INTUIT WITHOUT PROOF

Lately, I’ve been doing some meditation and reading that has brought me to the awareness that going inward isn’t just about silencing the mind or calming into bodily sensations but attuning to the inner voice within. Finding what is your truth or what is commonly referred to as True North. Learning to identify with what is One’s own subjective perspective.

The One (internal voice, inner guru, divine guide, intuition, etc.) is You. It is you at your most pure. It directs us like a compass and knows who we are and precisely what is best for us and what’s not.

It (The One, internal voice, inner guru, divine guide, intuition, etc.) doesn’t mean that the voice's directive will always produce a favorable outcome. But it will at least produce one congruent to who we are. Our karma. And, the larger dharma of our life that makes our human experience a lesson that we will always find the dignity within and fruitfulness to discover to keep living.

A part of hearing into this inner voice has been learning to trust my own nonverbal cues. That includes energetic hits, cautions, and intuition. This is a big deal for me because, for most of my life, I was raised to believe we need to have facts and/or reasons for what we do and do not. And if we cannot come up with them, asserting that “I dunno why this is what I have to do, I just feel that it is” wasn’t reason enough to follow through with or without doing it.

In therapy, I shared this “intuiting” as not enough reason for something with my therapist, and she recommended that I journal on it. 

She recommended I do so because our instincts or intuition in situations or how we feel about something are important directives that can protect us. They can give us insight into an inner knowing or perceptivity about something our logical mind may not be able to understand or interpret. 

She (my therapist) did caution that intuition is not always correct. Sometimes, it can cause us to miss the mark of an ideal outcome. Nevertheless, whatever the outcome, it is generally to a larger and (maybe not yet known at the moment) greater benefit of Self.

Intuition has always been a part of my life, but maybe not one I have welcomed or knew what to do with. 

As a child, I remember being able to predict when the telephone would ring by telling my Mom who would be on the other line or preemptively advising her that who would be calling was someone she would need to speak with, so she should get it. 

I remember having dreams about my Mother’s Dad, my Grandfather, who had died when she was a child, several years before I was born. I remember fearing my room at night and going to sleep because some guy who looked like Abraham Lincoln (whom at the time I had never seen a picture of) would stand in the doorway of my room and watch me. I knew him as the man who watched me sleep. 

I’d know about events or have feelings about why I did or didn’t want to do something I objected to. But because it wasn’t a good enough reason, as I grew up, it caused me to reject and resent the voice within to the point of refusing to listen to it, which developed into a relationship with trusting others more than I trusted myself. 

And, it (this negative relation to my inner voice), made being myself feel like a constant gamble or kamikaze mission exacerbated by denying the validity of my inner voice and being afraid to make self-led decisions.

It wasn’t until I was 24 years old, on my birthday, that the intuition and flashes of ‘knowing’ reared their head again. It wasn’t until then that I even remembered internal knowing existed. It happened at a random bar that I had never been to, called Buckhead Saloon, in the City of Pittsburgh. 

While seated at a bar, I turned to see a man (who would later become my husband) who I had never seen before, yet felt like I knew in a way that I had never known anyone. Just by looking at his face, I saw what felt like a foreshadowing of my future flash before my eyes at the sight of Scott. And, in the same intuitive instant, the power of my intuition return. 

It wasn’t just Scott that jolted this awareness back into presence; it was through the reappearance of the same man who haunted my sleep years before, my Grandfather, showing me that I needed to know this person. That I already knew him. That our hearts were one and my meeting him that day was not by accident, when through my mind’s eye, he united our hands together and granted me his approval of our union by wrapping his hands around ours.

This day, many years ago, began a reawakening of warming up to intuition without proof. I didn’t know it at the time, but I know it today. I know it now in reflection over the events of my Dad’s passing. And the awakening that is occurring within me as its presence continues to urge, reveal, and progress.

I think I’ve been fighting my ability to sense things my whole life. Maybe it’s because I was raised Catholic? And, in my experience, to invest in such thinking is a heretical offense.

