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Understanding Intuition

Nowadays is common to aspire to listen more to our intuition rather than only obeying rational thought. But, how do you differentiate between the voice of your intuition from the many voices that echo inside of you?

When I began my shamanic apprenticeship, twenty some years ago, I remember counting sixteen voices inside me. It was a time in which I felt disempowered and confused and these voice often contradicted each other leaving me paralyzed.

One of the voices was from my grandmother “If you don’t take a risk, you will not cross the river”, then my mother’s words would compensate with “Be careful!” Other ancestors would also add their opinions while my inner wounded child would be stupefied. Meanwhile, powerful emotions—fear, resentment and sadness—added a good share to my internal dialogue.

Inside all this turmoil it was difficult to know what I wanted, and making simple decisions was an almost impossible task. Then, with my journey through the Medicine Wheel and years of inner work, I was able to transform that insecurity into certainty.

One by one those voices were peeled away. In the South direction, with the Serpent as the guide, personal stories holding limiting beliefs are shed—the way the Serpent sloughs off her skin, all at once. In the West, with Jaguar and death as an ally, I looked into the shadows to discover hideous voices and illuminate generational curses. In the North, with Hummingbird, we recover our innocence and are able to believe in ourselves again and drink from the sweet nectar of life. In the East, Eagle and Condor guided me to overcome many challenges by flying higher and seeing a greater perspective.

This was my process, and maybe yours is different… But, what is important is to recognize the different voices that show up in your inner life and to begin to discriminate which ones are coming from a place of courage and self-stem and which ones are paralyzing and destructive.

Eventually you arrive at your intuition—that voice that comes from outside logical reason and that springs from wisdom itself. Yes! There is an element of spontaneous knowing from personal experience, however, intuition can source directly from collective wisdom, as when we have an epiphany capable of transforming lives.

Another way to relate to this is to imagine yourself embodying the archetypal wise old man or wise old woman. Then intuition is the wise voice of someone who has lived a long and rich life filled with deep lessons and juicy insights. I say archetypal because we all know people who exude a wisdom beyond their chronological age and then others who are old in years but chronically dull.

Now, in discerning many voices we must also consider those narratives that are part of our culture and society, and that are constantly intruding into our lives. These include the injurious messages of the patriarchy with its greedy economic systems driving the mass extinction of species on our planet—pushing us to buy and buy and, as a result, to pollute and pollute.

We may ask ourselves, is there another voice that is healthier for life on our planet? Even if we can only hear it as a soft whisper…Can we heed it?

Marcela Lobos