Life can often feel as though we’re finding our way through a dark labyrinth with a lit match. Sometimes, especially during challenging and uncertain periods, we wish someone would just turn on the lights and give us a map. Many of my recent individual healing sessions have focused on helping my clients navigate difficult decisions. While this process can be complicated, the key is to develop practical decision-making tools, the most effective of which is intuition.
Life is a training ground for translating the impulses of our souls into the actions and circumstances of our lives. Within this framework, the soul is the captain of the ship and its language is intuition. Through intuition, our soul determines the “what” – the activities, contexts, and relationships that we spend our time and attention on.
The mind is the first mate and its language is thought. Through the analytical and creative processes of thought, the mind figures out the “how” of the soul’s “what.” For instance, if the soul directs us to sing, then the mind makes and executes the plan for actually singing: joining a chorus, finding a teacher, scheduling gigs, figuring out a budget, etc.
Most of us tend to reverse this hierarchy, letting the mind steer the ship of our lives and the impulses of our soul take a backseat as unrealistic pipe dreams. We are so conditioned and accustomed to operate mentally that we feel we don’t “know” something unless we can understand it rationally. Since intuition expresses itself in non-rational ways – gut feelings and instincts, direct knowing and sensing – we tend to miss and distrust its signals. Using intuition requires letting go of control and developing trust in a different mode of awareness.
Developing intuition is essential because it gives us direct access to a broader and deeper experience of ourselves. We are not just our minds and limiting ourselves to our rational processes has practical and spiritual consequences. Listening to your soul through intuition will allow for clearer decisions, more fulfilling relationships, and the inexpressible contentment that comes from connecting to your essence.
