Intuition is our inner knowingness, the wisdom of our soul. When we know something with our intuition, it is a knowingness we feel in our bones, in our heart, a certainty that resonates throughout our entire body/being.
By learning to access the intuitive capacity innate within us we can access our own truth, as well as the truth of others. If we ask our intuition to show us the direction that is the most appropriate for us, if we ask to know the truth about a given situation, our intuition will provide the answers, indicating the most appropriate path for us to follow in relation to each situation we encounter in our lives.
Knowing the truth in a given moment and understanding the dynamics of a situation in which we find ourselves gives us certain advantages in our lives. But are we willing to act on the truth? Can we follow the truth we perceive, thanks to the perceptions of our intuitive self? If we do not follow the guidance we receive from our intuition, we will not reap the potential benefits offered by its counsel.
Finding the courage to follow the guidance offered by your intuition can be a demanding challenge. Developing confidence and trust in your intuition takes time and requires personal commitment. Courage is a quality essential to intuition development, because you must be willing to take a risk—the risk that you may be wrong. The discovery that you have been wrong in an action or a decision is often difficult to accept and manage. However, if you do not take the risk, you will never know.
There is, in fact, a series of challenges we face in the development of the intuition. The first is getting in contact with the intuition. The second is learning how to live with it—how to share our intuition and be true to this aspect of ourselves in relationship to others. The third is gaining something through the existence of your intuition.
What do you have to gain by developing your intuition? Let us imagine that it has become imperative to you to begin to utilize your intuition. You are aware that this aspect of you has been dormant, sleeping. You have neglected your intuitive self terribly, but now you would like to wake up and begin to share this aspect of yourself in your world. What do you have to gain? You will not wake up unless there is a gain. This is normal. It is painful to wake up. It is easier to dream, to stay wrapped up in a comfortable, reassuring illusion. It is challenging to wake up, to become aware, to become conscious. What will you gain by developing your intuition?
If you really make a commitment to your intuition, you will evolve more deeply and more thoroughly, and gain a greater lucidity about your process of personal evolution. You will develop to your potential more quickly. However, to transform and evolve is not necessarily an easy process. It is certainly easier to stay asleep than to wake up and take responsibility for yourself, your life, and the direction in which you are evolving. If, however, you are tired of sleeping, of being a victim, of feeling lost, out of control, and confused, then developing your intuition will serve you well. It will give you a resource to which you can always turn—a resource that is inside you and that is always there, waiting patiently to guide and serve you.
The commitment you make to your intuitive self is a deep commitment. It is an engagement that will challenge you, both internally and externally, to become more honest, more authentic. At times, this commitment may throw your life into a state of temporary chaos. If you are truly well in your life, well on your chosen path, and aligned with your purpose, then your engagement to your intuition will simply improve your life even further, adding dimensions of richness and deepness to an already fulfilling path.
However, if you are not where you should be, where you could be—if you are not involved in a type of work that really suits you, if you are not satisfied with your intimate relationships and family life, if you feel lost and misplaced with yourself—then developing your intuition may very well push you so that changes begin to happen in your life. Change will begin because change is what you need. Your intuitive self wants you to be well—wants you to be in the right place, at the right time, with the right people. Your intuitive self will always guide you toward whatever is the most appropriate, the most perfect for you. However, your deep and true need may not be the same as your conditioned idea of what you need.
If this is the case, you will discover you have a problem. You will be challenged by your intuitive self to see, to feel, and to understand your problem more clearly. You will be challenged to solve the problem—to create concrete changes in your life. If, in your conditioned, programmed idea of yourself, you want one thing but your deepness needs something else, then you will have a decision to make. You will have a choice: should you follow the deep need or should you follow the desire? There is always a choice. There is always free will.
For example, if I want a hamburger for lunch, but the deep need of my body is for something simpler and nourishing, like a fresh salad, I can eat the hamburger and survive. I will not be punished for following my desire rather than my true need. I have the advantage of knowing my need, even if I do not follow it. Perhaps by following my desire, by fulfilling my desire, I will eventually go beyond it. The next time I face this same decision, I may choose the salad and nourish my deep need rather than my desire.
