24 Nov Intuition and Discipline
When working with our intuition, there are two kinds of discipline that come into play. One is the discipline of taking action on our intuitive nudges. The other is the discipline of allowing guidance to unfold, one step at a time, without allowing our mind to come up with a plan!
Intuitive nudges are so gentle and non-compelling that it’s easy to ignore them. So when a thought whispers through our mind out of nowhere, it’s important to act on that impulse as soon as possible. This is the first kind of discipline – to take action readily, without needing life to kick us into gear through dire circumstances. If we cultivate a willingness to take action, even if it takes us out of comfort zone, then we are truly allowing our intuition to change our experience for the better.
The other kind of discipline is especially important for the highly motivated worker bees among us! Intuition only ever gives us the next step of our journey – because it’s the only step that is available to us. When we take that step, the next will be revealed and so forth.
It’s so easy for the mind to jump in, grab that next step, and spin it into a clever plan! The mind so desperately wants to “know” its path, wants to control its future and be sure of the outcome of our actions. It’s tempting to take an intuitive impulse – a nudge to reconnect with a friend, a business idea, a creative urge – and create an elaborate step-by-step action plan. The mind tends to leap ahead of the next step and create logical, reasonable extensions of the original intuitive impulse.
If we turn an intuitive nudge into a plan, we may be very disappointed with the outcome. We may even begin believing that our intuition isn’t to be trusted. In reality, our mind began running the show while our intuition was left by the side of the road.
It takes discipline to remain in a state of “I don’t know” when we take one single step as guided … and then wait for the next step to be revealed.