The REAL Secret to Unlocking Intuition

Being intuitive is a natural part of being human, and we each have a unique way that the Universe speaks to us. It’s just that most of us are too distracted by thoughts, emotional patterns, and habitual behavior, to listen closely enough to what the Universe is trying to say.

So what exactly is intuition?

Intuition is the flow of Divine Guidance running like a current through our lives. It’s the thread that connects our awareness to everything in the universe, each other, and our destiny. We can learn to listen more closely to this flow of guidance through our feeling sense, our knowingness, our dreams and visions, and the signs and symbols we see in our daily life. 

          Intuition arises naturally when there is a clear space within. When there is stillness, and silence, which comes from not pushing or pulling on life with our egoic agenda. When we can come to a place of just being with what is, in this moment now. It’s a surrender – surrendering our judgments and our personal will, so that there can be space for Divine Will to arise uninhibited within us, and reveal to us our true path.

Often we want to activate our intuition so we can get somewhere or be someone other then who we are right now. We feel like if we could just see and hear our guides, and know what the universe wants us to do, then we could finally be who we want to be, and escape the feelings of pain, struggle, and lack we experience now.

There’s a feeling of being insufficient – of not-enough-ness – that accompanies that kind of intention, which leads to self-judgment and self-doubt, which are the two major killers of intuition. 

My way of teaching intuitive development then is more about cultivating humility, self-love, and aware presence, which form the foundations for true intuitive awakening.  

So what do these three keys to allowing intuition to open really mean?

Let’s break it down:

Humility – A lot of times the concept of humility gets misunderstood on the spiritual path, and is internalized as thinking that we should put ourselves below others, and not out-shine anyone or ask for too much from life. This is really just low-self esteem in disguise. True humility is the willingness to face ourselves and be 100% honest with ourselves about how we feel in each moment.

We don’t need to pump ourselves up to impress others, and we don’t need to cut ourselves down to avoid being rejected by others. We can just be as we are, and honor that, however that may look from the outside.

With humility, we can learn to recognize the voice of the Divine verses the voice of our ego when it speaks to us.

Self-Love – The only way to break the cycle of self-judgment and self-doubt is through self-love. Self-love is not a state, it is something that has to be practiced with dedication each day, and then grows over time.

It’s a choice we make, when something happens that upsets us, we can choose to beat ourselves up, or we can choose to love ourselves instead. We simply say to our heart “I love you. I love you. Even though this happened, I am here to love you.” We let our feelings be what they are, and we love ourselves through it.

It may feel fake at first when we have spent so many years in self-judgment and blame, being critical of ourselves. But even saying the words creates a ripple effect through our energy body, allowing us to be more and more receptive to it the more often we say it, and soon we start feeling the love sinking in on deeper and deeper levels.

Self-love is also about making loving choices for ourselves, treating ourselves the way we would treat our most beloved friend. Giving ourselves the most nutritional foods, lot’s of rest, and time to enjoy the things and people we love.

This opens our heart, and puts us more in alignment with Divine Will, which always gives us the most loving choices.

Aware Presence – This is something that all people who meditate on a regular basis are working to cultivate. It’s the ability to step back from being so caught up in the activity of being human (thinking, doing, etc) and resting as the space of awareness that it all happens within. Some people call this being the witness.

The witness doesn’t push anything in its experience away, nor does it try and grasp at anything out of a feeling of lack. Those are all actions of the ego, which is constantly either pushing away, or grasping towards, keeping us locked in the cycle of not-enough-ness.

It’s not about trying to overcome the ego, or demonizing it in any way. The ego is a part of us, it makes us the individuals we are, though if given too much power, it starts to dominate our experience. When we can practice being the Aware Presence, we see ego and all it’s desires, and we simply acknowledge them for what they are, without feeding into them.

This is tricky! And it takes years of practice, and a good foundation of self-love and humility. But when enough awareness is present, it creates the clear space within that allows intuition to be revealed, and gives us the personal freedom to follow it.

