The Practical Art of Divining

Tami Simon: You’re listening to Insights at the Edge .

Today I speak with Meg Lundstrom. Meg is a journalist and author who has written extensively on the topics of self-development, health, and the search for meaning. She discovered the art of divining over twenty years ago, and calls upon her vast knowledge in the subject for a new book with Sounds True called What to Do When You Can’t Decide: Useful Tools for Finding the Answers Within.

In this episode, Meg and I spoke about synchronicity and divining, the three types of divining methods discussed in her book, as well as the mechanisms at work behind the art of divining.

Here’s my delightful conversation with Meg Lundstrom.

Tami Simon: Meg, you wrote a book on synchronicity called The Power of Flow: Practical Ways to Transform Your Life with Meaningful Coincidence. And now you’ve written a new book, published by Sounds True, on divining, called What to Do When You Can’t Decide. And to begin I’m curious to know, as a journalist, why and how you’ve chosen these topics: first synchronicity and now the topic of divining. How have these played into your own life that they’ve become so central that you’ve wanted to write about them.

Meg Lundstrom: I guess, Tami, it’s because they are my life. It’s been my experience over time that synchronicity is the way that life works. When you’re really in accord with your deepest self, things have a way of unfolding in dramatic and remarkable and wonderful ways. And along the line, I learned divining and I found that when I use divining, it accelerates this process.

And so life and decision-making — both of which can be so fraught with internal clutter, we might say, and with anxiety — can actually just turn into a dance. You move a direction, you get guidance, you move, and things start happening in ways that just lead to delight and discovery. And that’s why I was drawn to these topics; the more I lived my life in accord with, you might say, my deepest self, deeper truths, the better it went. And then I just wanted to tell people about it, and that’s why these books came about.

TS: OK, well, let’s break it down a little bit. What does it mean to live your life in accord with synchronicity? What does that mean for you?

ML: Well, what it means is you really tune in to what’s happening right in front of you — what is unfolding? What does it mean? What is the next step? And everything becomes information. And when that happens, you enter into a very interactive kind of process with the universe, and everything is a bit like a dance; it’s like a tango. And step-by-step, you move in some direction, and then another direction opens up and something else opens up. And bit-by-bit your life is transformed so that it gets easy. It’s not that you don’t have problems, don’t have anxieties, you don’t have fears, but somehow everything almost on its own falls away as you go through these processes. And synchronicity is what helps this all to happen — the people it puts in front of you, the approaches you try, the way things open up.

And divining is a way that you can…you actually tap into this process. It’s a very intuitive process, and divining is in a sense your summoning intuition: you’re not necessarily waiting for it to show up; you’re in a spot, you need an answer, you’d like to have it sooner rather than later. And you use one of these tools and the answer is there. And then it’s your choice: do you go with it, do you not? If you do, my experience has been that it’s great — it really works out.

TS: OK, so let’s just make sure everybody’s tracking with us. How do you define “divining”?

ML: Divining is when you use a tool or an approach in order to bypass your conscious mind. And the conscious mind — here we’ll define it just as that kind of busybody part of us that knows it all — it’s our ego. Some people use “ego” in this sense. We go past this part of the mind to tap what we might call the deeper, truer part of our selves. In one sense we’re going past the conscious mind into the unconscious; we’re accessing the vast panorama of potentiality that’s in our unconscious when we use these specific tools. It’s a bit like intuition on demand, although since you can’t really demand intuition we can say it’s intuition “on request.”

TS: So is it your experience that synchronicity is always happening, but that sometimes we’re not aware of what meaningful information we need, and that therefore using a tool like a divination tool helps us navigate when we’re not as tuned in as we want to be?

ML: Absolutely. Absolutely. You know, it’s all a process of coming into accord with what is happening in the moment and moving with it. And the more we use intuition, the more we use these tools, the clearer we become and the more able we are to dance with what is happening rather than to try to plot to escape it or avoid it or do something else, all of which leads to internal discord and actually stops the whole process of synchronicity and intuition.

