Intuition or Ego?

Our soul is always calling to us. It is that still small voice that we notice when we pay attention to it. As the voice of Spirit, it must be wise, loving, and know us intimately. We call this connection to Spirit our intuition, and when we follow it, our lives thrive, and we strengthen our relationship to that Loving Presence that is God. We are led one step at a time toward the life of our dreams, and we are released from the need to constantly think about how to get ahead, how to reach our goals, and how to make the people around us do what we need them to do for us to achieve those goals.

On the other hand, our ego is always talking to us. It warns us, berates us, cajoles us, entertains us, and generally is trying to keep our consciousness focused on it, and only it. It is that voice that is in our heads that Michael Singer called the Crazy Roommate in one of my favorite books, The Untethered Soul. Society teaches us that this babbling brook is our consciousness, but it is not. It is the mortal aspect of us, while our true consciousness is divine and immortal. Our ego is primarily concerned with keeping us alive because the ego knows that it is mortal and will stop existing when we die.

The question is, how do we tell the difference between our intuition and our ego?

I am assured that it is my ego when I loop back around to the answer I came up with initially, especially when something was telling me that I should not go down that path, as if the Lost in Space robot was yelling, “Danger Will Robinson!” This is one of the primary dangers of ruminating, which we do when we keep thinking about the same thing and can not let it go. This is the process of the ego, where it chews on things and tells us contradicting statements. As a result, we find ourselves in a maze of conflicting thoughts and opinions. We will tell ourselves we don’t know what we want, but we keep finding reasons to go back to that initial way of thinking. Finally, we convince ourselves that we have no way forward but the path we know we should not follow. This is the way of our addictive thought patterns, where we want to do what we know we should not do and ruminate on it until we have convinced ourselves that we have to do it.

Our intuition is nothing like that. First of all, Spirit is infinite in nature, and so Its creations are always new. When we find ourselves going down the path we have taken a million times before, the voice drawing us down that path is our ego, not Spirit. Second, if that voice is giving us a logical way forward that is calling for more than just the next step, then it is not our intuition because my experience with my intuition is that I never truly understand where it is leading me. Last of all, if that voice is critical, mean-spirited, or contradicts my innate goodness, then it must be my ego because my intuition is always kind, loving, and filled with wisdom.

If we want to hear our intuition, we need to be open to hearing it. It will show up, not generally as words, but more like a knowing. I sense it in things happening around me as if life was drawing my attention to something. It is subtle, and there is no mortal logic to it. I see a billboard, and I remember a truth about Spirit. I hear a story on the radio, and there is a whisper that this is true about me also. I see a sign-up sheet and know that I need to be in that class or event. Most importantly, my intuition does not show up in my worry and anxiety, and absolutely not in my ruminating. I need to let my consciousness be free of my ego to hear my intuition.

So if I do not hear my intuition, if my ego is in complete control, if my consciousness is trapped in my body rather than being above me as a watching presence, then I have to do something different to have a different result. I can try meditation, a yoga class, or listen to music, all of which will calm me and open me up to my own divinity, but similar to that adage, “if all else fails – read the instructions,” I would say that “if all else fails – PRAY!” In prayer, we know that we know that we know, and because of that it sparks our intuition. Prayer is powerful. Prayer works! I suggest that we use it to gain clarity on those tough issues in our life by allowing it to open ourselves up to that intuitive knowing, and allow the ego to take a rest.