Intuition and Discernment

Spiral Shower 8.25.22

In my life, there have been many times in which I’d felt completely captured by my intuition. As though there was an inner voice inside of me that had a life of its own entirely.

It can hit you as though you’ve just walked right through a ghost. It can hit you gently like a breeze, or intensely like a guttural punch. But more often than not, I feel the need (and the desire) to follow these hunches I receive with great loyalty.

“I had to obey and inner law which was imposed on me and left me no freedom of choice… A creative person has little power over his own life. He is not free. He is captive and drawn by his daimon. … This lack of freedom has been a great sorrow to me” - Carl Jung

Everybody receives these messages, but not everybody listens the same. And as I get older, I begin to realize more and more that listening is only half the battle. It’s one thing to pick up on intuitive information that’s coming to you from the collective unconscious. It’s another to be discerning about your interpretation.

You see, the somatic experience of being captured by an intuitive message is not the same thing as understanding the implications of that message.

You may ask yourself…

1. What is this inner experience asking me to do?

2. Where am I being guided to go?

3. What outcome should I expect?

4. What and where is the source of my discomfort?

5. Which physical factors in my environment are in alignment with the ideal in which I am being drawn to manifest?

I could go on and on. There are an infinite amount of questions you may need to ask yourself in order to correctly interpret the intuitive lightbulb hits you receive. While it may be tempting to believe that having an inner experience of intuition can bring you 100% certainty, your understanding is only as good as your ability to apply it to real-life, physical scenarios.

This is just one example of the disparity between sensing and intuition that Carl Jung talks about. As perceiving functions, we need both sensing and intuition equally in order to make sense of the world around us. Too much of one without the other can lead to delusion.

I find that in this culture, too often we assume that it is the intuitive information we receive that is making us crazy — not our inability to interpret it. However, I’d argue that often, the root of the problem is that our interpretations of our intuition are often incorrect and/or irrelevant.

Let me give you a practical example. While it is possible for anyone to receive intuitive information about anything at any moment, I would argue that this is more common when romance or attraction becomes involved. Why? Because interpersonal relationships, specifically romantic or sexual ones, often serve a spiritually catalytic purpose. While many people can live their daily life ignoring their intuitive pulls, this may feel impossible if you’ve become captured by Eros.

Art Credit: Maurice Denis. “The Story of Psyche: panel 7. Cupid Carrying Psyche Up to Heaven”

To put it simply, it is quite common to 1) have a crush, 2) become captured by fantasy about said crush, and thus 3) become delusional about the situation.

If you know the feeling, you may have felt like, “How could I have been so wrong about this person? How could I have believed so strongly in an outcome that didn’t happen, that I didn’t actually even want in the first place? How could my sanity have slipped away so easily?”

So here is my take on it. To be real with you, I’ve been in this position a million times before. And while I don’t regret much, I’ve made a terrible mistake with how I’ve handled myself in the aftermath of intuition-gone-wrong. In the past, I’ve concluded that because I was wrong about my interpretation, that my intuition was to blame.

Then what did I do? I grew to distrust my own instincts more and more, until I completely disowned my own personal power. I became so overwhelmed with my sensitivity to intuitive information, that instead of learning how to correctly interpret this information in the real world, I ignored the signs. I abandoned myself.

The hilarious thing about this is that, it is possible to feel an intuitive pull and receive intuitive information that is 100% valid and be completely and embarrassingly wrong about what to do with that information. Going back to our common, human example of a crush – often, people assume that the intuition they feel around a person that’s special to them must mean that there is a fated outcome associated with the intuition. I.e., “if I feel so strongly about X, it must mean we are meant to be together forever.”

Unfortunately, I feel like this assumption is pervasive in our culture because too many of us are too afraid to dive deeper into that intuitive information and question it further. Many of us never learn to develop our discernment and struggle to know how to apply our intuitive insight in a functional way. And I wouldn’t be surprised if most people in present-day Western culture begin completely denying their intuition in their adolescence, the very first time a fatal attraction leads to suffering. It is sad to imagine that something as small as a naive schoolgirl crush, can lead so many to completely disconnect themselves from their creative instinct.

Most people feel that once, and then go “never again,” because our culture doesn’t give us much room to explore that suffering in a way that validates our original intuition. Instead, we seek to control and eliminate the intuitive voice in our head that was trying to show us something. Unfortunately, many of us never follow the path that our voice is revealing to us because it seems to be a path full of obstacles, pain, and suffering. Who would choose that?

Intuition without discernment can become blind faith. Intuition with discernment can help you to live each moment to the fullest, bringing your full soul with you every step of the way. When you continue to listen to intuitive information, you are open to receiving wisdom and lessons as you go. If you stop listening, you may find yourself making the same mistakes over and over again. But if you do listen, no matter how many times you fail — you can honestly promise yourself that you will always do better next time.

You see, if you stop listening to where your intuition is directing you, you never learn the lesson that the experience was trying to teach you. You then find yourself in a perpetual loop where life is showing you the same people, same situations, your same fears, over and over and over again. Until you face it directly and take on the challenge that is your destiny.

It is human hubris to assume that we can control the outcome in any situation, no matter how loud or powerful our intuitive messages may seem. Many times, we don’t actually know the purpose of the experience until it’s over. In my understanding, the purpose of our intuition is not to tell us the end of the story before we’ve lived it. It is to activate our soul so that we feel moved to make better choices that will create the life we want to live.

We will never know the end of the story before it’s lived. So if you are banking on your intuition telling you that, 9/10 you will be wrong. Instead, listen to what your intuition is telling you about you.

1. What do you actually want?

2. What lights your soul on fire?

3. How can the information you’re picking up on help you to better understand your destiny, purpose, or calling?

4. How can you use that information to control what you can control, and let go of the rest?

This takes practice. And I suppose the main purpose of this post is that I want to argue that improving your intuitive discernment is a valuable pursuit. We will have to untangle the actual intuitive information from the sensory specifics that our human ego may be unconsciously attaching to that experience. I.e., feeling connected to a person has literally nothing to do with how long they will play a role in your life. In nature, nothing stays constant anyway. Everything is either growing or decaying.

In my life, relationships of all kinds have been my greatest teachers. From long-term relationships, to short-term flings, from lifelong friends to enemies. I take them all very seriously, because they all contain a meaningful lesson. No matter how painful, chaotic, or toxic — I am proud of myself for moving through them soulfully each time. I always come out on the other end with a lesson. And with each lesson, discernment sharpens. This discernment gives you the power to make stronger commitments to yourself to do better and choose better next time.

“The meeting of two personalities is like the contact of two chemical substances: if there is any reaction, both are transformed.” - Carl Jung

All you have to do is listen, and it’s there. Intuition is there to help you, not something to control or repress. And even if you could control it, you absolutely should not aim to use your intuition to control other people, anyway. That’s how things like ideology get out of hand, and people become zealous egomaniacs.

The more you allow yourself to listen to intuition, you’re sharpening your sword. You’re developing a relationship with your core creative instincts. With this discernment, it becomes easier to trust yourself in the moment, when it matters. As time goes on, you’ll wield that sword with more and more accuracy. Intuition is not there to give you a secret “how-to” manual for life that will give you the answers before you take the test. You still have to go out there and take the test.