TS: Mm-hmm. Now, how did you first discover divining?

ML: I was on a trip to India and somebody showed me the chits; this was about twenty years ago.

TS: And can you tell us what “the chits” are?

ML: It’s a very simple approach. It’s a form of casting of lots, which is probably the most ancient kind of divination. With chits what you do is you write out your options on pieces of paper. You fold them up, you pray, you connect with that deepest and truest part of yourself, with the Divine, and you toss them. And the one that falls closest to you or to the sacred object — whichever you decide on in advance — that’s the one you pick up and that’s the counsel.

So it’s very simple, and it can be used in very simple ways. I think the first time I used it was to decide whether to go on an errand, and it advised me not to. I thought, “Well, never mind, I have to do this.” And I went on the errand, and it turned out to be hot and sweaty and complicated and useless. And I thought, “Ahh, OK. Maybe I’ll try this system again.”

TS: OK, now hold on one second. So just to understand how you used the chits to decide if you were going to go on this errand or not — so how many little pieces of paper did you have?

ML: I can’t remember this totally clearly, but this is probably how it went: I had one piece of paper that said, “Do this errand.” The second one said, “Do not go on this errand.” The third one said, “Wait” — that means don’t do anything now, of course. The fourth one is “Do not choose this way” — that means don’t use this approach to make this decision.

TS: Uh-huh, that’s a good chit to have, I think.

ML: You always have to have that in there.

TS: Uh-huh.

ML: Because maybe it’s not the right approach for this time. The thing about these tools is that they’re just tools, and like any tool you use them when they’re useful. That doesn’t mean they’re good on all occasions, but for the right occasion they’re great. So you always have to have that “Do not choose this way.”

And so then I prayed, probably, and threw them, and the one that landed closest to me was the one that said, “Do not go on this errand.” But I went.

TS: Well now, of course when we’re thinking about using the chits to decide something rather low risk like this — “Should I go on an errand or not?”; I guess it could be high risk depending on what might happen — but still, that’s not like, “Should I leave my husband?” “Where should I move to?” “Should I quit my job?” Do we really throw little pieces of paper down to decide if we should leave our husband? That seems a little ridiculous.

ML: It sounds totally absurd! And I’ve done similar things in the past and it’s really worked out. I know it sounds crazy. But if you really, really, really can’t decide on something major like that and you’ve tried everything and your mind says one thing then it says another; and your friends say one thing, and the Internet says another; and you just can’t decide, I’ll tell you this is a better approach than most. Because what you do is you just get so quiet, you’re so still, you go through several steps: You get very quiet. You get connected to that deepest and truest part of yourself, to the Divine. You write out the pieces of paper. You meditate. You pray for ten minutes, half an hour, until you feel this calm settle in, and then you throw them. And then you look at the one that comes up first. And quiet often, it’s not the one you want.

But, yeah, even major decisions like that…in the book I interviewed one woman who told me that she did the chits about leaving her husband and she got a “Yes.” And so she went and she talked to a divorce lawyer, and then she went and she told her husband. And she said that he totally changed. He’d always refused to go to counseling, to do anything about the problems in the marriage. [But] because she had taken those steps and was clear, he totally changed, went to counseling, and now their marriage is very happy.

This brings up another aspect of the chits and these systems, which is that they’re very much process-oriented. They take you to the next step and then another step, where you can then go from there to the next step and then to the next step. You cannot always get to there from here, but these sort of take you gently along the way.

And just a small example — again, it’s a minor thing — but I was in India; I had to have a haircut. And so I did the chits and I — actually, I think it was muscle testing then — and what came up was to go to a salon, a top local beauty salon. So I went there to make an appointment and I was standing out front and I ran into an Italian friend of mine. And she — I was really tuned into haircuts at the time — and she just had a wonderful haircut. And she told me she had gotten it from a guy who had just come from London who worked at a top salon there. And he was giving haircuts in his flat, which was just a few blocks away. So I knew enough not to be rigid about the first one — it got me to a point where I saw this woman. I called him; I went to his flat. He gave me a really terrific haircut — very frisky.

