When Intuition Isn’t Always Intuition

One of the things I've become more careful about over the years is trusting something simply because it feels true.

That probably sounds strange coming from someone who works with Past Life Regression, hypnosis, guides, the Higher Self and experiences that can be difficult to explain.

I'm actually very open to those things. Probably more open now than I was years ago.

But I'm also more cautious about what we do with them.

I've had people in sessions suddenly know something without knowing how they know it. A word comes into their mind. An image appears. They feel a presence. Sometimes an answer comes so quickly that they'll say, "I don't know where that came from."

I've experienced things like this myself.

Some of those experiences have been incredibly meaningful.

But meaningful doesn't necessarily mean that our first interpretation of the experience is correct.

That's where I think discernment becomes important.

When Something Just Feels True

We tend to give a lot of authority to intuition.

Someone says, "I just have a feeling about this person," or "Something is telling me not to do this."

Sometimes that feeling may be worth listening to.

But I've also seen how easily fear can feel like intuition.

Imagine someone who has experienced rejection repeatedly in relationships. They meet someone new and everything is going well, but suddenly they have this strong feeling that the person is going to leave.

They might be right.

But something else could be happening.

A part of them may have learned to anticipate abandonment before it happens. It's trying to protect them.

From inside the experience, though, that fear might not feel like fear.

It might feel like knowing.

That's what makes this difficult.

I've seen similar things happen during hypnosis. Someone encounters an image or feeling and immediately decides what it means. But if we don't rush it, sometimes the experience changes.

Anger turns out to have sadness underneath it.

Fear leads back to something that happened years earlier.

A frightening figure becomes a younger part of the person.

Something that initially seemed completely unrelated suddenly connects to an experience they haven't thought about in decades.

The first impression wasn't necessarily wrong.

It just wasn't finished.

I've learned not to rush that part.

Where Does the Information Come From?

This is one of those questions where I don't think anyone really knows.

When someone receives information during hypnosis, meditation or some other altered state, where exactly does it come from?

The unconscious?

Imagination?

Memory?

Intuition?

Something beyond the individual mind?

Maybe some combination of these?

I don't know.

I also don't think we always need to know.

But I do think we should be careful about automatically assigning a source to something simply because the experience was powerful.

If someone encounters a figure during a session who feels like a guide, I'll usually work with that experience as a guide.

I don't need to stop the session and figure out whether we're dealing with an independent spiritual being, an aspect of the unconscious, an archetype or imagination.

The experience is happening.

Let's see where it goes.

What does the guide say?

How does the person respond?

What changes?

What do they bring back from it?

For me, those questions have become more interesting than trying to prove exactly what happened.

Sometimes the Ordinary Message Is the Important One

There's another thing I've noticed after doing a lot of these sessions.

The most useful messages are often not particularly impressive.

People sometimes expect their Higher Self or a guide to reveal some enormous secret about their life.

Instead, they get something like:

You need to forgive yourself.

Stop trying to control everything.

You're allowed to say no.

You don't have to take care of everyone.

Go spend more time with your family.

Part of me almost finds this funny.

You go through this elaborate experience, perhaps another lifetime, a spiritual realm or an encounter with a guide, and the message you bring back could have come from someone who knows you really well.

But maybe that's the point.

Knowing something intellectually and actually experiencing it are very different things.

I've watched someone hear a simple sentence during a session and suddenly start crying.

They already knew it.

But somehow they hadn't known it that way before.

Those moments have made me less interested in how extraordinary the message sounds.

I'm more interested in what happens when the person receives it.

Ego Can Get Involved Too

This part is probably worth talking about because I don't think anyone is completely immune to it.

Spiritual experiences can make us feel special.

Being told you have an important purpose feels good.

Feeling that you're receiving information other people don't have access to feels good.

Believing the universe is communicating directly with you can feel pretty good too.

That doesn't automatically make any of it false.

But I think it's worth noticing.

I've had to notice it in myself.

If I receive something that happens to line up perfectly with what I already want to believe, I try to leave a little room around it.

Maybe it's intuition.

Maybe it's something deeper.

Maybe it's me.

And sometimes I just don't know.

I think that little bit of uncertainty is healthy.

Not the kind where you distrust every thought and feeling you have. That's not particularly useful either.

Just enough uncertainty that you don't immediately turn every experience into a fact.

What Does It Do to Your Life?

This may be where I've landed after years of working with this.

I'm less interested in whether someone can prove they received psychic information.

I'm interested in what they do with it.

Does the experience help them understand themselves?

Does it make them more compassionate?

Does it help them finally deal with something they've been avoiding?

Does it bring them more fully into their life?

Or does it make them afraid?

Does it make them dependent on getting another message before making a decision?

Does every coincidence suddenly have to mean something?

Even these aren't perfect rules.

A useful experience can be uncomfortable. Something imagined can still create a genuine change. Something that feels wonderful could simply be telling us exactly what we want to hear.

There isn't a clean formula for this.

Maybe that's what discernment really is.

Not deciding that intuition is real or isn't real.

Not believing everything.

Not dismissing everything either.

Just being willing to stay with an experience long enough to see what else might be there.

I've become much more comfortable doing that.

I can have an experience and say, "That was strange."

I can take it seriously.

I can even believe there may have been something more happening.

And I can still say, "I don't know exactly what that was."

Those things don't cancel each other out.

If anything, I think that's made me more open.

I'm just a little less certain.

And maybe that's not a bad thing.