Your Intuition Does Not Use A Whip

by Sarah Taylor

If you’re looking for a way to identify your intuitive ‘voice’ from the many other voices inside you vying for your attention and your action, maybe this is a good place to start: with what intuition is not.

Your intuition does not use a whip.

If that voice – that felt sense, whispered or silent – is cajoling you, bribing you, blackmailing you, or beating up on you, then what you are hearing is not intuition.

If you are bargaining against fear with it, then it is not intuition.

If it is telling you to do something, or else face the consequences: not intuition.

If it causes you anxiety, or your blood to run cold? Nope. Not intuition.

Likewise, if it dangles promises in front of you, or promises to hit you up to sate whatever withdrawal symptoms you’re feeling, or to rescue you from your discomfort, or it offers you a short-cut that’s too good to be true?

Not intuition.

All of these other voices may masquerade as intuition to varying degrees of success, but they are not it.

Intuition does not use a whip; nor does it offer you a narcotic shot of bliss to wow you out of your circumstances. Nor does it judge you, or others – or anything, for that matter.

It does not cause your body to feel contracted, or repelled, or hooked-in.

Intuition sinks and expands you deeper into yourself, your body, and your breath. You let go. You exhale. You know.

There is no emotional charge to intuition, whether that emotion is an upper or a downer. Intuition is entirely neutral.

Intuition is an expansive thrum, humming through your body. It is a knowing without affect, a wisdom free from feelings. It lies beyond feeling.

Intuition is there before you hear it. And when it does speak, and you do hear, it talks quietly, or whispers, or resonates – and it is always entirely present.

To identify intuition, picture this:

A room filled with people, all of them wearing masks. All of them talking above each other. It’s loud in here!

Card: Queen of Swords from the Röhrig Tarot deck, created by Carl-W. Röhrig © US Games, Inc.

Now look carefully.

There, in the centre of the room.

The one figure who stands there, quietly, calmly, undeterred … and looking directly at you. They aren’t interested in being loud, or heard, or even understood. They are simply interested in you.

And they are waiting for you to become interested in them.

To do that, you must learn their habits – their stance, their look, their feel, their silence, their lack of drama, their unwavering presence and attention.

They are not out to impress you with that attention; it’s just that their only reason for being there is to witness you, and to act as a mirror to you.

That is intuition: the one person in the room who is interested in you, just as you are, and who will wait patiently – for ever, if need be – for you to listen to what they have to say to you.

No shouting, grabbing, anger, seduction.

When you first manage to pinpoint your intuition in that crowded room that is your mind, you have taken a huge step – towards yourself, and also towards being able to familiarise yourself with what intuition looks and feels like.

So that next time, when you’re in that room, you’ll have a clearer idea of what you’re looking for.

But don’t forget: that metaphorical room is full. Full of other people who don’t want you to see that figure in the centre who’s looking at you. They’re not interested in you at all: they only want you to hear what they have to say.

But that figure, who keeps their eyes trained on you? They don’t care that the room is full.

They care about you.

In the same way, intuition is not interested in what you want to hear. It tells you what serves you to know. It will tell you for as long as it needs to.

And it will never use a whip.

IN CONCLUSION

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Merken