We all have intuitive guidance that comes to us in many ways, whether we are aware of it or not.

Eventually, as the ego-based personal will starts to unravel through humility, self-love, and aware presence, Divine Will acts through us, in our thoughts, words, and actions, and we no longer experience a separateness from our Source.

Intuition becomes the natural guiding system for our life, as spiritual beings having a human experience, and we can live freely and joyfully in this moment, falling in line with the bigger picture we know we are all a part of.

Returning to Wholeness

This article was featured in Timeless Spirit Magazine, Spring 2013, on the theme Connection.

            As I was sitting down to write this article, musing on the topic of “Connection,” it came to me that our natural state as humans and as spiritual beings is one of connection – of Oneness with all that is. I look out my window and see how Nature works so perfectly in harmony with itself. It’s all connected, every aspect of it supporting and nourishing everything else in a beautiful rhythm, and we are a part of that.

            So if this is our natural state already, why don’t we experience that in our daily lives? Why do we go around so stressed out and worried trying to pay the bills, take care of our kids, get ahead in our careers, never feeling like we have enough – enough of anything – time, money, or love. Somehow we got disconnected from our natural connectedness, and the question is, how can we get it back?

            Children have it, young children especially. They experience life with pure openness, awe, and wonder. Somewhere along the way growing up, we harden into these “adult” beings, with a fixed way of thinking and experiencing life.

            We form a framework of beliefs, habitual thoughts, and expectations of ourselves, other people, and life that all of our experiences filter through. When this happens, we are no longer living in direct contact with Life itself, as we did when we were children. We are living separated from Life, within this framework of who we think we are.

            This framework is not for nothing. It serves a purpose. And that purpose is to protect us from the unresolved emotional hurts of our past. It’s like a shell of protection we create to ensure we never have to feel that way again, because we never learned how to express and feel our feelings in a healthy and safe way.

            So we go along in our life, trying to be the people we think we should be in order to avoid further pain. Treating people the way we think we should treat them to avoid rejection. Making the choices that maintain our current view of reality, because even though it may be unhappy, at least it’s safer then opening to what is true deep down that we don’t want to face.

            But our Soul can only take that for so long. Eventually it calls us with its still-small-voice in the heart and says “it’s time to wake up! It’s time to face the truth. It’s time to heal. It’s time to remember who you REALLY are! You weren't meant to live this way, there is more to you then this!”

            If you are reading this article, then you have already answered that call. And so our healing journey begins. Our quest for the Real – to know ourselves as we actually are, not just as we’ve been conditioned to think we are, and remember our connection to the whole.

            One of the common traps when we start on a spiritual journey of personal healing though is we come at it with an attitude of “I want to know what is real…..but only the good stuff. I don’t really want to know the dark stuff, the painful stuff in me that might rock the boat of my reality too much if I fully face and deal with it.”

            But Life (the Divine) loves us so much that it wants us to have it all. It wants us to know our wholeness on every level, and feel connected to All that Is, and safe enough to fully show up in our bodies and in our life.

            So what does Life do? It brings us challenging situations and people that trigger us, that cause the unresolved emotional pain we’ve carried around for years to come to the surface, so that we can have an opportunity to heal it fully and have it be released from our cellular memory permanently, leaving us more free, whole, and embodied than ever before.

            Again, it’s the unresolved emotional energy that gets locked in our bodies that causes us to feel disconnected from the One, from the Divine, from Life. Life is constantly conspiring to bring us back into resonance with that place, to how we were as children, so we can experience ourselves as a part of the miraculous whole, holy and unique, and free to express ourselves however we choose.

            So what’s the most gentle, loving, and easy way to cooperate with this process when Life brings us those opportunities for healing?

            The simplest answer is – just open to it.

            Not that we should go around in life completely boundary-less and take in other people’s toxic energy they may be projecting at us, all in the name of “opening to it”. That is not a loving or healthy thing to do. It’s important to have discernment, and make the most loving choices for ourselves with our boundaries and who we choose to spend time with.