So, that’s how it works out. It takes you step-by-step toward the direction.

TS: Now what is the role of praying? You mentioned centering yourself, waiting ten, twenty, thirty minutes before throwing your chits. How does that impact the process?

ML: I think it’s very important ‘cause, to me, I mean you’re really accessing the Divine. And I guess theoretically you could do it quickly and without that step, but I think that step is really critical. For me it’s been really critical, ‘cause something is moving in the universe. And by going as deep in yourself as you can, you’re engaging with that process. And I think when you do that the answers are very much spot on.

TS: Now, Meg, I know you’re a very intelligent woman and a researcher and that you won’t be offended by this question — at least I hope not. But there’s a part of me that thinks that something like just throwing the chits to make major decisions is really superstitious mumbo jumbo. We are now relying on a superstitious toss of the dice, if you will, to make major decisions in our life? I know you talk about how divining can access our subconscious mind, but how can something like throwing the chits — we’re not accessing our subconscious mind. We’re trusting our life to randomness.

ML: You know, we’re trusting our life to God; we’re trusting our life to the Divine. And I think it’s actually…I know it sounds crazy. I know it sounds insane. And if you do it and you don’t get that internal “Yes,” then don’t do it. Then the process is not working properly. But what it really does is it summons up our deepest answers and puts those in front of us. ‘Cause our minds, they can go nuts sometimes; it’s just their nature. They protect us from stepping out of our mold. And sometime we have to take risks; we’ve got to step out of our mold. And the chits, in my experience, can give us the courage to actually do that. ‘Cause there is the sense of something coming from a very deep, deep place, whether we consider that within ourselves, whether that’s God or the Divine or… It comes from someplace [that] is both within us and beyond us. And it’s a very moving thing to do and then there’s a sense about it that it feels right. It just feels right. And in that case you can move.

So it does sound superstitious, but sometimes you’ll want to…It’s very interesting: there are researchers in Holland, [and] they’ve done a lot of research on decision-making and the conscious mind. ‘Cause we tend in our culture to put so much stake in thinking something through carefully. Researching it, looking at all the angles: “How do we get this to work?” “What’s the best approach?” And what they’ve found is that actually the conscious mind is not very good at making complex decisions. What happens is that…they’ve done research for instance where they had students look at buying cars or choosing apartments, where there are a number of factors involved. And they’ve found that if they distracted them so that they’re not thinking consciously about it, and then ask them — the people who did not think consciously about it but turned it over to their unconscious — [they] had a much, much higher rate of making good decisions. People who thought it through very carefully tended not to make good decisions. And it’s partly ‘cause of the way our minds are structured — our conscious mind can only take in about seven bits of information at any one point in time, plus or minus four, they say. The unconscious mind takes in eleven million bits of information at any one point in time. So there’s a vast amount of difference in the information that each part of our mind is collecting at any one point in time.

And I think what divining does is it really allows us to somehow tap into that unconscious and to look at it with our conscious mind.

TS: OK, so in the book What to Do When You Can’t Decide you teach three divining techniques. One you’ve described now in quite some detail — throwing the chits. You also teach muscle testing, which you very briefly mentioned was part of your hair-cutting sojourn. And then the third technique that you teach is what you call “pendling”: working with a pendulum. And so, when it comes to muscle testing (which I want to go into in just a moment) and using a pendulum, it makes sense to me that if we’re testing our own physical response (and we’ll go into what muscle testing is) or if we’re using a pendulum that’s attached to our hand (we’ll talk about that), it makes sense to me that our own unconscious — as you say, these eleven thousand pieces of information that we’ve received and processed — would influence the results of the muscle testing or the results of the pendling. But when it comes to throwing the chits, which is what we’ve been talking about so far, I write on a little piece of paper and then I seal the piece of paper so I don’t even know what’s written on it. And then I’ve got four, five, six of these in my hand and I throw them — how is my subconscious influencing the chits? I don’t even know what’s on them anymore.

