Your heart pounds, mind races, something is definitely wrong. Your mind begins to scan the environment, what can it be? Maybe it is this person next to me? Maybe someone in my family is struggling and this is my sign. Maybe I am in fact having heart problems.
We have all been there at one moment or another. Frozen in the spell that is fight or flight. Our animal body, rears to fight and our senses heighten. We feel instinctual, primal and ready but we also feel broken, scared and confused. Is this my intuition? We ask ourselves repeatedly afraid to miss anything.
I have experienced this time and time again in myself and witnessed this in others. I will attest to how confusing it is, because intuition can feel like heightened senses but it usually doesn’t feel like fear. We can know something and then feel uncomfortable with it but more often than not intuition comes in calm states. With the exception of an actual physical survival threat. In which, may I say run, unless its a bear, then back away with your hands raised making loud sounds, or a mountain lion then fight, and well I don’t remember which animal you should play dead for, but lets hope it’s that one if I’m ever in the situation because these days that seems like my best fight or flight skill. (Glad to know those safety debriefs from family summer camp in Colorado are in their somewhere).
For many reasons, we live our lives with the potential to enter survival states when there is no real risk to our life. There are so many things contributing to this that it would be hard to put my finger on any one thing to resolve it. But I would say the majority of the people I am encountering with this state in chronic activation, are actually more afraid of emotional situations than physical threats.
The amount of time I have had a client in front of me in an urgent scheduled session from fear is countless. I am glad to be there for this. The amount of time that fear has been right, is almost never. This is important to remember because so often it feels like something urgent is being communicated from this place. And something is. But it’s usually not what our mind is fixated on. The messages coming through about the safety of ourselves and our loved ones are not to be trusted. But their is something in this state that does need to be listened to. In some way we have come in to some emotional dynamic or belief that has caused us a lot of distress. This information is crucial. Something you are continuing to think, is not in alignment with your truth. And beyond that thought, may be intuitive information you need to hear.
Now we can be in a calm state and feel some energy that raises our hairs, we don’t need to ignore it, we need to inquire deeper, am I triggered by something personally activating an old fear, or is something off in the environment, we must ask ourselves. Calm your body and if the message persists it is better to follow it, than ignore it.
But the only way back to clear intuition is to return to your own safety. First, you must convince this protective part of you that it is actually safe to feel safe.
In order to really hear your intuition, you must feel fairly calm and centered or even well much of the time. I know that seems like a tall order and maybe it is but if you want to operate from clear internal sight you must find some calm and clarity within. A muddied pool is very hard to see through. As someone who has dealt with so much anxiety in my life, I do understand that this can feel like I gave you a ladder to help you our of a whole but covered it with grease. But if you take a moment to realize that safety is an energy always available to you, and that you need only find the beliefs and practices that help you return to it, again and again you will find that this is something you can obtain.
Through out my years or working with others, I noticed a pattern in people who I found particularly intuitive at times but they often missed major red flags in life. I even notice it in myself at times in the past. I wondered how this could be. But the chronic state of protection and needing to also function means you just eventually choose things to do and often those things match your fear more than you trust. Subtle or sometimes not subtle fear dominates the energy field and we will eventually find matches for it. But don’t panic, there is always higher support and even meaning in these encounters. The dominant energy in all things is of our souls intention to evolve here. Sometimes that is painful but in that same event we can receive good if we come to the calm receptive place within us to find it.
I often share this metaphor. If you are listening to peaceful music and you come across discordant and upsetting sounds, you will notice it. If you are mostly listening to loud stressful music and something discordant plays you will not fully hear it. You may be so familiar with it you actually mistake it for something good because it matches the song in your head. Or maybe you hear it but you are too overwhelmed to do anything about it. So the music just merges with the background chaos of sound that you hear. You learn to live with it, you learn to sleep to it albeit poorly. One day however you will wake to a space in that sound, and at first you may worry about this foreign thing called silence but eventually you will find that it brings you something. Peace. And then you will cultivate the peace, and begin to hear your song as the discordant noise fades in to the silence.
The safest place for your mind is in this grounded moment. We must settle our body and mind to actually receive clear insight. This may feel like ignoring at first but after a while you will find center and you will know what you really believe or intuit about a situation. It is not from excitement or ungrounded anticipation either, this place is calm and feels just like something you know. This insight is always trying to make its way to you. You just have to let it in.
So today, if your mind is nagging you, dont ignore it but calm your body and witness it. Don’t assume truth but do assume validity. Calm the body and the mind and inquire deeper. The clarity will arise. If you can’t, then pause actions around the subject until you are clearer.
As always when you can not get there, a reading can help to find your truth again. Set up one today, to get back to feeling clear and at ease.