            But we open to ourselves fully in that moment, to how we feel as a result of whatever is going on, and let that energy surface, be witnessed, embraced with compassion by our own loving heart, and released.

            There’s a practice I use called Heart Breath Which I’ll share with you here.

            Heart Breath Meditation

1.      Event occurs and triggers an emotional reaction in you. Notice the feelings arising and how they feel in your body.

2.      Put your hand on your heart and start to breathe slow and deep, directly into the feeling, as if you are breathing the energy of that emotion up and into your heart.

Usually we want to suppress the emotion and push it away. We are doing the opposite here, we are letting it come up, and breathing it into our heart.

Experience the flavor of that emotion, as if you are drinking it in, giving yourself permission to feel all your feelings, honoring them as equally valid.

And note – it’s not necessary to know where in your past the feeling originated, all that’s important is what is coming up now that is ready to be cleared. It doesn’t have to make sense, just allow whatever arises to arise how it does.

3.      As the energy starts to come up into the heart, you will notice it begins to shift. The heart is like an emotional recycling plant, it can transmute the energy of that emotion, releasing it from your body. Just notice this happening and be willing to let go.

4.      You may feel like expressing the emotion in some way, through tears, or through sound, or through some physical movement or shaking. This is part of the process as the energy is being released from your body. Just witness this, and allow whatever expression feels right in that moment to come out.

5.      Emotions come in waves, so stay with the breath until it feels like the wave has passed through, and all the energy has been released from your body. More might come up later when you think about or encounter the triggering event again, and that just signifies that there is a deeper layer coming up to be cleared. Repeat the process again, as often as you need, until there is no more emotional charge around the situation.

Life gives us every opportunity to know our inherent wholeness, and remember our Divine connection to the love that we are. We just have to accept those opportunities, and be willing to let go of our fixed framework of reality so we can see and experience the Truth.

With willingness, and the courage to face, love, and accept ourselves just as we are, we are transformed, reborn, and able to experience ourselves in a whole new way – as a precious, whole, and unique gift within the greater Whole of Life.

Namaste. 
             ~Jessica Agnew

When our highest spiritual experiences become our greatest barriers

Most of us on the spiritual path have had our share of challenges. Indeed, choosing to open up and do personal growth work and explore the spiritual side is often a direct result of it. We are trying to find solutions to what we face, a better way to live, and the experience of lasting authentic happiness.

But sometimes, our biggest barriers to personal freedom isn't the hard stuff we've faced, but our attachment to the good stuff we’ve experienced. Those moments of transcendence, where we may have had a real glimpse of freedom, or love, or happiness. Times when it felt like we were really “in the flow,” and we were being the people we most wanted to be, or reaching a new height in our potential.

Maybe it was at a workshop, or in a situation that called something forth from within us that we didn’t know we had.

Or even some of us may have had powerful mystical experiences in meditation. Of breaking through the veil of this reality and experiencing the vaster reality that lays beyond. Sometimes even just reading a book on the subject can inspire in us a real sense of what that's like.

And while all these experiences are beautiful and meant to show us something of who we really are, the tendency of our human ego is to attach to these experiences, and try to hold on to them, recreate them so we can feel good. It’s that attachment that can throw a real wrench in our soul’s awakening journey.

What happens when we form attachments to the feel good, amazing experiences we’ve had is that then, we start to compare every other experience we have to it, using that peak experience as the new bar of who we think we should be, and when we don’t meet it, we judge ourselves.

When we erect a wall of self-judgment through comparing who we think we should be and want to be to who we actually are, and measuring the gap in between, we are divided inside. And that division completely paralyzes us from being able to move forward at all.

Eventually, our entire train comes to a screeching halt, because we are no longer living our life from an open authentic place of curiosity and creativity. We are just living in the loop of self-judgment, always trying to become who we imagine ourselves to be, based on our attachments to the past, while denying what’s actually here, right now.

