Intuitive Living

A recent LinkedIn thread began with the question: “Has Your Intuition Protected or Saved Your Life?” I always appreciate probing questions and this one definitely set my mind to musing as I began the search of memory files for specific experiences and circumstances that would fit the question. In the struggle to remember particulars, my mind presented its own question: When am I not being guided by intuition?

I’ve been a practicing metaphysician for more than twenty years. Even before that I was delving into the mysteries, asking unusual questions and sitting for quiet periods allowing my mind to travel etheric highways of information. All of these habits brought long stares and the brand ‘eccentric’ from family members. However, those habits have also guided me to a way of living that brings me happiness. Whenever I look back at the decisions made, I can see where choosing another route might not have brought as satisfying a result. 

My years of counselingclients along with studies beside traditional elders have widened my  understanding in patterns relating to health, relationships and lifestyles of people that live guided by intuition and those who do not. First world cultures value reliance on academic or scientific information over the internal promptings that are the preference of the less economically developed societies.

My belief is that there are four areas where human beings draw decision making information. I list them from the most base to highest guidance:  

1.      Instincts (behavior performed without prior experience or learning)

2.       Cultural training or condition (belief systems, perceived safety and learned values)

3.       Gut reaction (an etheric DNA, sins of the fathers, attitudes or behavior before applied reason.

4.       Intuitive (knowledge beyond understanding of how or where; never harms another life form) 

Intuition is an inner voice available to all. It is a wordless language of the heart connection. Yet in cultures that rely on mental programming over feelings, 10% of the decisions are made instinctively, 50% from cultural training, 15% from gut reactions, and only 5% from intuitive guidance. That leaves 20% of the decisions being made from some chaotic distraction which often include influences from advertising. 

In traditional or aboriginal peoples, around 5% of the actions are instinctive, 15% from cultural training, 35% from gut Impressions, and 45% from intuition and a deep connection with the Earth. The reduced influence from cultural training is because the teaching in these cultures is to connect with nature and Spirit to find answers. 

Choosing to follow a more intuitive lifestyle helped me find my husband, guided us from Florida to Hawaii where I was accepted by Hawaiian teachers and family. It was through meditation and intuition that I received an invitation (and the funds) to travel on pilgrimage with Mayan elders through Guatemala. The same process of meditation and intuition led me to my beautiful home on the Caribbean coast of Honduras. I feel my life has been greatly blessed, and quite possibly saved from many painful lessons or uncomfortable situations in my choosing intuitive living. How have you followed your intuition?

Charity and Compassion

It was during the years I lived in Florida that I first began seeing men standing at intersections holding signs that read: Will Work For Food. At first, it was shocking in its newness; afterwards it became a personal conflict. I would often overhear groups of people talking about what a racket it was. They would say that limousines delivered the men to various corners. However, I had not seen this; could it be true or a lie? Then one day I was driving home from the grocery store. A man with a sign approached my car while I was stopped at the light. He was holding his sign to my window and looking in my eyes. I had to make a decision, it was no longer a matter for debate. It was there in that moment the world became silent. All the voices and arguments were gone. I had clarity. It was not my responsibility to decide if this man deserved my help or not. He was asking for food; I gave him a loaf of bread.  

What a relief and blessing it was once the decision was made. It is not my responsibility to judge whether someone else deserves to be helped.  When someone asks, give what they ask for. I did not give money, he asked for food. Where I live in Honduras, there is very little financial aid for those with physical limitations or the very ill. Often I’ll see a mother with a invalid child holding her hand out while standing outside a grocery store, a blind man with a brother or neighbor helping him request donations at a traffic light. There is generally some handicapped person in  a wheel chair holding out a jar at an intersection. People from other cultures can find these sights disturbing but within the culture here, there is a quiet understanding.

Those who have help those who cannot help themselves. I see it in so many levels here. If your life is blessed with a car then you financially aid those that are walking blind or in wheelchairs when they stand asking for help. If you live in a nicer house with a number of electric appliances, you pay the highest rate for electricity so that the poor who use little receive their electric free. The emotional benefit is a wonderful feel-good. There is also the added benefit of being free of guilt or shame in having while living amongst those who don’t. The benefit that comes on the energy or spiritual level is the highest reward. It is what is often referred to as The Golden Rule.

Seeing and Believing

As a naturopath and meta-physician, I tend to look at the world less conventionally than those who only follow the accepted sciences. For example a small baby’s eyes  do not often hold a direct gaze; they ‘float.’ The scientific explanation is that the bridge of the baby’s nose is still soft so the eye muscles are not tight.  My belief is there are fields of energy, unseen by us, that they are following.

Those who study subtle energy or metaphysics understand that there is a greater degree of reality invisible to the average human than is accepted knowledge. In the etheric, or unseen, there are colored electromagnetic fields that surround, encompass and spiral out from the body; these are most often referred to as auras and there are separate colors for the physical, the mental and emotional aspects of our being.  
 

Child training in industrial cultures generally retards the ability to see these fields. Instead infants are  taught to focus only on apparent tangibles. Parents begin encouraging their babies to draw their focus in and look at Mommy, see the toy, or baby, or other things. By the ages of 5-7 years, the message often given is that seeing outside the lines is unacceptable.  Confining beliefs solely around a tangible reality can become a threat to physical well-being; the physical can become corrupted or weakened by unexpected change.

One of my steps in helping clients heal from chronic conditions or enacting the Universal Law of Attraction, involves seeing beyond present circumstances. Our eyes pick up only light and image, our mind determines what that image (or reality) is. The physical plane and the etheric field are dance partners; one always follows the other. When the etheric partner leads, the dance moves smoothly toward the reality that you see in your mind. The dance is free form and choreographed by our beliefs. People from cultures whose realities balance the physical and spiritual know that everything in the physical plane is changeable within the mind of the believer. Just as in the story of The Chemical Marriage by Manly P. Hall, old realities must be destroyed before a new and pristine one can be created. It is only a matter of ‘seeing’ things differently.

Training the mind to become the quiet creator of new beliefs comes from meditation. Letting go of old thinking, then writing down or posting pictures of a new desired reality begins the process of mental change. Giving the mind permission to be open, and for the eyes to expand their perception to full peripheral vision, encourages the mind to expand to a greater picture. The life we desire to live is invariably outside the perceived lines.