TS: Well, Tami, this is really funny. The I Ching is the same thing, right? The Runes are the same thing. The Tarot is the same thing. They’re all random processes out of which order emerges. And it totally boggles the mind; it makes no sense. And yet, as anybody that knows these systems well knows, somehow it works. How does it work? We don’t know.

TS: Does it work, or do people project whatever and then that works? I mean, is the system working, or are we interpreting it in such a way that it works in our life?

ML: Well, that’s an excellent question. And my experience is that the system works. I have just found it amazing. And just to quote Jung — Jung wrote the foreword to the Wilhelm version of the I Ching — and he talks about how watching order emerge out of this seemingly random process, and he said — he wrote very wryly — he said, “The less that one thinks about the theory of the I Ching, the better one sleeps at night.” I really like that quote.

I mean, the I Ching of course has a long tradition behind it as [do] the Runes and the Tarot. This is a very simple, customized version of those. Unlike those systems, which do rely a lot on metaphor and symbols and which can be interpreted lots of ways, the chits are cut and dried; they just give it to you straight-on, and then you can decide what to do with that. But that’s their strength, and it’s probably the reason they haven’t spread in use more — there’s not much wiggle room with them.

TS: And before we move on from the chits, I just want to make sure that I hear it in your own words, what you believe is happening when we throw the chits. I asked you, “Do you feel like you’re trusting your life to randomness,” and you said, “No, we’re trusting our life to God.” What do you believe is happening in that moment — do you believe we’re having some kind of dialogue with Divinity that is giving us the information we need?

ML: Absolutely. That’s it. That’s it. I think we ask and we receive; it’s that simple. And…it’s difficult to grasp conceptually how this can work. And I think the best thing would be if somebody is at all intrigued is to try it out and see if it works — that’s the ultimate test. Does it work? Does it give you the answers that serve you? In my experience it has, over and over again. But this is something to be explored and experimented with, to see if it works for somebody individually.

TS: OK, so now let’s move on to using muscle testing and how that can be a divining technique. Now I think most people are familiar with muscle testing as something, you know, you go to an energy healer and they’ll test you, they’ll hold your arm out. And if your arm…they try to push it down. And if they can push your arm down it’s a “No,” and if your arm is firm it’s a “Yes.” And different kinds of energetic healers will test you about all kinds of things.

But you’re talking now about muscle testing that I can do on myself in order to make decisions. So I’d be curious if you could explain first of all what this is and how to do it.

ML: OK. The theory behind muscle testing is that [with] a positive response, your muscles will hold their strength. And with a negative response, they’ll lose their strength. Although for some people it’s the exact opposite. But that’s the basic theory. And to do it, what you do — I can lead you though it just very quickly — there [are] several ways you can do it. In the book what we taught the most is, you take your left hand so the palm is facing in and you put the tip of your little finger against the tip of your thumb so you’ve formed an “O.” That’s called your “circuit fingers.”

Then you take your right hand and you put your pointer finger and your thumb together and you insert it into that circle so that the knuckles — whatever knuckles feel comfortable resting against each other. And the testing involves pushing out with your “testing fingers” against the circuit fingers to try to break that link between your thumb and your pinky.

And the way you can test this is that you do this and then you say, “My name is ____” and you say your name. “My name is Tami,” say. And then you press outward, and it should hold its strength. Then you’re going to say, “My name is Roberta,” and you test it and should open a little bit. So that’s your yes and your no.

And then you can also set it up so that you can do a series if you wanted to check on, “I should go to Paris in June/July/August/September.” You test each time and it opens on the word September. So that’s how you choose from a list of things.

