The Bullshit of Intuition
After travelling I ALWAYS look forward to coming home. It’s always been part of the joy of travelling for me, leaving home-base for a week, sometimes a couple of months, and then enjoying coming back home too.
And yesterday was the first time I can remember I did not feel that joy. Of course, it was wonderful getting reacquainted with my own bed, but even that felt tainted and overall my return home felt devastatingly sad.
And yes, I know I am creating that experience completely and in it’s entirety, and also know it is an indicator of my thinking around the wonderful week I’ve just had that is such a contrast to what I have come home to. It is a reminder for me to be much more honest and open with myself and be willing to make the changes I want, to continue to take steps in the direction of my desires, and to be willing to be open to explore all possibilities in pursuit of my dreams.
It’s almost comical that the view from my window now includes what is probably my all-time favourite quote: ‘Be the change you want to see.’
I have a clearer vision of the changes I want to see, and have a renewed level of inspiration to live into those changes right now. And I am also cautious of the level of detail in my vision so as not to exclude and filter out what the universe has for me.
I know how I want to feel. And I’m learning to be conscious of whether I am using my vision as a way to set a prerequisite before I allow myself to feel what I want to feel. Have I set myself a prerequisite that says I’ll only feel x when y shows up in a particular size, shape and colour? What if I am completely open to allowing the feeling to flow through me without prerequisite? What if I am really open to allowing that feeling to show up knowing it does not have to come from any particular size, shape and colour of circumstance?
Feelings never come from circumstances. Any time I am tying the two together I am creating an illusion of bondage. I am relinquishing my innate freedom.
Perhaps the easiest illustration of this for many of us is in relationships or a life-partner. The principle is equally applicable to all areas of our lives, including our work, our jobs or careers, or where we live.
We might create a vision that has that person be a particular type, maybe even size and shape too! Yet, as Syd Banks said, it’s all in the feeling. What if I meet someone and I feel joy, a deep connection, passion, support, challenge, protection, or anything else I want to feel? What if they help me grow, which for me, is a wonderful thing to have in any relationship? What if we're both to grow into how I thought it would show up? What if I just want to be with them, even though they don’t comply with the detail of my vision?
Life leaves clues. Often the greatest clues are joy and passion.
Am I keeping out that joy because the logistics or physics of the picture don’t match the details of my vision?
What we want in life often shows up without looking anything like we thought it would, and might show up after a series of clues that we’ve refused to embrace. Then, the nudges from the universe get stronger, sometimes kicking our butts big time until we really see what’s on offer, even putting us in places we’d never thought to go until we see what already is here.
Maybe we don’t see because of our identifying with our intuition. I believe wholeheartedly in the power of intuition, it’s entirely how I coach, yet time and time again it proves to me that how I think things will be are not how they are. And often what we think is intuition is actually noise from identity, noise from some made up prerequisites, perhaps an intellectualisation of intuition. Intuition itself is not bullshit, but our concept of it, and our interpretation of it can be, contaminated by who we think we are and any mantra we assert to ourselves, and a belief and intention of how we think things should show up and be.
Don’t get me wrong, I also believe in and have experienced the power of intention, creating a picture of something I want and experiencing it perhaps a year later. But the power of intention is in-between the detail and attachment. It is in the surrender of expectation of precise detail of what the nature of that experience might be. Dreams certainly can and do come true, have come true for me many times, and often do not look anything like we think they would.
My reminder here is to simply follow your joy. Simply do that. That's not the same as the intellectualisation of your vision. Have your vision be a request to the universe, and your joy and passion be a guide to its delivery.
Follow your joy. I’ve heard this so many times over the last few years, and I’m really getting it again. I’m getting it at a deeper level, and at the same time getting a wet-fish slap around the face that says ‘No, dumbass - THIS joy, follow THIS joy!’
Just as that sign - Be the change you want to see - is an obvious notice to me, so is my joy. If we’ve loved doing something, if there’s been joy and passion in it, keep doing it. Any fear we have around it just comes from it not looking like we thought it should. Any fear is always coming from resisting what is.
I thought I lived in this place. But now I really am listening to the feeling and letting go of intellectualisation.
I’m listening to the ‘wow’ rather than the ‘how’
I really am intent on following my joy, without so much focus on size, shape, colour, or any other conformity to the detail in a supposed vision of how it’s meant to be for me. I’m just going to follow my joy.
And I thank my sadness for guiding me back to that direction.