Do you work "intuitively"?

Ego vs Intuition

This phrase has become a credential. To work intuitively. To channel and “tap in”. It is meant to signal something beyond generic and prescribed, beyond the mechanical, anything but the Western societal conditioning we have grown up with and loath once we become aware of how strongly they severed us from our innate nature and oracular wisdom. And of course, working intuitively offers a quality of presence and receptivity that elevates the work above technique, above training, above the ordinary.

I believe in that quality. I have spent years developing my relationship with it. And precisely because I take it so seriously, I don’t use it lightly but have the impression lot’s of people do. Especially if they don’t only loath the dogmatic, dominating, patriarchal system, but also resist proper training and patient, honest apprenticeship.

We all are innately intuitive beings and have are able to “tap in” but exactly because of systems that have made us believe that we don’t, we have internalised blocks on top of our very own filters that often influence our intuition. They don’t only distort it and can actually be incredibly supportive to navigate one’s human life but other times they are outright malfunctioning, leading us to either confuse the filters with our intuition or make us believe we just don’t have access to source wisdom and divine inspiration (spoiler: you do, don’t believe the doubt!).

This leads to the word intuition being used to describe this very precious insight that in the spiritual circle can’t really be argued with but often is mixed up with gut feeling, instinct, emotional impulses or intellect. Or ego. Hence my slightly provocative title.

We live in a culture that has lost the ability to distinguish between confidence and wisdom. Volume has become its own kind of authority. People listen to the tall and the loud, the certain and the fast, the ones who take up space without hesitation. They do not tend to listen to the elderly or the children, the nuanced, complex uncertain ones, or the quiet ones in the corners. We have been so thoroughly disconnected from our own nature, and from the natural world, that the ego became the de facto leader. The most insistent and loudest voice.

The spiritual and healing world is not exempt from this. It has its own version of confidence culture, and “intuitive” is one of its trademarks. If what I do comes from intuition, it can’t be examined. It’s like two sorcerers in a fantasy movie battling with magic wands and colourful lighting bolds. But truly it’s not different than using swords or fists, it’s the same dynamic just made more exciting. The battle is becoming subtle manipulation and statements that suggest they work from a place of deep spiritual receptivity, but because its an inner and invisible (to most, i think?) process, no one would dare directly question it. Because to question it would be to distrust the source itself.

But ego and intuition feel similar from the inside when you have not learned to tell them apart. And ego will almost always be the more compelling speaker unless you are keen and practiced to recognise your inner resistances, your discomfort, your identity attachments and fears and protection mechanism.

Five years ago I attended a sacred leadership retreat for facilitators. The assignment one day was to listen and follow. The reason behind it was something I believe in deeply: we can only be good space holders when we are not able to hold space for ourselves but also be held by others.

And of course I love the image of the wolf pack that moves through the forest with the pack leader at the back, watching that everyone in front is safe and heading in the right direction. Leading from genuine service means being willing to be last.

Why the quote on quote trained facilitators at the retreat did not understand this, took me years of diving into the contemporary internalised and conditioned dynamics of humans to grasp, because instead of listening, they talked about themselves. They jumped on every available opportunity to speak. They positioned and promoted themselves and did anything but allowing themselves to look like “followers”, even in the moments of listening, they nodded as if they already know the answer to everyone’s problems and when they shared, they only shared stories that were digested and fitted the facilitation arc.

I have seen the same thing in ceremony, my one and those of others.

A participant who, in their sharing time, doesn’t allow themselves to be vulnerable, who instead takes the teacher position, or uses the circle to advance their own positioning or even to speak about their offer.

Claiming space, building confidence in speaking about your work without making yourself smaller than you are, learning to hold yourself in a room as someone who believes in their work and has something important to offer… all of these are necessary processes and some a lifelong pursuit. But not reading the room clearly because your inner wounding or need to feel recognised convinces you to speak in order to showcase yourself is a process of becoming not leading. Especially as a space holder who is meant to read spaces (intuitively?).

A fully fledged leader knows when it is their moment and when the moment belongs to someone else. They do not give advice that was not asked for. They can listen and follow and know when it is their time to step forward and when it is ok not to be seen and still know their own worth.

And that knowing, without the need to manufacture a reason, is one of the clearest expressions of intuition in practice.

