Trusting Your Oracle
Distinguishing the Voices of Doubt, Delusion, Reason, and Intuition
There is deep wisdom within our very flesh, if we can only come to our senses and feel it.
ELIZABETH A. BEHNKE
So, you’ve got your Oracle. Your very own direct line to the Divine. Woman, this is great news indeed! You have located your soul’s mouthpiece, and you have started the conversation flowing. Now it’s time to find out all that your inner knowing wants you to know. It’s time to use your Oracle as engine, steering wheel, captain’s quarters, and compass. Let the good times roll!
And yet.
Over the years, as I have been reintroducing women to their Oracles and inner knowing in this way, one of the first doubts I often hear is something like, “Having an Oracle between my thighs sounds good and all, but why just this one little spot? Why not listen to my whole body, if it’s as wise and trustworthy as you say it is?”
Oh, yes, your whole body is infinitely wise. Of course there are other places and types of intelligence throughout it, including (but not limited to) your head, heart, and gut. I am sure you are used to hearing “be rational,” “listen to your heart,” and “trust your gut instinct.” Yet, I think of each one of these spots of your body as a tributary that flows to the “mouth” of the river of your inner knowing: your Oracle. And I have noticed that at a certain point, either naturally or deliberately, your Oracle will hook up (no pun intended) to your whole body’s wisdom, including that of your head, heart, and gut — your thoughts, reasons, concerns, fears, emotions, and instincts.
I look forward to the day when “commune with your Oracle” is no longer considered radical but commonplace. It will signify that we women aren’t routinely overlooking a powerful source of wisdom in our bodies, one that can also act as a focal point for and synthesizer of our whole body’s wisdom.
Look, if after trying out all this Oracle stuff, you find that you access your inner knowing in your big toe, hallelujah. Feminine Genius is anything but formulaic. But for now, I suggest you focus on the place of intelligence that is your Oracle, because it is, in my experience, the place where women are most disconnected. And when a woman gets reconnected to her Oracle, it is the place through which she can source the most power, fulfillment, and insight. I have seen over and over that when a woman gives communing with her Oracle a real, earnest shot, she taps into an aspect of her Genius that is entirely unreachable any other way.
your Oracle is an organ of truth
DOUBTS, DELUSIONS, FEARS, AND REASONS
Let’s look more closely at the other doubts that may come up as you begin to engage with your Oracle. At the very moment you part your lips to say word one to your Oracle, you might pause and think, “Wait a minute. Whose voice will I be hearing, exactly? How, exactly, can I trust what I hear? Since my Oracle is in my sexual center, isn’t my Oracle only about sex? Is that really my highest guidance? I want other things for myself besides sex. How do I know I’m not going to regret following her advice? I have followed my sexual urges before, and they got me into trouble. Shouldn’t I go with a safer source of guidance like my head, heart, or gut?”
When I say that your Oracle is your in-house interpreter for the Divine, you may think, “But I am not God. There are people who have studied their whole lives to understand the power of all this. Isn’t it arrogant to assume I know as much as they? I have so much psychological baggage that I am not to be trusted with what I hear internally. Surely, killers and psychopaths also listen to what they hear internally, and they are in no way trustworthy. Don’t we need our sages, priests, lineages, rule enforcers, and teachers to keep us on the right path?”
You may think, “Can I really know what is best for me? Can I listen to me? Me, who, if given an inch of chocolate cake, will eat a mile of chocolate cake? Me, who, if given the chance, would sleep with the UPS guy or sleep in until noon? Me, who, if given the opportunity to show up, prefers to hide out? Me, who is a mile-high manic one day and a raging bitch the next? Me, who is just as much primal animal as rational human?”
yes. you. listen.
These are the questions that you must grapple with in learning to trust yourself and listen to your Oracle. Is it intuition or fear? Guidance or doubt? Instinct or compulsion? Good or evil? How do you know which is driving you? How do you know that what you are hearing is not just the voice of a hang-up, addiction, or past wound? How do you know if you are talking with angels or demons? How do you know if you are maneuvering with a trustable compass or about to lose control of the wheel?
I get it. These have been my questions, too. These are the questions of nearly every woman, too — of course. Worthy concerns, all. First, you can learn to discern the different voices within you, all the while respecting and befriending them. Then, it’s important to go back to focusing on your Oracle because her softer, subtler voice often requires patience in order to be heard, and her symbolic, indirect guidance often requires decryption in order to be understood.
Remember Callie, whose childhood act 1 we looked in on back in chapter 3? I caught up with her a few years after we worked together. She had answered for herself that most difficult question about her relationship, “Should I stay or should I go?” Her answer was, “Go.” She spent many agonizing months looking for reasons big enough to justify her leaving. Although there were plenty of reasons for her to separate from her partner — their incompatibility in communication, sex, and whether or not to have children — Callie made her decision from a place that wasn’t about reasons. She made her choice by consulting with her Oracle.