People who have had really powerful spiritual experiences can very easily get caught in this loop. Having a moment of union with the bigger Reality is so ecstatic and healing and joyful, and when it’s over, it can feel like “I lost it. How do I get it back?” And we start chasing it, constantly trying to get back to that place of perfection, doing so many hours of meditation, sitting with every teacher, doing every workshop that comes our way. But the problem is, we are no longer living in Reality, we are chasing our memory of an experience, which is NOT the same thing as direct contact with Reality itself.

So we are living in a spiritual fantasy, chasing our tail, until one day, Life intervenes and breaks the cycle. Usually by causing us to fail miserably at ever achieving that which we have been so desperate to achieve.

There’s no simple equation for enlightenment, or inner peace, or personal success and happiness. It’s a journey, and every journey has peaks, and every journey has valleys. Both are equally necessary for our growth. To allow what we gain from the peak moments to be fully integrated and embodied into who we are in this moment, we have to let them go. Release our attachment to them. Bless those experiences as gifts from the Universe, and be willing to accept whatever we need to experience for our highest good right now in THIS moment.

As we release attachment, we no longer have an inner expectation we feel we need to live up to, so self-judgment can dissolve. As the wall of self-judgment falls, and we are no longer divided inside, we can just face forward in our life, and feel what is present within our heart, and express that, in whatever way it wishes. We begin to move forward, from a more grounded, humble, willing, and relaxed place.

There’s no way we are meant to be other than how we are right now. Right here, right now, is the only place Truth can find us, and reveal to us in time, the full beauty of our soul.

The "Why" Trap

Things can get very confusing on the path to become free from ego. He’s a tricky little bugger! And there are a lot of teachings out there about it, some that directly contradict each other, and it can all get very complicated very quickly. I want to try and simplify things a little.

Our human ego is made up essentially of one thing – our identification with the reasons and meaning we give to the things that happen in our life. 

Reasons and meaning define who we think we are. It creates the script and story line for the character of “me” to follow. But the trap is that we believe the character we are playing is actually real, is actually who we are, instead of just an experience the limitless potential of consciousness is having. 

So we go from pure expanded consciousness, to experiencing ourselves in the most limited way possible, imprisoned by whatever our beliefs are. And these beliefs are all forged from the meaning we have assigned to life.

So Where does it all start? How do we start creating meaning to identify with, thus trapping ourselves in a limited egoic state of consciousness? 

It all starts the moment we ask one simple question: Why? 

“Why did this happen to me?” “Why can’t other people give me what I want and need?” “Why is life so hard?” “Why can’t I ever get ahead and be who I want to be?” “Why do I have to feel this way?” “Why won't that person love me?” 

It goes on and on. The ego lives on answering the “why?” question. It is reason-and-meaning super-food. 

Let’s take an example. Say in your childhood, you felt like your parents never really listened to you or cared about how you felt. The natural question to ask is “why don’t mom and dad listen to me or care about what I feel?”

Then automatically, the mind starts coming up with possible reasons like: “Maybe I’m not worth listening to.” “Maybe they just don’t love me.” “They listen to bobby, but they don’t listen to me, maybe they just love him more.” And why is that?  “I guess I’m not as good as bobby. I guess I’m just unlovable.” 

…You see the pattern.

So the conclusion the child mind comes up with is “I’m not lovable” as the most logical answer to why mom and dad don’t listen to him. (As children, this is a common assumption, because we see the world as all having to do with us at the center of it, we don’t have the capacity to think about how mom and dad are really feeling, etc.) 

So now without even realizing it, that person has created identification with a thought that gives meaning to the rest of their life. 

Every relationship they enter into, that thought will color their experience, and they’ll feel not listened to, only to confirm their belief that they are unworthy of love. It becomes their personal prison.

And they’ll harbor all kinds of bitterness and hostility towards their parents, and project that hurt onto other people who trigger that core wound. Welcome to ego land!  

Or, sometimes it gets really tricky, and we start learning about spirituality, and then start coming up with spiritual reasons to the question “why.”

“Why did that person leave me?” 