So that’s the basic mechanism. In the book we have some exercises on how you can develop that skill and play with it. But to begin with muscle testing, although this is a very simple mechanism, easy to learn, to actually do it effectively and well you have to do a few steps before you actually ask the question. And the first thing is that you have to get very quiet; find a quiet place inside and outside. Later on when you get good at it this isn’t as necessary, but particularly in the beginning when you’re training yourself, that’s very helpful. The second thing is you get connected to that deepest and truest part of yourself, however you conceive of it. It might be a prayer, it might be a mantra, it might be thinking of somebody or something you love — somehow you connect to that space. And the third thing is, is you neutralize your opinions and your desires, your preferences. This is a really important step, and there are a number of ways you can do it. You can for instance imagine putting it all to one side, just taking it and putting it to the left, say. Or you can have a prayer such as “Thy will be done.” Or you can think of ways in which every outcome would turn out well and every outcome would turn out badly, so that in effect neutralizes your preferences.

Then you do the actual testing, and then again you wait for that intuitive response — does it feel right? ‘Cause that sense of “Aha!”, that rightness, that has to be there also. Afterwards that’s how you verify.

TS: Um-hmm. Now a couple questions. One: sometimes of course we divine and we get an answer we don’t like, and yet you’re saying that there should be this kind of “Aha!” So are you saying we get an “Aha!” even about the answer we don’t like?

ML: Yes. In fact if you get an answer you don’t like, that’s proof that it’s working. If you keep on getting answers that you like, you know, something’s not quite right. It’s very easy to override this process with our mind and just have it give us what we want. And then it’s of no use whatsoever; I mean, what good is it then?

It’s best to actually ask it to be very honest with you — that you really want to know the truth about this. Above anything else you want to know the truth about what’s right for you in this circumstance. And then you can accept whatever answer comes up and move with it.

TS: Um-hmm. OK, and then I understand from the way you’ve described it how I can use muscle testing to get a yes-or-no answer. I got a little confused when you were offering the list of options of which months I might be traveling to Paris. I think I started thinking, “Am I going to go to Paris soon?” I got all excited…and so, can you talk me through that one more time: how I would work with a list of options in muscle testing.

ML: Actually what you would do with your fingers in those positions still, you’d just say to yourself, “This is a choice.” Then you wait to see if the fingers open or close: that indicates to you what the choice is, from a list of things. And so let’s say for instance that your finger stays shut on a choice — then if you were testing, let’s say, “Should I go to the park Monday, Tuesday, or Wednesday?” So then you would test Monday — it stays open. Tuesday, it stays shut. Wednesday, it opens. So Tuesday is your answer there.

TS: Right. OK, very good. And is your view here — I mean, I know you quoted Jung: “It’s better not to think about these things”…but I can’t help myself from actually trying to think about these things, and I know you do, too.

ML: I have such an active mind. To me it’s amazing that…my mind is just so, so active all the time that these aids are wonderful for me, but they’re also…the fact that I use them means they work for me. I mean, they have to work; otherwise I wouldn’t bother.

TS: Do you think that’s part of your interest — because your mind is so active you need tools like this, because otherwise you’d be bouncing: “Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday; Monday, Tuesday…Aaaaooooh!”?

ML: You know, it’s quite possible. I’m a Gemini so I not only see two sides of an issue, I see twenty sides of an issue! It’s great when you’re a journalist but when you’re making decisions it can make you…it can be difficult. So for me it’s very helpful, and that can be partly ‘cause I do have trouble making decisions.

Some people who are very decisive have no need for these tools. I mean, why would they bother if [they] could really easily make decisions and they turn out well; then it’s great. But most of us…most of us are–

TS: Why stick your fingers together in these weird configurations while you’re in the grocery store if you know what you want to buy naturally?

ML: If you know what you want to buy, but then again you’re looking at bunch of, let’s say, watermelons: which one should you buy if you don’t know how to get the right sound out of them? It’s very easy, just, uh…a friend of mine, her mother, when she goes to the fruit market she swings her purse; she uses her purse as a pendulum. Oh, it’s not her grandmother; it’s her husband’s mother, who’s in her nineties in Brooklyn. She goes to a market, [and] she uses her purse as a pendulum to pick the right melons! [laughs]

TS: Now, Meg, I’m seeing that as we sell hundreds of thousands of copies of this book that there are going to be people in Whole Foods all over the country swinging their purses in front of the watermelons.

ML: Exactly. It’s going to be dangerous!

