Flexibility and Intuition

Posted on March 8, 2007
Filed Under Embrace Your Highest Path and Purpose, How To Develop Your Intuition, Spiritual Development |

We all love it when intuitive insight points us towards our highest good. Sometimes, our intuition lets us know exactly the right decisions to make, the right path to follow. We gladly take a leap of faith and follow our inner wisdom, happy to have this resource available to us.

Sometimes, however, our intuition serves us by announcing quite clearly what path would NOT serve us. Perhaps you’re familiar with this scenario: You are talking to a friend, co-worker, or family member. In the midst of conversation, you make a commitment. You offer to help with a project. You make plans. Perhaps you even commit to a joint business venture. But as the conversation ends and you are left to your own devices, you begin feeling uneasy. You are suddenly filled with regret over the commitment you made. This is not simply a slight feeling of annoyance or inconvenience. You are truly in discomfort. Your mind, meanwhile, is playing catch-up as you try to come up with plausible excuses and little white lies to “get out of” the plans you just committed to.

Sometimes our conscious mind gets enamored with an idea and makes decisions before our intuition has a chance to weigh in. The mind can be a noisy place, and a conversation can be even noisier! And so we don’t even notice what our intuition is telling us until the mental chatter has subsided.

Sometimes it even takes us setting foot on a path before we recognize that it is not appropriate for us. Our mind can get so busy being logical and rational, so in love with a good idea, that it does not even occur to us that “right” and “reasonable” might not be the same thing. And so we interview for a job, announce a business expansion, or register for a workshop, only to recognize belatedly that our actions do not align with our desired outcomes.

These things happen all the time. The question then is whether we have the courage to be true to ourselves, and our inner wisdom. Sometimes, intuitive insight is inconvenient. In our collective consciousness, being true to our word is held in high regard. We are taught to keep our commitments, to follow through on plans made. But what is our commitment to ourselves? If something feels truly wrong, should we follow through just because we said we would? Or do we make room for our own personal Truth, and allow our intuition to guide us towards our highest path and purpose?

What would the reaction be if you announced to your friends, your business partner, your clients, or your family that, upon introspection, you felt that you had made a decision not aligned with your highest good? What if we skipped the feeble excuses and white lies, and openly embraced our inner wisdom? You might be surprised. What is wrong for us is rarely truly right for others. You may find that, by embracing your intuitive insight, you are empowering others to do the same. In reality, is anyone close to you really going to discourage you from being true to yourself?

Living intuitively means cultivating the flexibility to act on our insights – even if those insights occur with inopportune timing! Our intuition is only a valuable resource if we put its wisdom into action. Sometimes this may appear awkward in the short term. But the more we allow intuitive wisdom to take its place in our lives, the more assertively it will make its presence known.

Blessings,
Andrea