“I guess he wasn’t my twin flame, or our astrology was off.”

“Why did I spend all my money on these cloths I can’t return, now I’m short for my rent payment!”

“I guess because I’m learning to be more abundant, so to have abundance, I have to act abundant, by buying the things I want!”

And it becomes a bypass from just experiencing the truth of how we feel (hurt, alone), or of facing the reality of our situation (needing to be more disciplined with money), or letting Life show you something deeper. We just create a spiritual ego with spiritual reasons to overcompensate for the lousy self-hating one we had before.

So how do we get off the ego-affirming reason and meaning merry-go-round?

We start by letting go of asking “why.” It’s so hard for the mind to do that! Because that ego is always wanting to know how it measures up, where it stands, am I good, or am I bad. It is so used to gaining its value and substance from the meaning it gives life events, and thoughts that enter it’s awareness that not doing that any more can feel like a death.

It’s like letting all the air out of a balloon, in the same way, the ego is only as inflated as we are attached to believing the stories the mind comes up with in answer to the question “why”.

When the balloon of ego is deflated, we can finally see clearly the Truth of our Divine Essence that is there in the background. We can rest into it, and let it guide our life in a whole new way; Effortless, Joyful, and Free.

The simplest solution to letting go of our attachment to knowing “why” is responding to the mind that wants to know with, “I don’t know.”

“Why did this happen to me?” “I don’t know.”

“Why doesn't anything work out the way I want it to?” “I don’t know.”

“Why doesn't that person love me?” “I don’t know.”

Instead of being so concerned about why it happened, we start to simply acknowledge that it happened. The reason "why", isn’t as important as just accepting what is.

We live in a mysterious and complex universe, and we can never really know why anything happens. We can only make assumptions that may or may not be true, and ultimately only lead us to be more caught up in the fictional story of who we are, and missing out on getting to know the Reality of who we are.

Admitting “I don’t know” allows us to be open to whatever Life may be trying to teach us in any given moment. Our cup is empty, ready to be filled with the Truth that can be given to us, instead of overflowing with our own ideas, assumptions, reasons, and meaning.

There’s a humility to it, to “I don’t know.” It instantly deflates the ego that is filled with thinking it knows best, that it’s in control and has it all figured out. Inevitably Life comes to let the air out of it. Tragedy, challenge, and failure are Life’s main tools for doing this.

The sooner we just accept “I don’t know” and bow to the mystery of life, the sooner our hearts are freed of the burden of having to serve the false identity as it’s master.

Our heart longs for freedom, to live wide open, to love fully, to play and create, and the only way to experience that is to let go of our reasons, our meaning, by letting go of asking “why.”

Accept that we’re not meant to know, we’re just here to marvel at the mystery of it all. When we stop judging it, we see how truly miraculous it all is. When we let go of knowing, of controlling, of believing and assuming, then we can have instead, the birth of true wisdom.

Choosing to Live

        I’ve come to a deeply sobering realization in my life. My addiction? Seeking the love, acceptance, and approval of others to fill the hole I had there inside myself.

I realized I’ve been waiting all this time for permission to live my life the way I want to. Waiting for someone else to see me, REALLY see me and go “Hey you! You’re awesome! Go out and be happy prosperous and free now! You deserve it! It’s your turn!” And that would be like my green light, and I’d be off!

But the problem is, no matter how many people would tell me that, no matter how much positive feedback I got, it was never enough. It never satiated that deep longing for acceptance, for love, that I was looking for before I could move forward and feel safe enough and worthy enough to live my dreams.

And then situations would come along where I got the opposite of what I wanted – rejection, blame, and judgment thrown my way, and it crushed me and scared me to death. I was too afraid to face life if there was a chance I’d have to go through that, walk through other people’s stone throwing, because it would confirm how worthless and bad I already felt inside.

Somehow in my childhood I internalized this insecurity that I was bad, fundamentally flawed somehow, and I needed to earn the approval of others before I could feel free to just relax and be myself.

