fully aware of it, you can work to build that muscle by exercising it more.

That's as good a reason as any to keep dowsing … something, anything … every few days or even daily. Got to build up that muscle!

On Intuition, #1

[During the past year, I've been experimenting with dowsing and for awhile maintained a blog dedicated to my experiences. I've put that blog on hold, but would like from time to time to reprint some of its posts on Quantum Spirit.]

Devices such as dowsing rods behave as if they have some intrinsic power of their own. But this isn’t the Middle Ages and we know the rods react somehow to the musculature in our hands. Yet, the question remains: What’s controlling the musculature?

Without a doubt, intuition – the mind’s ability to sense information and subtly transmit it – has the leading role. Here’s what the late Indian mystic Osho says about it:

Intuition cannot be explained scientifically because the very phenomenon is unscientific and irrational. The very phenomenon of intuition is irrational. In language it looks okay to ask, “Can intuition be explained?” But it means, “Can intuition be reduced to intellect?” And intuition is something beyond the intellect, something not of the intellect, something coming from some place where intellect is totally unaware. So the intellect can feel it, but it cannot explain it.

Considering the role of the intellect in our culture, becoming more intuitive has some challenges, to say the least.

Intuition Workout

Medical intuitives are people who can diagnose ailments in trances ~ such as the renowned psychic Edgar Cayce and his thousands of medical readings ~ or even over the telephone as is sometimes done by people such as Mona Lisa Schultz, author of Awakening Intuition: Using Your Mind-Body Network for Insight and Healing.

Aside from her psychic abilities, she’s a neuropsychiatrist with a degree from Brown University, and her M.D. and a Ph.D. from Boston University of Science and Medicine. I read Awakening Intuition earlier this year and a few days ago went back to it for her thoughts on intuition in general. (I should mention that the book title is a bit misleading ~ there's a lot about mind/body medicine, but very little on how to awaken one's intuitive abilities.) Here’s one thing she wrote:

Some people are visual intuitives, receiving mental visual images. Some people are auditory intuitives; they hear thoughts, sounds, or message that carry intuitive information. Some people are somatic intuitives, receiving somato-sensory input, or body feelings about themselves or others. When people say to me, “I’m not intuitive. I can’t see things,” I ask them, “Then what do you hear?” or “What do you feel?” It’s important to discover your own particular strength and to use the connections you do have instead of becoming blocked by the thought of the ones you don’t have.

In getting in touch with their intuition network, people have to understand how they’re already using intuition, perhaps in very subtle ways. Once you recognize what you’re already doing without being fully aware of it, you can work to build that muscle by exercising it more.

That's as good a reason as any to keep dowsing … something, anything … every few days or even daily. Got to build up that muscle!

This post is from one of my other blogs, "A Dowser's Diary: An Experiment in Intuition." I have not been good at keeping the diary current.