Anxious or calm?
How to discern ego from intuition.
A few years back during a very revelatory psychological/emotional/spiritual process, I uncovered the answer to a question that had been gnawing away at me for years.
The question was, "How can I tell what is intuition and what is just paranoia/fear/ego/whatever?" The context of this question came up throughout my life and I truly didn't have a good answer. I'd read quite a bit, taken spiritual and life-improvement workshops as well as earned a master's degree in spiritual psychology, during which this question and answer came more completely into focus.
You see, there's this psycho-spiritual technique called gestalt developed primarily by Fritz Pearls. Look it up if you're curious. During a gestalt process, one usually gives a voice to the aspect of themselves, person, thing, or issue that is creating dis-ease or presenting an unresolved issue. Truth be told, I don't even remember the presenting issue that caused me to gestalt that day (it was summer 2007), but I do recall with vivid clarity the ensuing gestalt session.
I basically had a conversation with my higher self. Which I can only describe as the aspect of myself that doesn't perceive separateness, otherness, nor does it judge anything as right or wrong, good or bad, and they (since it came out as "we" during the session, and spirit guides seems to be the best description) seem to have a sense of calm, knowing and joviality to such an immense degree that you'd think they were ethereal, high on endorphins or drugs or all of the above.
The questions and answer I remember most clearly are the following two that I'll transcribe. Now before I reveal, I'll give you this very gentle disclaimer. Believe or don't believe. Take or leave whatever you read here. Whether you believe or not is of little concern to me (and of even less concern to my spirit guides). I have a tendency to sometimes roll my eyes when people start using language like spirit guides, but for some reason, that's what they identified as. Also, whenever I'm reading about someone's experience that is unquantifiable or unverifiable, I tend to assess the information based on whether or not it makes sense or feels right for me. I suggest you do the same here.
Me: "But now that I've discovered you, does this mean I have to get rid of all my worldly possessions and go on a spiritual sojourn or something?"______
Spirit Guides (SG): (the tone here was very funny. like this question was very amusing) "We would never tell you that you have to do anything. Any time you get a message that you have to do something that's just ego masquerading as spirit."
Me: "But what if I'm making this up? What if you're not real or you're a figment of my imagination. Am I crazy? Do I have to believe now that I've communicated with you?" (When I asked this question I truly thought the response would be, "how could you question. you've found us. We're real! Can't you tell?!? Instead it was...)
SG: (again their tone was very light, playful and funny) "It doesn't matter whether you believe or not. We're here. We're not going anywhere."
From this experience, I realized the simplest way to discern whether a message we're getting from within (which usually come through our thoughts but sometimes translate as visceral sensations) is truly intuition or ego/fear/reactive-mind. If the message feels calm it's intuition. If it feels anxious, it's ego/fear-based. There's some other author/spiritual guru who uses the question, "Is this coming from a place of fear or love," and while I've found that works too, sometimes we tend to delude ourselves about love because it is so undefinable. Also, I think love is one of the most abused words out there. So many abusive people out there are depicted saying "I'm doing this (abuse/punishment/etc) because I love you," that it has irrevocably tainted that word for a lot of people. I feel as though calm versus anxious is more clear and undeniable.
Share. Let me know in your life how you experience this type of thing. Let me know if this works for you.
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