Intuition and Your Spiritual Guidance System

INTUITION AND YOUR SPIRITUAL GUIDANCE SYSTEM

QUESTION: 

“To be honest, I don’t care about enlightenment or god, but I want to live the best life I can and a part of that is to try to find a way to live with sickness, death, violence and all those bad things I can’t control. There are so many theories, belief systems and ideas floating around so where to turn? Where to start? And some spiritual teachers say there is nothing to do which may be true but is not helpful at all.

So my questions is, where can I find my GPS-system to guide me? Where do I look for direction? It can’t be a book or an external authority. My best answer so far is intuition. My own feeling (not really an ordinary emotion like fear or anger, etc.,etc.,) of what is the next right step.”

ANSWER:

The “best life” you can live is the one you are already living.

There is no “better” or “best” version out there. THIS is all there is.

That your current experience of life is filled with confusion (competing theories, ideas and belief systems) and suffering (sickness, death and violence) does not mean that the quality of your life is poor.

A “good life” is not one that is free of pain and confusion. That is an EASY life.

It sounds to me like you are conflating a good life with an easy life.

Why should life be easy?

I can give you many strategies for living an easy life. I can tell you numerous ways by which you can quite easily live with the sickness, death and violence in the world. Or I can show you ways to completely resolve the conflict between the various beliefs and theories out there.

In fact, as we speak, millions of people across the world are using these strategies right now – and quite effectively. Ignorance, apathy, magical thinking, spiritual bypassing – these are tried and tested techniques for living with suffering. And as for resolving the conflicts between various beliefs and theories – its easy, just pick one belief system and brainwash yourself thoroughly.

But a “good life” is rarely ever an easy one. Because it is one that refuses to accept things at face value - to turn away from doubts, discrepancies and inconsistencies. In fact, it is oriented towards delving deeper in an effort to get to the marrow of experience. To savor living.

Encountering doubt, conflict and irreconcilable differences not only become inevitable – they become NECESSARY. If you do not feel uncomfortable with the suffering in the world it means you are either ignorant or are numbed. Suffering should feel uncomfortable – just like the smell of shit should stink.

Suffering stinks and I hope you never lose your sense of smell for it.

Desensitization is a coping mechanism that people use to deal with the feeling of becoming overwhelmed by the sensory inputs in their environment. Life is too intense for them and so they learn to “dim” it in order to engage with it.

But a dimmed existence isn’t what you are looking for, is it? Rather it’s the opposite. Its one in which you are able to engage with life in its full intensity.

A life fully lived.

Such a life requires us NOT to desensitize, but to do the opposite – to become increasingly sensitive and intimate with it. We begin to feel things more intensely – sensations, emotions, thoughts – even conflict, confusion and suffering.

However, sensitivity and tolerance tend to be inversely proportional. So, those who have a high immunity or tolerance to their own suffering (or that of others) also tend to have less of an awareness or sensitivity towards that suffering. Whereas, people who are sensitive towards that suffering also feel the negative impacts of that suffering more acutely.

Seekers tend to be of the more sensitive kind. They often begin seeking because they have felt something about their own existence acutely enough to be motivated to find out more. Yet, they also tend to feel the impacts of suffering more acutely for the very same reason.

Therefore, seekers are driven by dual motivations – to discover truth AND to alleviate pain.

The problem is that these two goals exist at cross-purposes. I often say to people: “the truth isn’t going to feel good.”

And so, there is this fundamental conflict at the heart of every seeker. Two competing motivations struggling for dominance. For the majority, the desire to relieve suffering wins out over the desire for truth. This is why you see so many spiritual paths presenting “liberation from suffering” as their highest offering.

Non-duality, in particular, attempts to package its offering as a 2-for-1 deal – offering both truth and peace within the same solution. Its strategy is to simply get rid of the “separate self” eliminating the very root of suffering, thereby revealing the truth of reality.