TS: It’s going to be a strange movement. OK.

But here’s the question I wanted to ask you with my rational mind in looking at muscle testing, and then we’ll get to using a pendulum in just a moment. But with muscle testing, do you believe — there’s this sort of theory, consonant with your view — that our body is somehow communicating what’s in our subconscious. And that’s [why] our fingers are opening up, because our body is this knowing mirror or something?

ML: I just think it’s, it’s…I mean, we have intelligence in our very cells. I really think it’s our unconscious speaking through our bodies to our conscious minds. Because obviously with muscle testing and with the pendulum, you might say a signal goes from the brain through our neuromuscular system to our fingers. And there is a result. So a lot of things are happening along the way, and it’s really our body communicating to us from our deepest intelligence I think.

TS: And with that now, let’s move to the pendulum. And the pendulum’s something that we’re holding in our hand, and so there’s some communication of what’s happening in our body through that point of contact, whether it’s an actual pendulum or our purse, as you’re describing. So can you use anything as a pendulum?

ML: Sure. Anything that swings freely, you can use as a pendulum. You can use a pendant on a chain. Once I was just playing with it and I used a computer mouse on the end of a cord! I thought, “My God, this works!” So, yeah, you can use anything.

TS: OK, so I’m gonna take off my watch and use my watch.

ML: Now does it swing? Does it swing freely, this is the question — most watches [are on] a band that doesn’t swing very freely.

TS: My watch swings pretty well; so it swings. And how do I establish what’s “Yes,” what’s “No,” what’s “Maybe”, what’s “Don’t use this technique to make this important, critical decision in your life”?

ML: What you do is, you can either ask it to show you or you can direct it to show you a direction. In this case we’ll try asking; so you ask it, say, “Please show me a yes.” And then you watch and you see which way it moves. It can be circular, it can be back and forth, up and down. It can move sideways, counterclockwise…

TS: And you believe that what’s happening here is that my subconscious is starting to dialogue with my conscious mind, so my subconscious is–

ML: What you’re doing is, you’re setting up communication between your unconscious or subconscious and your conscious mind with this process. You’re setting up the rules of conduct, you might say.

TS: OK, I’m with you. I’ve got a “Yes.”

ML: OK, and what is your “Yes”?

TS: My “Yes” is just a back and forth, straight back and forth.

ML: OK. Now you say, “Show me a ‘No.’”

TS: Um-kay. It’s a left-to-right motion.

ML: And now say, “Show me a ‘Neutral.’”

TS: It’s not moving at all.

ML: OK: there you are. Those are your three responses. So now that you have your responses you’re going to ask a question of it, and you’ll get your “Yes,” your “No.” “Neutral” means “Wait” or “The answer isn’t available” or “The answer is not here right now for sure.”

TS: And so I could say, “I want a ripe watermelon.” I could go to the grocery store and hold this over various watermelons to find the one that was ripe. And this would a low-risk way to find out if it worked.

ML: But you also have to specify when you want it to be ripe. Do you want it to be ripe enough to eat in two hours? Do you want it to be the best ripeness for eating in one day? If you just ask for the ripest watermelon you probably will get one that’s overly ripe.

TS: Right, so you have to be very specific.

ML: Very specific, and simple language. Uncomplicated sentences — very simple sentences.

TS: What would be your guidance, like the kind of dos and don’ts of divining so that I can have the best results?

ML: Well, the three steps we had talked about — those are important.

TS: Remind me…that I pray first–

ML: Again, first to be quiet. (And if you’re testing melons, of course it can be done more quickly.) Second, to connect to the deepest part of yourself — somehow make that connection. And then three, neutralize your opinions. Just be willing to trust that any watermelon’s going to be the right watermelon. [laughs] And then you go over them.

So the dos and the don’ts…I mean, to me a real basic do is don’t ask about the future. I don’t think it works with these devices; I don’t think it works particularly well for anything. But it’s-

TS: Why is that?