There is something unmistakable about a woman who has come home to herself — a still center, a strong backbone, and a sparkling energy. I see it all over Callie, even over our video call. When we talk, she is living with her new love, Adam.
“Looking for reasons can be ugly because you will find them,” she tells me, tearing up a little. “I really had to first get in touch with my own sexual energy and see it as a kind of life-force energy. I could then be in my body and feelings (and Oracle!) in a different way than before in my life. So then, I really just kept asking myself, ‘what do I want?’ and from that place — before any reasons — my answer was clear. It really took something to get to know myself and what all my voices — my fear voice, my desire voice, my higher-self voice, my parent’s voice — sound like.” Callie’s are the words of a woman who has learned how to trust her Oracle, and thereby to trust herself.
We have been raised to fear the yes within ourselves, our deepest cravings.
AUDRE LORDE
As the voice of your Oracle becomes stronger, and you feel more sure of it, you find it easier to trust what you hear. You hear the voice of your Oracle as distinct from the voices of delusion, fear, reason, or addiction. And, as you keep walking the path of Feminine Genius, it becomes easier to find the wisdom even within the voices of delusion, fear, reason, or addiction.
Discerning Your Inner Voices
As you know, you’ve got all kinds of voices within you that are happy to chime in given even the tiniest invitation: your five senses, your intuition, your emotions, impulses, instincts, urgings, warnings, fears, judgments, and reasons. How’s a girl to hear her Oracle in that kind of cacophony, let alone trust it? Let’s take a closer look at each of them, so you can begin to distinguish them for yourself, all the while confirming that each is your friend, not your foe. (Yes, even fear.) Each, when seen correctly and worked with skillfully, is a source of somatic intelligence, custom-designed for your learning and growth. As a way to begin your process of discernment, let me attend to some of the worthy concerns from the beginning of this chapter.
First, it’s true that going with the guidance from your head, heart, or gut can be more of a sure thing than listening to your Oracle. Not to mention more socially acceptable. I mean, you can talk about your head, heart, or gut at any fancy dinner party without anyone asking you to leave. But, there comes a time when you want more. You want truth. You want passion, self-expression, and the confidence that only comes as you walk your Feminine Genius path. That time is now.
Second, if you get the guidance from your Oracle to have more and to have better nooky, she is likely on to something. Your Oracle is not just about sex. And yet, what woman couldn’t do with reclaiming and reintegrating her sexual energy and letting it flow more powerfully? It is less a question of whether sexual urges can be trusted and more a question of whether you trust your own (and another’s) no or yes. Do you trust your ability to get into and out of situations when you want more, or when you’ve had enough? Do you trust that this is not your last chance to get something finger-licking good, because you know that the Universe won’t ever run out?
Last, it is good to remember that, although your Oracle makes her home in your (spicy) sexual center, she is all about the other (mild and medium) expressions of erotic energy and pleasure as well: creativity, well-being, communion, and meaning. Your Oracle’s job is tending your light and fire, period.
But here is the thing. The voice of your Oracle feels completely different from delusion, fear, reason, or compulsion. Let me share with you some of the distinctions I have gathered with clients and participants over the years, to help you to distinguish — and befriend — each voice for yourself. Then learning to listen to your Oracle first, and all the other domineering voices later, will allow you to sift the chaff of an untruth from the wheat of your truth.
Fight, Flight, Freeze, Feed, Flock, and Fornicate
There is a part of your brain that is affectionately called the lizard brain, partly because, in terms of biology and evolution, it is the oldest part the brain, and partly because it is about all a lizard has for brain function. It is the primitive part of our human brain that we share with other animals, and is responsible for primal functions like breathing, coordination, and balance, and survival urges like defense, eating, and mating.
Your lizard brain is the part of you on hyper-vigilant alert and, when “triggered,” will demand you “freak out,” through fighting, fleeing, freezing, feeding, flocking — or fornicating. Fighting, fleeing, and freezing are pretty self-explanatory, but I add three more Fs. By feed, I mean the instinct to put food in your body, whether consciously or compulsively. By flock, I mean the impulse to do what the group is doing, to keep up with the Joneses, and to not rock the boat. By fornicate, I mean the urge to jump in the sack with someone who is probably bad news for you. Your lizard brain is responsible for two things: making sure you don’t die, and making sure you reproduce. Your lizard brain will use the six Fs as it sees fit.
Your lizard brain doesn’t always distinguish between real or imagined danger. It doesn’t concern itself with the concept of time, and in many ways, it hasn’t yet learned that you grew up. That you made it out alive. That you are actually quite lithe, discerning, smart, and strong. That you are no longer dependent on pleasing someone so they will feed you, love you, keep a roof over your head, or wipe your butt.