But I’ve come to realize now that the reason I never felt unconditionally loved and accepted, and continue to fail at finding it, is because no one can ever really know me. And if no one can ever really know me, know what it’s like to be me, to walk in my shoes, to see through my eyes, then how can they truly, truly love me?

I know my parents and family love me, I know my husband and friends love me, but the feeling is incomplete, because I keep waiting for them to really SEE me, really KNOW who I am on the inside, and THEN tell me they love me. Until then, there’s always this thought like “yeah, you say you love me, but if you really knew me, would you still?”

People don’t really love you, they love what you mean to them. They don’t accept you, the real You, they accept that you meet their expectations, needs, and desires, and are pleasing to them in some way. And as soon as you aren’t anymore, they reject you.

That sounds really depressing, but it’s the truth, we all know it deep down, though we don’t usually want to face it. We find too much security in the assurance of other peoples love to really face it.

But the fact is, no one will ever love and accept us the way we want them to. And we have to stop holding out, putting our life on hold for that to happen.

The only person who can love us truly and deeply, the only person who can fill the emptiness we feel inside, the only person who will ever, ever accept us for who we are is Us.

How could it be any other way? We are the only ones who really know ourselves. We are the only ones who can look through our own eyes and see the world in exactly the way only we can see it.

We are alone in that way. Alone on the inside. And that’s okay. When that is seen and accepted as the sobering truth that it is, it’s extremely liberating.

It’s as if we associate rejection and aloneness with death. Like if I’m rejected, I’ll be left alone, and then I’ll die. Or some part of us thinks the worst-case scenario will happen if we make someone upset, like they’ll come beet us up and try to kill us, or we’ll be severely prosecuted against. These aren’t usually realistic fears, but they feel very real to that survival based part of us.

Ask yourself, if you didn't need another person’s love and acceptance, and if you weren't afraid of rejection or prosecution, what would your life be like?

What If you where no longer concerned about fitting in and measuring up? 

What if being abandoned and left alone wasn't the worst thing that could happen to you, because you acknowledge that you are, fundamentally, already alone?

What if even Death wasn't an ending, and you knew that no matter what happened to you, you'd still be free in your Soul?

It's one thing to say that, and it's another thing to walk through it, and face the fear of death, aloneness, and prosecution. But in choosing to do so, in choosing not to hide from life, and to stand up and be who you are anyway, for your own sake, because it's what you where put on this planet to do, even though you are scared to death, you can break free.

You can break free from the fear by realizing what survives the fire. You survive. You come out the other side, one way or another. So you are Free, and now you can just live your life!

We all face that fire in a different way. It could be having the courage to stand up to your boss, and risk losing your job and reputation, because the way he or she treats you isn't right. It could be choosing to leave an abusive situation you are living in. It could be having the courage to come out of the closet as a LGBT person, or as any person who feels different from the norm, stepping out and choosing to be who you are, regardless of what people think about it. 

Eventually we all get tired of hiding, of waiting, of seeking and grasping, of settling for less then we are worth, of sacrificing our dreams and values. Our hope and our fear keep us prisoners at a certain point.

Eventually you just have to let go and say "if rejection, exile, or death should come upon me as I step forward in the way I am guided to today, then so be it." And take that step. Take just that one next step.

Every time we do, every time we choose to live, choose to love ourselves, choose to be the ones to accept ourselves completely, and release all others from the responsibility of doing that for us (and our responsibility to do that for others), we take a step into freedom, into total spiritual empowerment.

Then we can really enter the heart of Intimacy. When we are really seeing and embracing ourselves, it allows us to for the first time see and embrace others for who they are, even if they don’t see themselves yet.

We can have transcendent moments of Oneness with a flower, with our cat, and with our spouse. That’s the irony! When we stop chasing it and find it within, we see it reflected all around us.
This is the dance. This is how Life brings us home to ourselves. This is how we become the Free beings we actually are, choosing to live our lives based on whats really true in our heart, for no other reason then the pure joy of it.