Reaping the Benefits of Your Intuition by Alyce Barry

In the business world, it's often called "instinct" -- the feeling in your gut that tells you to do something. Following your instinct is also called "playing a hunch."

When you follow your instinct or play a hunch, you're listening to your intuition, the voice inside that knows what it knows, regardless of what anyone else says.

Intuition is capable of telling us things that we have no "rational" way of knowing. It's capable of what looks a little like magic.

THE INNER MAGICIAN

Every archetype has two sides, like a doorway you can walk through in either direction. The Magician is the part of us that knows. If you walk through the Magician doorway in one direction, you know by learning from others. Walk through it in the other direction, and you know from the inside, from your intuition.

There was a time when I didn't listen to my intuition because I didn't trust it. I especially didn't trust myself to "think on my feet." I thought I needed to have everything planned in advance, down to the last detail, because I'd never be able to improvise.

I didn't trust my intuition because, when I was young, when I said what I thought to be true, I heard in response that I was "just imagining things." That I "must be exaggerating," that I "didn't know what I was talking about."

The time I remember best was when I was about six. I grew up near Lake Michigan, and one day we were at the beach swimming. I was playing and splashing in water that was waist deep. I dove to the bottom, and the undertow took me out a ways into the Lake. The undertow in Lake Michigan can be lethal, but obviously it wasn't that day or I wouldn't be here writing about it.

I remember being curled up in a ball and rolling along the sandy bottom, doing somersaults. Surprisingly, I wasn't scared. A calm voice in my head said, "This isn't good," and I had the idea to dig my feet into the sand. I did so and was able to stop rolling and propel myself to the surface, which was now over my head. I paddled to shore and marched proudly up the beach, breathing hard, my adrenaline pumping, to tell my mother what had happened.

"Oh, don't be silly," she said, "you're just making that up."

I was stunned that she didn't believe me.

I had a choice between trusting my mother and trusting my own knowing about what had happened. And I chose, as I believe most children do, to trust the interpretations of others, because I needed to believe that the people who took care of me were trustworthy and right. I put my intuition into shadow.

THE POWER OF INTUITION

Today, I use my intuition a lot. I use it when I'm doing Shadow Work, and I notice it particularly when I'm with a client whose issues are different enough from mine that the solutions aren't immediately clear to me. I say a silent prayer and have the sensation of opening a little door inside. I've received powerful insights through that door and now trust to my experience to know that it will happen again.

My intuition shows up in some intriguing ways. Sometimes, I'll be ready to leave my house to do errands when a subtle feeling holds me back. Then the phone rings, and it's my daughter or one of my siblings needing to talk.

I think of that subtle feeling as "the energy wall." When I say subtle, I mean so subtle as to be barely noticeable. It's a feeling that's very easy to doubt, very easy to believe I must be just imagining it.

Sometimes the subtle feeling is less a wall stopping me than a subtle pull. I'll get an idea to do something that seems kind of odd, and it will turn out to get me exactly what I've been wanting.

I often notice the pull when I'm at the grocery store. I'll have a list of items to buy, and as I pass a certain aisle, something beckons me to walk down it, where I find that my favorite tea is on sale. My intuition saves me a lot on groceries.

RECLAIMING YOUR INTUITION

You can benefit a lot from your intuition, as I do. The first step is to find out what might be at risk for you to have more access to it

One common risk would be that your intuition could be wrong. Following an intuition that's wrong can be risky for a lot of reasons: it can get you criticized or ridiculed by others, or judged harshly by your own inner critic. You can feel like an awful fool.

Then the question becomes: Is not having access to your intuition keeping you from getting criticized or judged? Or do you ever get criticized or judged anyway?

Or, is not having access to your intuition keeping you from feeling like a fool? Or do you ever feel like a fool anyway?

If your answer is, These things happen anyway, you may be ready to take the risk to have more access to your intuition.

REMOVING THE SHAME

It also helps to remove any shame you've got on your intuition. You might start by thinking back to how your family treated intuition.

Was it appreciated when you put your finger on an unspoken truth? ("Cousin Fred has pimples all over his face!") Or were you told to be silent?

Were your assessments of a situation honored and appreciated? ("You're only being nice to Grandma because she's rich!") Or were you told you were only imagining things?

When your opinion was at odds with the opinions of those around you, was your opinion honored and heard? Or were you told that you were wrong, that you didn't know what you were talking about?

If your intuition wasn't treated with kindness and respect, chances are it's in shadow for you. You can bring it out of shadow and use it for many powerful and useful purposes.

Alyce Barry
(WWTW Lake Delavan 1996)
(303) 485-5400
www.AlyceBarry.com
Author of Practically Shameless: How Shadow Work Helped Me Find My Voice, My Path, and My Inner Gold, summer 2007
www.PracticallyShameless.com

Email: alyce@alycebarry.com