For so long, I was taking for granted that I had reasonable access to my interior life: I had one, it was supposed to be rich, and I was supposed to have access to it. Perhaps you have a similar impression.
And yet I had to question this reassuring way of looking at things when I started meditating and practicing Yoga Nidra. I discovered that my inner life was a territory infinitely larger than what I had been able to perceive of it, and in addition I had to realize that this territory, at least most of it, was almost unknown to me, and that I did not know the paths to explore it.
I therefore give you these few reflections in the form of a testimony: it is a way of sharing what I have received and understood. I hope it will inspire and help some of you who read me, just as I have been inspired and helped by the experience of others who have discovered and traveled these paths before me.
My first discovery came to me through this meditative practice which consists in observing from the outside my thoughts, how they happen and go away, without getting stuck in their stream. By meditating regularly 10 to 15 minutes a day for a few weeks, I realized what my inner dialogue really was, what my thoughts were saying throughout the day. For 95% of them, an endless and boring stream of repetitive thoughts, always the same themes that came back, the same anxieties that were expressed, the same situations that I relived or that I anticipated ... and in the middle of this flow , this background noise, this buzzing, sometimes some pearls, some useful ideas, some living and generous impulses.
In fact, an obvious fact seized me: I believed that my inner life was made of thoughts, and that it merged with my inner dialogue. No, decidedly this internal dialogue, for the most part, is much more of a barrier to be crossed if one wants to find access to the whole depth of interiority.
Interiority begins when I pass through this noise of thoughts and enter a larger space. And this is where meditation and Yoga Nidra are precious aids: they implement techniques which precisely help us to calm the thoughts, or better said help us not to let ourselves be obsessed by them, in order to enter a wider perspective, wider space, and see beyond the thoughts. I stop being caught in the cloud, and I discover the sky in which this cloud passes.
And this territory to explore opens up: it is made up of all the different aspects of my interiority, and the different techniques deployed in Yoga Nidra accompany me in their discovery.
There is the whole area of my bodily feelings, and I am not always as close to my body as I think. When one begins to feel and visit it, for example with the exercises of rotation of consciousness, it begins to speak more and more.
There is the domain of my imagination, the world of symbols and images that I carry within me.
There are memories and imprints of everything I have experienced, from the most present and clear to the most buried.
There is the world of dreams.
There are the emotions, the intuition, the feeling of the energies which run through me, and the exploration does not stop there.
No doubt there will always be new worlds to discover, and we will touch on the reality that our body is full of the entire universe.
If these words vibrate something in you, it is the sign that you hear the call of the explorer, the deep vocation, inscribed at the bottom of your intimacy, to turn to these territories and to start to draw up the card, and to dig deeper and deeper into it, in search of yourselves, in search of the great mystery.
May we all find the help, the inspiration, the constancy which will make us joyfully follow ever further this inner voice which calls us to ourselves.