But a self can no more eliminate itself than a knife can cut itself or a single hand can clap. And so, the REAL effect of non-dual teachings is one of total desensitization. Where the self, rather than being eliminated, becomes utterly sedated. And the resulting experience of life – while perhaps reduced in conflict and suffering, is also a greatly dulled experience bearing little resemblance to truth.

As I’ve already said, there are many ways to live with confusion and suffering – and absolute self-denial is one of them.

So, before I answer your second question, you need to ask yourself:

“What is it that I truly want? Truth or peace?” And I want you to work on the assumption that only one of them is possible. That you can’t have your cake and eat it too.

In other words, truth may not be peaceful. And peace may not be truthful.

Which is it that you choose?

If your choice is peace, above all else, then you do not need my input. There are literally hundreds of teachers, writers and gurus out there (many of whom you are already aware of) who will do a much better job than I ever can of showing you a technique to achieve greater peace of mind.

However, if your choice is truth – then you have to be willing to forfeit “peace” as an expected outcome. That is not to say peace is forever going to be withheld from you. You may very well feel moments of great peace – but these may not endure. Or you may feel no peace at all. The important factor here is that peace, if it occurs at all, will be just a by-product – a side-effect that cannot be predicted and will never be the primary focus.

Is that what you want?

If that is the case – then your initial query of “finding a way to live with suffering” becomes a moot point of consideration. You will either figure it out or you won’t.

This brings us to the next point that you brought up about the “internal GPS system”. Most people are simply guided by pain-pleasure responses. And so, they orient themselves via external markers that elicit such responses. Driven by a desire to alleviate pain and to find peace/comfort – they pursue those objects, people and experiences that bring them a sense of ease, security and comfort.

But if those are NOT the primary factors that you want your life to be guided then the question becomes – what is?

If pain and pleasure are the dual coordinates used by those who are oriented by a need for peace – then what are the coordinates used by those guided by a desire for truth?

What is that faculty within us that orients us towards these new coordinates?

You hit upon it when you mentioned the faculty of intuition. You called it “not really an ordinary emotion” – and you are right, it isn’t.

But what is intuition exactly?

The simplest way I can define it is – intuition is our compass for aligning with life. In other words, it is not so much a sense of what is the “right thing for me to do” – it is more the sense of “what does this circumstance (life) require of me”?

The reason intuition is often so under-developed in people, is because it is actually very hard to follow through on it for three reasons:

-  Intuition isn’t always logical (makes rational sense)

-  Intuition doesn’t always reduce suffering

-  Intuition does not earn the support/validation of other people

If you reflect on it – these are three factors on the basis of which most people make decisions in life. Does it make sense? Does it make me feel good? Do other people validate and support me?

But it is often the case that intuition does none of the above. It may make little sense from a practical or rational standpoint. It can cause more anxiety and stress, often because it makes such little sense. AND few around us seem to understand or support it.

Like any muscle in the body or faculty in the brain, the less you use something (and by “use” I mean you put it to the test in real world scenarios) the less that faculty is allowed to develop.

And so, the only way to actually DEVELOP intuition – is to take a leap of faith and learn to follow through on it. Over and over again. And sometimes, things will pan out for you. Other times they won’t. But fear of pain and failure cannot be obstacles if your real motivation is truth. To hone your intuition (the only truth detector you have) you have to be willing to allow yourself to be guided by it and to learn from all experiences that result – positive and negative.

The reason I can tell you this, is that after two decades of following my intuition – I now trust it far above any other faculty of intelligence I possess, including reason. Because my reason (though I highly value it) is limited to only those variables and factors in my environment that I can “see” and “make sense of”. Whereas my intuition is tuned into the totality – both seen and unseen, the sensible and the absurd, the known and the mystery.

And whereas in the past I would have struggled to follow through on my intuitions – now I do so more effortlessly. As a result, what my faculty of reason qualifies as “right” or “wrong” – or what my survival instinct projects as “good” or “bad” – do not have the ultimate power to dictate my choices and actions. I don’t ignore these faculties by any means – but the ultimate power lies with my intuition. And it may be that my intuition leads me down a path that aligns with my reason and my survival instinct. Or it may lead me on a path that completely negates them.