ML: It’s not about asking about the future. Ummm. You’re in a whole different realm. It’s been my experience that these approaches actually work best in the moment for a decision that you need to make. The future has often failed; it can change. It generally is not productive to [ask], “Will this happen?” Now you can ask, “Is it a good idea…should I buy a plane ticket for this date?” That’s a different kind of thing. That’s an action-oriented question as opposed to, “Will I go there on this date?”

The second thing is don’t get in other people’s business. It’s not about finding what your teenage son is doing and not telling you about. Again, it’s very hard to get clear ‘cause it’s…we have so many fears and desires and hopes and blind spots, so it’s very easy with a question like that to go astray and to come up with what either makes you more fearful or makes you more blind to it.

So it’s really not about other people. It’s more about…you could ask yourself, “Should I talk with my son about this?” “Is there anything more I should know about talking with my son about this?” And then you can dialogue with the pendulum and muscle testing very easily, to go deeper, to explore all the aspects of a question or some kind of issue facing you. But again it’s not about asking if your next-door neighbor is having an affair with the Fed Ex carrier — that’s not your business, you know. “Will this team win the World Series?” That’s not what it’s for.

TS: And then in terms of advice about how I frame my questions or yes-no specificity, do you have more to say about that?

ML: It helps, especially in the beginning, to take some time on it. To be really clear about what your questions are, ‘cause the more clear you are the [clearer] your answers will be. And for some people it takes them time just to learn how to ask a question properly. And sometimes just in framing the question the answer becomes clearer.

What often happens with divining is, as you go along the process, the answer will become clear to you even before you ask the question. And in those cases you don’t even have to ask the question, but there’s something about the process itself in opening the doors and opening the potential for things to be different than our narrow preconceptions, sometimes information just comes and you know how to deal without even going through the process itself.

TS: Now, Meg, when I think back to cultures that have been around for a long time — and you mentioned the use of something like the I Ching — we can see that divining tools have been useful for people for thousands of years. And I completely hear what you’re saying about the need to have access to guidance that’s outside of our limited rational mind. But at the same time I can see in cultures that have been around for a long time a great deal of superstition, of just plain myth and ignorant views about the world and how it works. How do you make this distinction between relating to the world in a kind of superstitious and one might say pre-rational way versus relating to the world by wanting to go trans-rational, beyond the rational mind, still including our rational mind but — I’m drawing here on some work from Ken Wilber where he talks about something that he calls the “pre/trans fallacy”… And I’m not trying to get too complicated, but he talks about how we sometimes confuse what’s pre-rational with what’s beyond rational. How have you sorted this out?

ML: With divining we’re not actually using just our unconscious or just one side of our brain; we’re actually using our brain in a very integrated manner. Because coming up with the question — and I’ll use left and right side here, ‘cause it’s easy language — but coming up with the question, we use the left and rational side of our brain. As we write — let’s say we’re using the chits — as we write down the options, we’re opening ourselves up to intuitive inflow as well. ‘Cause an option may occur to us that hadn’t before, so we add that to the list.

When we pray we’re opening ourselves up again. We’re in the right side of our brain, opening ourselves up to or connecting with the Divine, opening ourselves up to this wider, deeper part of ourselves — the unconscious. We muscle-test, we pendle, we throw the chits, we get the answer — we look at it. And at this point both parts of our brain swing into action. There’s an intuitive “Yes” or there isn’t. And there’s also the rational mind, [which] comes in and says, “Is this gonna work?” You know, “How will this work?” And it does the evaluation. And then in terms of logistics: “What’s the next step?” Again the rational mind is engaged.

So anthropologists have found that shamans and people [who] do divining, you might almost say it’s a professional activity. Their brain weaves both the unconscious and the conscious realms together in a very fluid manner. And they have found actually — it’s an old study but it was done on divining — they found that experienced diviners are actually operating at all four levels of the brain.

TS: So, Meg, I’m not quite clear. What are the four levels of the brain?

