Understanding the distinction between Intuition and our conditioned instincts is essential if we want to live a life of true freedom, conscious empowerment - and cultivating less personal drama and conflict.
Many people confuse Intuition with basic survival instincts, rational thinking, or even strong emotional feelings and responses. However, Intuition is the space of awareness that exists outside of our physical senses, and beyond our conditioned minds ability to reason or rationalize. Even our emotional responses and reactions in our body are a form of conditioned patterns and instinct - not necessarily Intuition.
All of us are conditioned by our environment from birth within a dualistic framework—labeling our experiences as either good or bad, right or wrong, safe or unsafe, etc. This is how we learn to survive and belong within our family and social systems, avoid danger, and navigate the outside world with common sense while finding security in our own identity and personality.
While our conditioned instincts are necessary and obviously truly helpful to us - they can become extremely limiting. They narrow our perception and our judgements about ourselves, others and the world into rigid, binary categories.
When we are disconnected from our Intuition, we can't help but interact with the world by seeking pleasure and comfort - and avoiding pain and challenges. This makes sense because pleasure and comfort feel good to our physical senses - and pain and challenges have a tendency to feel awful to our physical senses, as well as activate our stress responses and nervous system - putting us into fight, flight, fawn or freeze.
But, as we approach mid-life, a realization hopefully dawns on us: maybe life is more than just a quest for pleasure and avoidance of pain. Perhaps the world isn't simply divided into just "good" and "bad" people, or "right" and "wrong" choices.
Thankfully, this is when we are most primed and ready to connect with our Innate Intuition and begin to seriously develop it!
The invitation of the Mid-Life developmental phase is where we begin to understand the existence of a "gray area"—a space where what is good and true for us isn't easily categorized into black or white. Intuition exists beyond the binary lens, which allows us to perceive and integrate multiple layers of truth simultaneously, without the compulsion to sort these perceptions into rigid categories.
Intuition enriches our understanding by offering a higher perspective, enabling us to transcend fear, anxiety and survival impulses - and begin to navigate life with enhanced confidence, self-trust, and genuine empathy towards ourselves and others.
This broader perspective is not just helpful when making important life decisions; it awakens our acceptance to the interconnectedness of all things in a more nuanced and sophisticated manner.
While emotions like fear, anger, or happiness are often triggered by our nervous system's response to either painful or pleasurable stimuli, we come to find that Intuition is inherently non-reactive!
The feelings evoked by genuine Intuition are characterized by calm, ease, and a profound sense of knowingness. When we awaken our Innate Intuition, we enter into a state of pure awareness - devoid of the energetic charges or triggers that typically govern our physical or emotional responses.
While emotional reactions can provide valuable clues about our immediate psychological and physiological state, Intuition offers a deeper, more stable foundation of understanding and perception. Clarity, gratitude, and awe inspiring connectedness become our more frequently embodied states of being.
The choice to develop our Intuition is the most important choice we can make! It requires a daily commitment and strong intentionality to move our more natural state of awareness to conscious Intuition - and away from programmed instincts or emotional patterns. But nothing will bring you more joy, awareness, calm and empowerment - than prioritizing Intuitive development training.
Working with subtle energy through Clairvoyance, Active Imagination, and Dreamwork are the best ways to start understanding how our Intuition functions; and what it feels like to try and solve a problem or overcome an inner barrier through Intuitive means - and not logical reasoning.
The key is knowing the difference - and choosing Intuition as the best possible means to move life forward in a creative, non-reactive or limited way.