The facilitators at that retreat were working from urgency and a process of becoming. From the ego’s need to demonstrate. They may have believed it was intuition speaking but that is precisely the confusion I want to name.

The Temple of Wisdom

The Latin root of intuition is intueri: to look upon, to contemplate, to watch over. It describes what we often call looking inward. A turning of attention toward something that is always present, beneath the noise of everything else.

I like to think about it as a wellspring at the centre of a temple. Deeply connected to source, but only visible when inside the temple walls. The access varies; the source does not.

Around it stand four pillars:

• EGO | IDENTITY
  The identity it has constructed and the need to protect what it has invested in. Your categorising system and sense of belonging as well.

• MIND | INTELLECT
  The intellectual reasoning, risk-assessing, rational thoughts and a mind which is brilliant at its job but terrible at knowing when its job is done.

• GUT FEELING | INSTINCT
  The nervous system, the gut, the survival drive, the body’s ancient alarm system.

• EMOTION | IMPULSE
  E.g. fear, excitement, doubt, longing, usually the immediate reactions to an intuitive insight, leading to impulsive decisions

These four pillars are not opposing your intuition. They carry real information and they each have a necessary role which can be supportive even. The ego is a crucial filter. Emotions can become incredibly accurate signposts. Instinct, when healthy and unprimed by unresolved experience, informs well. The mind, when it is a servant rather than the authority, helps map what to do once the deeper knowing has been heard.

The problem arrives when the pillars are not recognised as filters. When the loudest or most familiar voice is mistaken for the wellspring it surrounds. When you only look up to the temple but miss the centre of it.

That’s when someone acts from urgency or ego and calls it intuition because it arrived with conviction.

You access the wellspring by moving through and past the pillars, by getting genuinely curious about what each one is doing, by developing enough self-knowledge to know the difference and meet any doubts, fears, discomfort and resistances as the initiation portals that they are.

For the literature geeks amongst you: If you ever heard of Kafka’s “Before the Law" and the doorkeeper? Go read it (it’s super short) and return to this article again, and I bet you will see it with a switched on perspective.

Working intuitively, in any genuine sense, is a practice of self-knowledge in order to discern between your personal knowing or desire or fear and the wisdom from source (that is more often than not very uncomfortable or challenging to your personal perception, especially if you have a strong mind pillar that wants to dissect the mystery before it trusts it - which is how all of us have been raised and therefore conditioned in the West).

It requires knowing your filters well enough to see them in the moment they are operating:

Knowing when the ego is protecting an identity or the nervous system is reading a present situation through the lens of a past wound.
When the emotion you are calling intuition is fear dressed as knowing or the mind is making a sound argument in service of avoidance (to feel an emotion).

I have found one compass reliable above others: where is the most resistance?

The place I least want to go, the option that makes me want to postpone and hand it to karma and not spend my energy on it, is almost always the place where true intuition is presenting itself. Another good one is asking myself what I would be proud of at my deathbed. Followed by asking myself what I would do if all uncertainties were covered, no risks involved and money not an issue. The wellspring, when it finally became audible, had been saying it all along. I had simply been standing in front of it with a very convincing story of four pillars that tried to keep me outside the temple walls.

The practitioners I most trust are not the ones who speak the loudest or with the most certainty. My mentors all have something in common: they never put themselves before me, always appealed to my sovereign choices and reminded me of my own power instead of enacting theirs and they never claimed their intuition as credential (they would never say stuff like “I just know”).

Working “intuitively” is a commitment to a strong level of honesty and introspection. To do it with integrity means doing the discernment work first.

The wellspring is absolutely accessible but what is crucial is your willingness to see what is standing between you and it.

For this I created a free guide which explains the different voices and how to work with them instead of trying to suppress them (which we all know, does not work on the long run anyway). Reply tot his email if you would like it and I send it to you to download.

In my next articles I go a bit deeper into each of the filters which I call the pillars of our inner temple.

On June 12th you can join me in Illumination, where I guide you to your sacred wellspring within and help you step by step to build strong temple pillars around it. After the two week rituals series you can hold our connection to source without collapsing - especially in the face of doubt, fear and reasoning from yourself or others.

If your oracle is ready to take her seat, join us, it’s £110 for a yearlong access that also includes my previous workshops Identity Alchemy and Witch Alchemy and my foundation course for all priestesses of Avalon, it’s called Archetypes of Avalon, find it here.

With a smile,
Laura