Musings...

Life will break you.
Nobody can protect you from that,

and living alone won't either,

for solitude will also break you with its yearning.

You have to love.

You have to feel.

It is the reason you are here on earth.

You are here to risk your heart,

you are here to be swallowed up.

And when it happens that you are broken,
or betrayed,  or left, or hurt,
or death brushes near,

let yourself sit by an apple tree

and listen to the apples
falling all around you in heaps,

wasting their sweetness.

Tell yourself that you tasted
as many as you could.

Louise Erdrich

What our intuition isn’t...

Before I begin a session and in fact prior to teaching a workshop I have a little something that I say, without fail, every single time:

Thank you for my gift

Please take care of me while I am using it

Please get my ego the heck out of here

And never, ever let me say or do anything that will harm someone

All parts of this prayer are vitally important to what I do, but the most important one for me is the third part, the bit that says “please get my ego the heck out of here…” because ego has no part in intuition and absolutely no place whatsoever in the work that I do.

What I am asking by this is that what I think, what I have opinions about, what I see as being true, what I consider of importance, play no part whatsoever in connection with my intuition.

And that’s why sometimes seems that our intuition misleads us, because it’s not actually our intuition speaking, it’s our ego. It’s our thoughts, our opinions, our judgements or our biases. And it can be from any one of these that we take our guidance, instead of bypassing them all and letting the voice within that has no ego, no thought, no opinion, no judgement or bias, letting that voice come through and guide us intuitively.

How do we learn to differentiate? How we learn to do anything else? Through practice. Through being very honest with ourselves, very humble, asking, and then listening for the answer… rather than finding it. Most of all by making a conscious effort to really get to know ourselves. Not the persona that we adopt to get though this thing called life. Not the layers of make believe that we’ve had to invent or had cast upon us to fit into this thing called society. Not the lies and the half truths that we live with, in order to belong and be accepted.

Really getting to know the truth of who we really are. Who we were created as. Who we are meant to be.

In Greek mythology, Delphi was the site of the Delphic oracle, the most important oracle in the classic Greek world. It can be no mistake that supposedly carved into the Temple of Apollo at Delphi, were the words “Know thyself.”

Musings...

People are like stained-glass windows.

They sparkle and shine when the sun is out,

but when the darkness sets in,

their true beauty is revealed
only if there is a light from within.

-Elizabeth Kubler-Ross

Is our intuition always correct?

You followed your intuition and you know in your heart that what you did was right. So how come sometimes it feels so awful?

I often get asked how do I know that my intuition is always going to be correct?

We need to start by defining what we mean by “correct.” If we take the meaning of the word to be “correct” as in “right” (as opposed to “wrong”) then we are, in fact, asking if our intuition is always “right.”

 The answer to that question is that our intuition is always right for us. And that’s the emphasis. FOR US. Which means that our intuition will always guide us to do what is right for us, but that doesn’t necessarily mean to say that it’s always going to feel good.

Again it is in the emphasis. It will be good FOR US. That doesn’t necessarily mean we’re going to like it, or that it isn’t at times going to really suck!

But remember, the story is never over. We don’t know yet where this part of our journey is going to lead us. And we continue along our path. We then often find, with hindsight, that it is exactly the part of the journey that we really didn’t like… the rotten part that we ended up in because we’d followed our intuition… it was that exact decision that brought us eventually to exactly the perfect place, or situation, or person that is right for us now.

Which is why the word trust goes hand in hand with intuition.

It’s trusting that we have an innate sense of knowing...

that we are receiving guidance from whoever or whatever we believe created us...

that we will follow that guidance come what may...

that we inherently trust that wherever we are, at any particular time, is exactly where we’re meant to be...

and that ultimately it will lead is to what is right... for us.

Musings...

If the sight of the blue skies fills you with joy,

if a blade of grass springing up in the fields

has power to move you,

if the simple things have a message
that you understand,

rejoice,

for your soul is alive.

- Eleonora Duse

Postcards from the Universe

In the course of my week there are often lovely little “coincidences” that occur which I fondly refer to as “Postcards from the Universe.” Sometimes they have meaning, which is immediately apparent, other times the meaning will not reveal itself until sometime later on down the road.

And then there are those special times, when it is, quite simply, as if someone is saying: “We’re here, we’re paying attention to your life, and we just thought we’d drop by to let you know that.”

To give you an example. The other night I watched the movie “Ondine.” The story of an Irish fisherman who discovers a woman in his fishing net who he believes to be a Selke (a water nymph). The next day I continue reading “Dream Keepers” by Morrie Ruvinsky. The tale begins when the crew of a fishing boat pulls a naked, wounded man from the cold Pacific waters. The protagonist’s name: Jason Ondine.

These are magical moments and when they occur I simply stop what I’m doing, smile wistfully and say “Thank you. Thank you very much”