Maybe it’s because I was raised by largely logical people who believed in reason more than sensation. Because in American culture, data, facts, figures, and proof are regarded more than knowing without.

Maybe it’s because I have a sordid history of thinking it’s wrong to believe that I might be unique. Or because our culture likes to vilify ‘specialness’ as a narcissistic and egoic trait, making it wrong to put Self before Other, versus celebrate difference in a way that allows us ALL to usurp the benefits of understanding such individuality, in a way in which we all get to benefit.

I have struggled with the idea of taking my time to come back to ‘reality’ while addressing that my reality IS different than others. I can see now how the above "maybes" play into that, given my resistance to allowing myself to be unique and/or take up space. 

I think that my therapist encouraging me to look at my intuition as a gift and validating its ability to be real without proof is more than just allowing myself to be special in some way. Of which, I know I AM. It allows me to see the need for each of us to be, by first acknowledging for myself why and how it may be beneficial to do such a thing as listen, valuably, to the voice within; to each be particular & exceptional.

Sometimes, my Project Manager mind thinks it’s necessary to start at the goal and back into where to start. I guess I’ve been looking at getting back to ‘reality’ as a problem instead of a valuable place to begin. And in the process, I have been denying how intuitively meaningful somewhere, deep within, I truly know it is. 

To start at the goal would mean I’d have to acknowledge that when I am capable of getting back to reality, it would mean I’d have to accept that it will be different. It will be without Dad, and since that is new for me, I’m not going to have any logical or factually based proof on how to do it because I’ve never lived a life without Dad before. 

I’m going to have to rely on and engage in a resource with which I’ve been out of practice & actually listen to ME in order to get there as necessary to reach the goal. 

I’m going to have to intuit it.

I’m going to have to trust that despite the fact that I know, somewhere within, I’m not going to be able to get back into step with my life as I have known it, because it is no longer as I have known it, and that my automaticity is driving me to do it, because it knows how to do that. I’m going to have to trust that I only intuitively know that I cannot do what I have previously done this time around. And, I’m going to have to be OK with what I know without explanation.

I’m going to have to trust myself. At this time, that means allowing what my intuition is encouraging me NOT to do. Even if I don’t precisely know why I can’t, just that I know it is not the way. 

It means allowing it (intuition, energetic hints, nonverbal cues) to be the thing that guides me in this instance without proof to validate that it is right and that, for some reason, it is best for me. 

And in following this knowing without proof, I will be good because of doing so. I will be fortified. I will be better than OK. I will be Me.

I’m scared to pull back and take this route. I won’t deny that.

I’m scared and yet, with all my tools, I am aware that I feel this way because I haven’t been here, Here, before. But, I have persevered time & again, differently. And, that is all I need to know to move forward in this unfamiliarity, to let what is familiar be, & choose again to trust I will endure, I will progress, I will evolve, & mature, same.

While I fear all that is unpredictable about this moment, I know I’ve been in unfamiliar spaces and places with myself. No matter how easy it was or wasn’t, I, Shannon, always am there for me. And, I, Shannon, always show up for myself. And, I, Shannon, always make sure that even if it is messy or illogical, I am OK. 

Intuitively, and without proof, appears to be where I will need to start on this journey back to reality; back to relating; back to whatever version of me is going to be Self. Now.

I know that much self-trust is going to need to be built to Be Here, as I Am, Now. I know that much sticking to my guns in confusion, stillness, and knowing will need to be felt. I know that much listening, learning, silence, and inconsistency will need to be allowed. 

But above all, on this journey, I know that it requires I begin, for the first time ever, a love affair relationship with Shannon; this is what allows me to hear me; to be as Ram Dass says, “In the world, but not of it, the World”. 

To develop what it means to be the eye of the hurricane, calm, centered, and present to who I am and what is stabilizing within me. No matter the circumstance. No matter the company. No matter the chaos. 

Because hearing Self is what will allow me, you, ALL, to become our most full, appreciative, responsible, and ALIVE Selves.

With Blessings,