Reasoning: Judgment and Deceit
There is another part of your brain that is called your prefrontal cortex, which is the “reasoning” part of your brain. This reasoning, judging, analytical brain — the headquarters of your Masculine Genius — allows you to do and comprehend truly amazing things, like music, writing, physics, and philosophy. And yet it is this same part of your mind that also allows you to lie, whether to yourself or another, as it seems only human beings can.
As the dominant culture believes, you might also believe that the rational brain defines you as a human being and separates you from lower — and lowlier — forms of life, like lizards. Your rational brain (Masculine Genius) thinks it is the boss and tries valiantly to run the whole show, trying to do your soul’s job (Feminine Genius). But really, your rational brain is working above its pay grade. As Dolano, a satsang and meditation teacher I sat with in India, puts it, “Your mind is trying to be your master when its real job is your beloved servant.” Your rational brain hasn’t yet had time to appreciate the power and accuracy of your Oracle. In time, it will stop trying to drive and will instead upgrade to beloved devotee of Feminine Genius.
Even Our Foolish Brains Can Be Wise
Compulsion, obsession, addiction, delusion, garden-variety fears, and the “reasonable” voice that warns you off “indulgences” — such as a lifelong passion for watercolor painting that you deny because your brain labels it as neither practical nor dignified (even though you feel deliciously alive when you paint) — come from both the lizard and rational parts of your brain. Some schools of thought instruct that these voices of fear, addiction, or analysis are parts of you that want to “keep you small,” sabotage you, or inflate your sense of self to delusional proportions. The instruction is to then treat these parts of you (often called your ego) as an invading cancer — something foreign that wants the worst for you.
But this is a misguided instruction. If you subscribe to this criminalization of your voices of fear, addiction, or analysis, you then walk around assuming you have hellions within you just waiting to do you in and, who knows, perhaps just waiting to do others in as well. I believe if you look closely, you will see that there is nowhere you could go, nothing you could do, and nothing you could feel or think, where the Divine is not. Even in your judgments and fear-based thinking. Even in your ego. God is in your lizard brain and rational brain, too. You do not have a force for evil lurking in your head. Actually, you do have a potential force for evil lurking in your head, but only if you treat what’s in your head as evil.
It is not about having voices of fear, addiction, or analysis. It is about how you regard those voices of fear, addiction, or analysis. As you learned in navigating your dark emotions, anything like fear, doubt, smallness, greed, anger, lust, blame, intolerance, hatred, or otherwise needs to be recognized, not as the enemy but as a part of you. When treated badly, these parts behave badly. Go after them like adversaries, and they will cower and fester in your dark recesses. (See, wasn’t our romp through the underworld in part one worth it? You’re welcome.)
Feminine Genius sways you to believe instead that every part of you is rooting for you, not against you. When each part is recognized with dignity and respect, it can transform into a wise messenger. Every cast-off part needs a promotion, not a firebombing. After all, your brain is part of your body. Every aspect of your brain and body loves you utterly. Every aspect of you has a positive intention for you, such as keeping you safe, loved, belonging, learning, growing, valued, and self-expressed. Every aspect, without exception.
However, your voices of fear, addiction, or analysis usually miss the mark in terms of what they propose you do in order to feel safe, loved, belonging, learning, growing, valued, and self-expressed. They often suggest actions that are at odds with the brilliance of your being, like: “Hide under the covers for the rest of your life.” “Just one more martini.” “I deserve this third pint of ice cream!” “Why yes, I will go home with you; my husband will never find out.” Or “Look and act perfect so no one finds out you are a fraud.” But these voices are not the enemy. They are you. They are another form of intelligence — to be deciphered, admittedly — and hold key information for you as you learn and grow.
INTUITION, SENSATIONS, AND EMOTIONS
Then there is the intelligence of your intuitive, feeling body — a whole other set of inner voices. Listening to your Oracle requires you to become fluent with the language of your intuition, sensations, feelings, and emotions.
Intuition, my dictionary confirms for me, is defined as spiritual perception, the ability to understand something immediately and directly, without the need for conscious reasoning. I also consider intuition to be your sixth sense. Along with your five senses of sight, smell, taste, touch, and hearing, your intuition helps you receive important — and sacred — information. I have noticed, too, that intuition couples nicely with self-esteem. Meaning, the more you hold yourself in a healthy regard, the more intuitive guidance you are likely to receive, the more you are able to trust what you hear, and the more you are able to trust yourself to follow what you hear. Listening to your intuitive Oracle inherently allows you to become more comfortable with who you are.
