Obstacles to Accessing Your Intuition, Part Two

This is part two of a two part series about the principle obstacles standing in the way of you accessing your intuition.  Obstacles to Accessing Your Intuition, part one was published one week ago today.  Combined, these two posts should become a part of your investor’s toolkit.  If you are looking for a manual for how to access your intuition as applied to investment results I encourage you to purchase a copy of my book, The Intuitive Investor: A Radical Guide for Manifesting Wealth.

• Anxiety is not the same thing as fear

The emotion most likely to trigger the ego is anxiety.  But anxiety is not the same thing as real fear.  When we experience real fear our lives are literally in jeopardy.  Real fear actually triggers a heightened, meditative state of mind.

Have you ever been driving on a wintry road and suddenly spun out of control?  When this happens many of us experience a state of heightened awareness devoid of emotion where everything seems to move in slow motion.  This is real fear, as opposed to anxiety.  Real fear is a feeling state, a heightened, meditative-type state.  Whereas anxiety is an emotional state.

Anxiety happens when we encounter a situation that is similar to a past situation in which we experienced a threat to our quality of life or health.  Here the egoic mind flies into operation to separate us from what it anticipates will be a painful situation for our feeling selves.

So if in the winter’s driving example above we had a bad car accident, now when we encounter similar conditions, or drive through the same location even in summertime, we experience nervousness, that is anxiety.  Anxiety causes a tightening of the solar plexus, shortness of breath, and most importantly separation from the present moment and from the subtle feeling sensations the unique and current moment provides to our intuition.

For intuition to be more accessible then we need to begin to tell the difference between real fear and anxiety.  So when we experience anxiety then we need to be able to trace the source of our emotions.

Through a method, such as meditation or psychiatry, we can begin to dismantle our reflexive anxious responses to situations.  In turn, that will unlock our ability to access our intuition.

• Being at war with our egos

To better access our intuition we need to not be at war with our egos.  But many spiritual traditions have the elimination of the ego as a goal.

Unfortunately, opposition to anything, such as trying to eliminate the ego, creates separation from that thing.  This is identical to egoic mind.  That is, trying to eliminate our ego simply creates more ego – a vicious and unending circle.

Stated differently, putting effort into destroying our ego is like being at war with ourselves.  Clearly this is unhealthy.

Instead of eliminating the ego, we need:

1.       Consciousness of the purpose of our egos and acceptance of that purpose.

2.       Conscious choice of when to let our egos operate.

This approach creates internal harmony.  Furthermore, it actually helps make a practice that aims to diminish the ego more effective because there is no internal, vicious circle, conflict.

• Archetypal mind

In part intuition works by letting yourself harmonize with something that you want insight about or that you want to understand.  When you do this you receive pure information about the subject.  But to understand fully – that is, to wrap your entire mind around it – you have to translate the signal into something that the left-brain can understand. Typically we translate our experiences into either images or words.

In both the image and word realms there are many archetypes that we are all familiar with and that our left brains use to help our understanding and interpretation of the vast, multi-dimensional world.

Archetypes are like structures for ways of being.  Think: the successful middle-aged man with his Harley Davidson, or the suburban soccer mom.  But archetypes can also be things that are deeply symbolic, like: gold, a labyrinth, a shark, the sun, and so forth.

When we take the raw intuitive, right-brained signal and bring it into left-brained consciousness it is frequently filtered through archetypes.  Unfortunately, archetypes are so generalized that they often obscure as much as they inform intuition.

So if your intuitive insights are frequently couched in archetypes or symbolism this is an indication that your intuition needs some refinement – that is, it is too left brained.

• Confusion between inspiration and imagination

Somewhat similar to archetypal mind, and too much expectation obstacles, the imagination can often stand in the way of really understanding intuitive signals.  Pure intuition has the quality of inspiration about it.  That is, it is charged with a profound sense of knowing and an electricity.

But often we prefer that the outcome conforms to an imagined outcome.  The imagination is where our emotional, often subconscious, longings intersect the right brain’s creativity function.  In other words, interpreting imagination as inspiration is a form of psychological projection.

So if you are looking for intuitive insight about which job offer to accept, there may be a job that your prefer.  This job may more actively captivate your imagination.  However, your intuition may be telling you that another job is the better choice for you.

One of the defining qualities of the imagination is a dream-like quality; whereas intuition has the sense of definitive clarity.  So if you are using your intuition to make a decision, make sure that you are actually tapping the inspiring intuitive source and not just your imagination.

• The wrong environment or being uncomfortable

Earlier I described that the emotion of anxiety is one of the primary obstacles to accessing our intuition more freely.  Clearly then, being in the wrong environment, an environment that causes anxiety in ourselves, is to be avoided.

Thus, if we need to access our intuition we need to be in an environment that is conducive to achieving a meditative state.  Usually this means we need a quiet and relaxing space, insulated from distractions and negative stimuli.

Jason