The more you listen to your inner guidance and follow its wisdom, the more you will trust that it brings you what is best for you. To discover that, however, you have to take the risk of following that guidance.
For example, you may have had a job for many years that you no longer enjoy. But the job pays you well. You ask your intuition for guidance and the response you receive is: “Leave this job. You are not nourished in your deepness by this work. You are not evolving. Be open to other possibilities.” Your rational self will probably not be in agreement with this guidance. It may respond with: “But if I quit this job, what will I do? I've done this job for twenty years. I'm 45 years old. What else can I do? No job, no money; no money, no place; no place, no importance.” Yet every time you ask the question, you receive the same response. “Leave the job … leave the job.”
Sooner or later you will have to choose, you will have to reach a decision. Do you want to be comfortable in your life? Yes, of course! Do you want to explore, evolve? Yes, of course! Is it really your intuition guiding you to leave your work, or is it the neurotic fantasy of a bored mind, idling its hours away at the office e desk? If you leave, what will happen? Will there be another job for you? Or will you eventually join the ranks of the unemployed, desperate and miserable, obliged to accept any job eventually offered to you?
This is the level of risk we are talking about with the development of the intuition. Real risks. Risks that can change your life. Not a choice between a hamburger and a salad, but a choice that can have an impact on your whole life. This is how the intuition can challenge you. Very often, too often, you are not where you really wish to be in your life. You are not satisfied with where you are and with the people who surround you, because you are not satisfied with yourself. You do not feel nourished in your deepness. Something essential is missing. This inner sense of lack, of loss, is a state experienced daily by many, many people.
Something you can always count on with your intuition is that, when it guides you and you follow it, you will have more joy in your heart and you will experience more joy in your life. As a result of the changes you create, you will feel nourished in the deepness of your heart, so that when you finally make the decision to leave the job, you will feel a release, a relief. “I did it! I'm unemployed … and I feel good!” The release is something you feel in your deepness, a feeling of certainty and of rightness. However, you have to take the risk and do it to feel it. You have to act on the decision to have the result. Great courage is needed.
It is difficult to change. It is difficult to let go of the past. It is even more difficult to follow your own truth. Other people can become frightened, threatened, if you follow your own truth. If you take the risk to be true, real, and courageous, if you begin to follow your heart, other people's concept of their reality can become very threatened. Even if they love you, even if they want the best for you, even if they want to see you happy, joyful, and content, they are not going to encourage you to follow your heart because of their own fears, their own lack of courage, and their own unhappiness—not to mention their fear of losing you from their lives. Great courage is needed to listen to your intuitive guidance and follow the path of your heart.
To succeed on the path of intuition you must have a warrior's spirit—courage, determination, and a profound belief in yourself. You must be willing to let go of all excess baggage in your life so you can go forward with lucidity and lightness. You must advance, even if you feel fear in your belly and dread in your mind. Once you choose this path, you cannot go back; you can only go onward. You can stop and rest, you can look back to the past with nostalgia, and you can delay your next step with the procrastinations of a weary mind, but you cannot go back. Why? Because your heart, your soul, your awakening, strengthening wisdom will not let you. It is as simple as that.
Even though, at times, the path of a warrior spirit is challenging, difficult, and tiring, the self-empowerment, personal lucidity, and self-reliance that result are worth the effort. There is nothing more enriching than the inner knowingness that you have found your path and you are walking it with the agreement and encouragement of your deepest self.
The path of the intuition is a path of the heart, a path of the soul. It is a path that leads you to yourself, that leads you home. In this homecoming, you can find true remembrance—remembrance of yourself, of your place, of your purpose. In this homecoming, you can rediscover the joy of your heart, the dance of your light being, and the ancient wisdom of your soul. You can know that you are not alone, that you were never abandoned. In forsaking yourself, in forgetting yourself, you lost your sense of yourself and so experienced abandonment. In coming home to yourself, to your intuitive heart, you nourish yourself in the deepest way possible. You accept responsibility for your own well-being and, in doing so, you liberate yourself from dependence on others. From a position of liberated independence you can begin to create personal relationships which are a true exchange, a true sharing, and a true joy to live.