The voices of your intuition, senses, sensations, and emotions are often quieter and softer, harder to understand than cognitive thought and strong impulses. Thoughts and reasons from your cognitive brain and lizard brain like to jump in quickly and manhandle your intuitive feelings like a Tokyo commuter in the crush of rush hour. So, after you experience your senses, sensations, emotions, and intuitions, you might be flooded with interpretations, analysis, reasons, labels, and language, which occur at more complex, abstracted levels of perception. And still, your softer, quieter, intuitive voices prefer to amble along like a Southern belle with all the time in the world.
The voices of reason or the freaked-out commands of the six Fs — fight, flight, freeze, feed, flock, and fornicate — can easily override your intuitive perceptions. We live in a world that is so loud, overbearing, demanding, and full of reasons that it can be particularly hard for us to hear our quiet truth. And because we are culturally groomed as girls and women to follow someone else’s script, it can be particularly hard for us to hear and trust our desires, impulses, and intuition in the first place. When you are “in your head” and “out of your body,” you often think, reason, and judge yourself into a confused frenzy. Getting “out of your head” and “into your body” can often reconnect you with your feelings, needs, desires, clarity, and truth.
And yet, at first it may not be obvious what part of you is speaking. Intuition or reason? Oracle or lizard brain? For example, let’s say you are asked to speak to several hundred people on a topic you care deeply about. You ask yourself if you should accept the invitation, and you get a response of heck, no. You wonder if you are hearing a trustable no or a knee-jerk compulsion to hide. Is it a fear voice warning you from what actually could be a very good move for you? Who has the mic, your intuitive Oracle, your frightened lizard, or your cocksure cortex? If you decline the offer, will you be moving the way fear or over-reasoning makes you move, or the way your soul asks you to move?
What these varied voices feel like, and where and how you feel them is entirely personal and will differ from woman to woman, but here are some generalities to help you discern for yourself.
• The voice of your Oracle usually feels calm but enlivening, steady and direct.
• The voice of your Oracle is often felt in your low belly, pelvis, and sometimes in your solar plexus, with feelings of expansion, opening, breath, clarity, solidity, and self-esteem.
• (As an aside, I have a hunch that oftentimes a “gut feeling” is often actually an “Oracle feeling,” as your Oracle is geographically right next to your intestinal tract.)
• The voice of fear often feels wavering, vacillating, and shaky.
• The voices of compulsion and addiction are often felt in your head, neck, shoulders, chest, or upper belly, with feelings of anxiety, worry, desperation, mania, lack of control, and self-loathing.
• Your Oracle’s no can come with feelings of clarity, solidity, and self-affirmation; while a fear-based, addiction-based, or analytical-based no can come with feelings of confusion, compulsion, vitriol, and self-doubt.
• Your Oracle’s yes can come with feelings of clarity, solidity, and self-affirmation; while a fear-based, addiction-based, or analytical-based yes can come with feelings of confusion, compulsion, mania, and self-doubt.
I was quite intrigued when Leigh, a teacher of Vajrayana Tantric Buddhism, called the “diamond path” or “path of desire,” joined my mentorship program. I was curious to see how my provocative viewpoints might overlap with her distinguished Buddhist lineage. Although she grew up in a small town in Canada, Leigh and her family are Zulu, and moved from South Africa when she was a young girl. She wanted our work together to help her embody many of her beloved philosophies, including embracing bodily desires as a path to enlightenment. (For so many women, embracing our bodily desires as a path to anything other than trouble is such a hot topic that I gave it its own chapter, coming up next.)
Leigh had spent countless hours on her beloved meditation cushion, studying detailed sketches of how energy moves in the body — a map of enlightenment. Yet, while any map is useful, a map simply isn’t the journey. Leigh’s philosophies had remained ideas in her mind, and she used the laboratory of our program together to live and breathe the philosophies.
As she put it, “Learning from high esoteric scriptures points the way, but it won’t get you there. You have to experience it viscerally and subjectively through your body. Whereas the philosophies I learned described a flower, in our program together you said, ‘go experience the flower — the red, the softness, the smell — and later add the label of flower.’” Leigh put her sensuous, desirous, wildly feeling female body first, and then gave her mind the job of processing it all afterward.
Beatific, Leigh smiled at me through my computer screen and concluded, “There was no need to kick out anything that I learned from my lineage, but I did need to flip the order. So, first body, then mind. Because I’m going to become enlightened through my body, through my embodied visceral experience.” Leigh asked her reasoning mind to help keep her on her path, but she asked her body to lead the way.
Your body is precious.
It is your vehicle for awakening.
BUDDHA
Recovering your ability to simply know what you know — as was likely commonplace at some point in your girlhood — is a natural byproduct of befriending and deciphering all parts of yourself. Friend, Feminine Genius isn’t interested in you transcending your body. Feminine Genius needs you in your body so she can speak with you, through your Oracle.
And you, dear one, can trust your Oracle to guide you home.