Yet, there is no longer ever a case in which I act in a manner that directly contradicts my intuition in favor of logic or survival.

Now, there are certain caveats to what I’ve talked about here that should not be ignored.

Precisely because intuition can be such a powerful guidance system – there is a tendency for people with an underdeveloped intuition to overestimate it.

Because, how do you know you are not just following your own egotistical motivations parading as “intuition”?

That’s another trap people in New Age circles often fall into. Their “spiritualized egos” tend to rationalize every selfish whim or fancy as “intuition” – whereas in reality they are still very much operating from the pain-pleasure format that everyone else is on.

So, here are some of the features of intuition that may help you clarify where the motivation is emerging from:

Intuition is never ego-based. It is not designed to make a person’s ego feel enhanced in any way. So, if a decision or choice is making you “feel good”, “feel happy” or inflated in some way– this may not be based in intuition. An intuitive decision has more complex impacts than that. It is often a sobering experience – it can fill us with doubt and make us feel “smaller”/ humbled in comparison to the life circumstance we find ourselves in. An intuitive choice rarely makes us feel “safe” but rather it accentuates the uncertainty of the circumstance.

This is why intuition requires “faith” to follow through on. Not the kind of intellectual faith that belief systems require. But a faith in life itself. Intuition doesn’t promise a pleasurable outcome for you. In fact, it may (at least temporarily) even lead to great discomfort, anxiety and fear. So again, the feel-good factor may be altogether missing from the equation.

Intuition will almost inevitably be accompanied by feelings of doubt – often overwhelmingly so. It is rarely ever clear cut. It is not always rational. It can even seem morally ambiguous. In fact, when we follow through on it, it is rarely with a sense of certainty or confidence that we do.

One of the tell-tale signs of intuition is that it almost never manifests as an internal dialogue. It does not present an argument. It does not attempt to convince. It barely ever says anything at all. At most it may appear as a single statement, articulated out of the blue and gone before it is fully registered. More commonly it manifests as a deep-seated feeling of intention or sense of inevitability which can easily be drowned out by the noise of the thinking mind.

Intuition is not the voice of the thinking mind.

If you are thinking, it’s not intuition. It may be your mind attempting to rationalize an intuitive feeling – either in support of or against it. But it is not the intuition itself. That arises from a much deeper place.

The way to tune into intuition is through awareness. Sensitivity. Intimacy.

The very qualities that also make you vulnerable to pain and suffering.

This requires courage.

Courage because you are vulnerable. Courage because your conditioned mind cannot understand it. Courage because it feels uncomfortable and uncertain. And courage because no one in the world can validate it for you.

Not a parent. Not a friend. Not a teacher. Not a leader. Not a guru. Not even your own rational mind.

Life alone can provide you that validation via a sense of alignment with its own movement. And that alignment is experienced not as a feeling of pleasure, nor as a sense of intellectual “rightness” – but rather as a sense of underlying perfection, of wholeness – an overwhelming feeling that “all is well and as it should be”.

Nothing is missing. Nothing is amiss. Even in the midst of great suffering or hardship.

Free flowing spontaneity. Of thought. Of speech. Of action.

"Witness the disappearance of thought. This directive will stop the mind. Thought will cease. The witness is nothing but a descriptive thought arising that 'I am seeing'. The actuality is simply 'seeing is happening'. There is no 'I' that sees. SEEING that simple fact is enough. It may appear 'for the mind' as a small opening, a glimpse of pure open cognition happening. It is not a small opening, it is actually the vastness of presence-awareness, which has no size, small or large. It has no dimensions at all. The 3 Dimensional world appears in THAT and is THAT. Everything appears in the SEEING. The mind believes in a point of view and adds a story of 'me' the seer. It is just words appearing. Thoughts appear and disappear, yet they have no substance whatsoever. See that. Know that." Gilbert Schultz

Kristopher