5 Common Blocks to Intuition
The logical mind is vastly overrated. Sure, it’s necessary to help us plan, schedule, choose and decipher. The logical mind is linear, rational and based on cause and effect. While it is indeed vital for living a productive and valuable life, for answering those deeper questions like love, creativity, purpose, destiny and passion, the logical mind is pretty worthless. To answer those questions we must engage another part of our mind; one that taps into a more subtle, yet just as powerful kind of knowing. We must awaken the intuitive mind. Each of us has been gifted this divine intelligence, this innate wisdom and this inner guidance system. To live a full, engaged, purposeful and divinely inspired life, we must find balance between the two minds, both logic and intuitive, and between form and flow; yet, most of us are out of balance.
Why is that?
Both personally and professionally, I dwell in the deep questions; therefore, much of my work involves the topic of intuition. If you feel stuck, bored or disenchanted with your life; if you have a burning fire within you cannot yet name; if you feel idle, perplexed or confused about which step to take, then you are very likely out of balance with your intuitive mind. The first step to rekindling the force within you is to identify the common blocks keeping you from freely accessing it.
5 Common Blocks to Intuition
Conditioning - We reside in a left-brain dominated, rational culture that relies heavily on logic or reason rather than intuition. We are taught to think in terms of “shoulds” rather than what feels “right”. This connects us to our head rather than our heart; teaching us to habitually access logic first, invalidating our intuitive sense with rationality.
Feelings - As a culture we are not very emotionally intelligent. Feelings are not embraced for the wisdom they hold. Instead, they are often categorized as “acceptable” or not; teaching us to edit ourselves accordingly. They are often shamed, ridiculed, feared or ignored. Intuition is a feeling sense, and without a clear channel to experience and feel our feelings we cannot be clear channels of our intuition.
Trauma - Past trauma or pain can be a serious block to intuition in many ways. By definition, trauma is unable to be dealt with at the time of occurrence, as it is too big and/or we do not have the coping skills or support to fully integrate the experience. Thus, there is a necessary numbing strategy that often occurs with trauma. As mentioned above, when we turn down our feelings we turn down our intuition, and we turn down the volume of our own lives. Additionally, trauma often creates a deep mistrust in ourselves, the world and our own resiliency. Trusting in something we cannot control or quantify, like intuition, might not feel safe, and a flawed sense of identity can make us feel unworthy of the message.
Do you own your intuition? I first recognized this block in myself and over the years have observed this in many of my coaching clients. What I witnessed is many people are highly intuitive, just not for themselves. If you grew up in a dysfunctional system where you learned to constantly track the emotional states and experiences of other people as a coping strategy, you likely still have that habit. Thus, you may feel blocked in accessing your own personal intuition but find yourself constantly intuitively focused on others.
Fear-Intuition is the language of the soul. Thus, it often asks us to grow, risk, claim authenticity and challenge the status quo. Engaging our intuition means we walk to the edge of our comfort zone and dance a bit with the fear that wants to keep us there. Really learning to work with fear is imperative to claiming intuition.
Intuition is a natural sense of all human beings. It is not special or extraordinary. Yet, just as the clouds cover the sun, we often have blocks to it and we find ourselves out of balance. We can, however, remove the blocks, clear away the clouds, find clarity, inspiration, purpose and passion, and we can radiate our whole and very best selves.
