The tools to discover your purpose and path are inside you. In part 3 of our Find Your Purpose Masterclass with Sheila V, you’ll learn how to tap into your own insight and intuition to create the life you really want and deserve.
Not so long ago when a woman actively followed her intuition she was rounded up and burned at the stake. It sort of makes sense that we’re scared of that little voice inside our heart. But here’s the uncomfortable truth that I’ve discovered: no matter how hard we try to ignore it, that seemingly tiny little voice, is the voice of our soul. Our truth. That voice is here to stay and it will become louder. That voice longs to be heard. In fact, she wants to roar.
Catch up with Part 2: How dark nights lead to new dawns
The wisdom of women throughout the ages
In 1252, Pope Innocent IV (oh, the irony) was terrified of women and their innate ability to heal, birth, nurture, know, see things and ultimately lead. For the next five and a half centuries, millions of women were persecuted because of their instinctive and truthful voices. Women were lined up and led off. The authorities came for the healers first. Then the women who walked with conviction, independence and knowledge. Still too feminine, too wise. Lastly, the older women with the real wisdom. They were natural seers, the real leaders, comfortable in their own skin, not scared of power and especially not their own. They were in authority and feared the most. They were our great grandmothers, great-great grandmothers and beyond. We do not know many of their stories as their stories were burned with their bodies.
Women’s lives are noisy
Understanding intuition has now become my passion. Before I took the first steps towards properly listening to myself and becoming the woman I wanted to be, I had no way of turning off the noise. Women’s lives are noisy – the cries of our little loved ones, the emails from our bosses, the streams of visual messaging on social media. This noise creates a gap. This gap between the rational advice we are given and what our intuition is telling us is called the Intuitive Gap.
Just acknowledging the gap between rationality and intuition can be quite shocking. The rational information may come from safe and predictable sources. Your friends tell you to stay, but you know it is time to leave. Or your boss promises something better around the corner, but you know it is time to move on. When we finally make a decision based on our rational mind, we are still left second guessing. This is not what true intuition feels like.
I now realise that not listening to our intuition is the greatest war we can wage on ourselves. Arianna Huffington describes in her book, Thrive, the revolutions that have marked the feminine uprising. The first revolution led by the suffragettes in the 1880s fought for basic equality. The second revolution led by Gloria Steinem and Betty Friedan in the 1970s expanded the roles of women in society. And the revolution we are in now is one that deals with our own individual courage honouring our intuition and our life path.
There are two ways we learn about our intuition. The first is by listening. The second is by not listening and paying a price.
Intuition is a female superpower. It took me a long time to realise this. There are two ways we learn about our intuition. The first is by listening. The second is by not listening and paying a price. Both ways teach you. How often do we learn something doing it the hard way?
When I realised I had to rely on my intuition I experienced a feeling of panic. Could I really rely on myself and not on others? Did I really hold the answers that I needed? I was fearful but was also buoyed by a reliance on myself. This was the healthy attachment that I was yearning for, not the reliance on everyone around me every time a crisis hit.
Intuition is most commonly received as a gut feeling. And intuition always has a physical intensity associated with the feeling. If it’s the right choice, you might feel as though a weight has been lifted or you may feel a force of certainty in your belly. Knowing the difference between emotional anxiety and your intuition is a learned skill. It takes time and effort to understand the subtle language of the heart and gut. Like a muscle, your intuition will become stronger the more it is honoured and valued.
The journey to connecting fully with your intuition will not be painless. I have a theory, unproved and untested. My theory is that the closer we get to the depth of extreme emotional pain, the closer we are to our primal nature. This primal nature is the home of our intuition. In this primal state we become super-sensitive and receptive. Sensitivity and receptivity are two key elements in accessing your intuition. Extreme emotional pain is accessed when we reach what I call the “Sacrificial Limit Point”. All women have this point, even the extreme martyrs amongst us. When we reach this point, our intuition says: “Enough is enough, you deserve more, what about you and what you want?”
How heartbreak can help you find your path
Heartbreak finally opened me up to my intuition. When the relationship ended, I cried every day in my lunch break for weeks. I sat in my car and sobbed. I sipped on my coffee and cried till there were no more tears left. Not a single person knew of the hardships I was experiencing. Have you been in this position? Where you have become lost because you’ve given your heart completely over to someone? Where do they end and you begin? I now know that this type of love is a choice and an action and it is irresponsible to our mental wellbeing. Eventually, I let my intuition guide me and I was free of the pain. The doomed relationship wasn’t the answer, I was the answer.
How to find self-confidence and courage
Now that I am a spiritual teacher, I teach my students to have the self-confidence and self-belief that the intuitive information that they are receiving is the truth. To increase our intuitive powers, we must increase our self-worth. Why? Because we must believe that we hold the truth and that it does not reside outside of ourselves, that we don’t need to get it from our parents, our friends, our boss, our partner. The oracle that guides us is already within us.
We need to develop the courage to become self-reliant. Once you start to believe in your intuition, you will be firmly on your journey to being your authentic self. There will be no turning back to person who always had to ask everyone else what they thought.
