Differentiating between Intuition and Fear ~ The Big Yes

The decision to make a decision

When I was younger I had challenges with making decisions. I used to say that I would have been very happy under a communist regime, since there was less choice and less room to make a ‘bad’ choice. I was kidding of course, since my rebellious nature would surely have gotten me incarcerated in some prison/labor camp somewhere cold and barren. I know now that it wasn’t so much the making the decisions I grappled with, but more about the fear of making the wrong decision. Now in hindsight, I know this issue was from overcoming trauma as a child and dealing with major upheavals at a young age.  I also now know there really is no “wrong” decision. Even back in the days though when I had trouble hearing my gut, there were definitive moments when I would feel a big YES to something even if others thought I was mad. This usually came into play with real estate when a place would just speak to me in loud tones. This also came to me when I was an actress and just HAD to play certain characters, or tell particular stories. I felt this when I decided to have a child in my early twenties. So even with my clouded inner self, I managed to follow the faint trails of big Yeses, but how much easier is life to have access to the Big Yeses all the time, or at least most of the time.

With my Buddhist practice, Kundalini yoga and other meditation practices I have noted that my intuitive capacity has grown and expanded even more. At times though, I still have moments where I have to stop and ask myself if a certain thought or feeling is intuition guiding me or fear rearing it’s head. Sometimes we have old programming that can resurface and disguise itself as inner guidance. Are we being protected when we resist doing something or is it fear attempting to stop our growth? This is usually something that comes up often for most of us.

Recently I traveled to China with The Global Tea Hut community, which was a huge endeavor for me. Just to plan the two weeks away and have my animals, daughter and businesses taken care of by trusted souls was an experience in surrendering. I tried to talk myself out of the trip a number of times, however I kept remembering that when I first initially heard about the trip to the Yellow Mountains of China, my heart and spirit cried out the big YES! Now, in retrospect I can see that my spirit guided me towards making the impossible possible, that my soul yearned for more teachings. My soul also yearned for an ego reset. I feel every few years we all need to take a moment out of our routine and sheltered lives to reset our egos. (This is also why I practice tantric a few times a year) This can be through offering selfless service, traveling, or to go on a spiritual quest. When we reset our egos, I feel we remember who we are at our core. Without my home, organic food, children, comforts, businesses, routines, solitude, without all of these luxuries I had to go back to my child like self that discovered wonder again. That person made friends easily with others, that person tried things more easily without judgement, that person surrendered to not having control, that person dropped into the present moment because that’s all that was there, and that’s all that really matters.

The trip showed me that again honing our intuition is the most important act of self love. To really listen and know when it is that our egos are trying to interfere, or when our spirit or source energy is guiding us. A few tools, that I always go back to to differentiate between old patterns of lodged in fear or an intuitive knowing are:

1) Listen to my body. When I ask myself about an idea or decision, what is the initial response in my solar plexus. Do I feel anxious, or a warm invitation for excitement to come. Also it’s important to decipher between instinct and intuition. Instinct is crucial for our survival, however intuition is driven by spirit.

2) Spend more time in quiet to stop the chatter in my head. Meditation (I know you’re sick of hearing this all the time) or being in the natural world unplugged.

3) Is the decision coming from a place of love or fear. I think the term “to know thyself” is really this. Is what we do coming from love or fear. You can pretty much boil down everything to this.

4) Work on clearing the pituitary gland which is a must anyway.

5) Reading books on opening our intuition. This one called Blink is an easy read and not too didactic.

6) Usually if the answer isn’t a big YES then we need to spend more time creating space for the question to reveal itself more clearly.

Tags:Buddhism, China, choices, decisions, fear, Global Tea Hut, Kundalini yoga, love, meditation, tantric, yes