ML: OK, there are actually, let’s say, four brainwave frequencies. One is the beta waves, which is ordinary waking consciousness. That’s our mind when it’s busy and buzzing. And then there [are] alpha waves, which are kind of calmed, relaxed, peaceful. There [are] theta waves, which is when we’re between wakefulness and sleep; it’s that stage when we’re just kind of drifting off to sleep. And then there [are] delta waves, which is deep, dreamless sleep; and also during intense spiritual practices these kinds of waves are present.

So in effect what they’ve found is that activity is occurring simultaneously in all four of these frequencies. So in effect they were thinking, they were relaxing, they were dozing, and they were sleeping deeply all at the same time, which is very unusual. So something very interesting is going on here. And what was happening is that neurons were also firing simultaneously on both sides of their brains, and even in a coherent manner, which amplifies the brain’s power. So it’s very interesting.

Actually, at the last convention of the American Society of Dowsers there was a man who has done much of the research at the Stanford Research Institute on remote viewing. And he was actually amazed by dowsing, because he said what amazed him about it was that the information that good dowsers obtained was so specific and that even the best of his people who…he did research experiments for two or three decades for the CIA, among other parties. But he said even the best people at remote viewing didn’t often have that kind of very specific information that they were able to access.

TS: So this is really helpful. What you’re saying to me is that when you engage with divining in a deep and real way, all of these parts of the brain and all four of these brain states are active. And something like superstition, which is more just like a belief — you know, it could be that just the rational part of my brain has latched onto a belief: “That’s it!” — that’s very different than what you’re describing.

ML: Totally, totally. And it’s…you know, you’re not bypassing the rational side of your brain completely with these processes. You’re thanking it for sharing; you’re putting it in its place in effect. And you’re accessing information that goes far beyond its meager powers. And to me it’s…the fact…it’s not superstition because it can all be tested out. You just try it out, you see where it goes, you see where it takes you. It’s an ongoing experiment. And you find over time that it defies the powers of explanation. It’s very mysterious at its core, just as the Divine at its core is very mysterious: how can we even start to guess what it’s all about? And yet it works; in a very concrete, physical, practical way, it works.

TS: Now one of the things I find interesting about you is that you’ve done a certain amount of research and engaged in scholarship to know what scientific studies there are to support divining. And I’m curious if there have been any studies that really “prove” quote-unquote its effectiveness?

ML: Not many, because on many of these questions how do you scientifically test what the right course of action is? It’s not particularly responsive in laboratory situations — in real life it is, but in laboratory situations it tends to get all funny, which is one of its more endearing aspects.

TS: OK. Well then, we’ll go to this then: what is your pet theory — your true, genuine pet theory in your heart — about how these divining tools work with quote unquote “the Divine”?

ML: I think we’re all deeply divine, and this process makes that clear and allows our rational mind to come into accord with that. The rational mind is wonderful — it’s a wonderful tool. It’s not the end-all and be-all of existence; it’s only a tool. And I think when we divine we really do touch the space that’s the deepest and the truest part of ourselves, which is the deepest and truest part of what is, and it is what is at base. In divining, what I find in my personal experience is the feeling I have is of coming into a space [that] is a very vast, vast panorama of information. But not just information — there’s an immensity to it and a depth to it and a silence to it. And, yeah, there’s kind of a sense of throbbing life, and there’s a kindness to it. You really see that: the universe is a kind place in which to be, and I am a kind part of it. I am that, actually.

And that’s what I find divining leads us toward. At its heart it’s a spiritual process. It brings us into the truth of our existence, and that’s why I like it.

TS: Wonderful. I’ve been speaking with Meg Lundstrom. She is the author of the new Sounds True book em>What to Do When You Can’t Decide: Useful Tools for Finding the Answers Within. And it’s a very practical book and very helpful book, supportive book, and intriguing book. Meg, thank you so much for speaking with me and for sharing a little bit about these techniques and how they’ve been meaningful to you. Thank you.

ML: Thank you so much, Tami. I’ve really enjoyed this.

TS: Again, the author of the new book What to Do When You Can’t Decide. For SoundsTrue.com, thank you for listening. Sounds True: many voices, one journey.

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