Intuition series: How to use intuition or should I head north to go south?

confusedI don’t know what it’s like for others, so I can only draw on my own personal experiences here. For me, I find when I’m thinking about a certain course of action, or am doing something; my stomach (in the solar plexus chakra area) will either feel distressed as though something is churning within me. (It’s a feeling resembling fear, even if no emotion is attached.) Or I will feel a sense of joy, connectedness, truth or love.

When it’s the former, it means that actions or situation will not suit my purposes. The stronger the feeling, the less I should do something. When it’s the latter, it means I should follow the actions or situation, no matter how unlikely or insane it might seem at the time.

The thing with your decisions is that other people will try and talk you out of it if they think you are wrong. They will tell you that you’re making a mistake, or that you’ll regret a course of action.

Or if you know something bad will happen, they will try and convince you that you’re being paranoid or negative, or that you’re a wet blanket.

Many tend to accept the advice of others, in spite of what they may feel.

This is a mistake.

Intuition is a sign that you’re  connected to your feelings. It’s like saying I wish to head north, but we’re heading east right now and we’ll never reach our goal.

Being told you are being negative might convince you that you should be continuing east, rather than listening to their internal guidance.

Remember, people give advice based generally on what they want, and not what you want.

If things were that obvious, we wouldn’t need our intuition, but they rarely are. When we call forth events in our life, we are also given directions, but those directions might seem wrong because they are pointing you in a different path. That’s when people ignore them and go in the direction they think they should go, or what logic dictates. In the end, often things just don’t work out quite as expected.

As an example, supposing you are at a train station and you need to get to your destination as soon as possible. The train arrives. Your first inclination is to board it, and logic tells you to, but something holds you back. It may be a feeling that something is wrong, or a sudden anxiety. It could even be a resistance in your movement. Perhaps you might even start to stress or panic.

What you need to take notice of is if it feels right to board that train? You listen to your feelings and you decide not to board it.

Five minutes later, another train comes. This one happens to be an express train, and will get you there 10 minutes sooner. You didn’t have that information, but your intuition did.

There are also those times when it’s not  easy to tell what of intuition is telling you.

This is because fear can cause interference.

For example, supposing your  child is home late, the fear of something terrible having happened to them will kick in and often override your intuitive feelings that all is well. (In which case, I’d recommend the Bach Flower Remedy, Mimulus, for known fears.)

Fear can cause a lot of grief and when you love and care for someone, it can really be hard to overcome  and be impartial.

(The Bach Flower Remedies Red Chestnut and Mimulus can really help here.)

Next:  How come feelings change?

Intuition series: Logic or why doesn’t it work?

Spock
Spock (Photo credit: Tram Painter)

I’ve spoken about intuition on and off, but have yet to really explain what it means.

I used to think that intuition was about manifesting and using mind powers.  That was back in the 80 and 90s, when there just wasn’t any information around at the time.

My intuition was working fine, but I would just ignore it because I didn’t like what it was telling me.

More importantly, when I was going to try something that didn’t feel right, I thought that it was just nerves, or me being negative, so I thought that if I soldiered on, thing would work out.

They never did.

It wasn’t till around 1994 that I finally started to understand. I’m not sure what caused the shift, but one day, I just somehow understood what I needed to do.

As I mentioned in previous entries, I had finally got to the point where I was so over failing in getting the things I believed I wanted. I was worn down, and had to admit that I just couldn’t brute force my way thought things.

Once I started to trust it, it became one of my greatest tools.

The skeptics out there claim that there is no such thing as intuition. They will put it down to us having the ability to read subtle signs and signals that we’re not even aware of.

Now, there is truth to this, make no mistake, but to dismiss it as all there is to it would be an error.

While we might be very good at reading signs (especially as an Empath), it does not explain how you can know about things where there are no signs to be read.

It doesn’t explain how you could know things that were never spoken of, of things that are happening elsewhere, when  you’ve got no prior knowledge of it.

It doesn’t explain why something might feel right today, and then tomorrow it feels bad, even though you’ve received no new information.

If it was a matter of being logical, then most of the decisions I’ve made would not have been made and the ones based on logic would have ensured my life would have thrived.

Logic has gotten me nowhere. Even reading the signs has failed me when it doesn’t match with what I was  feeling.   In fact, often,  what I might be feeling may be totally contrary to what I’m observing.

The fact is, intuition is real, it is powerful and can really steer you through the minefields of life.

The fact that people fear to trust their own feelings shows that logic has very little to do with  it, because people tend to take the logical route, or the path that they feel will lead them to the most benefit, even if they don’t feel good about the choice.

In these things, fear is often at the root of our motivation.

Intuition is like your personal inbuilt GPS with full traffic information and where the speed and red light cameras are… well, I’m sure you get the idea.

It will navigate all the obstacles that you can’t possibly be aware of. All you need do is listen.

Next: How do you use your intuition?