This message has been coming up a lot lately, not just for me but also for others around me. Trust Yourself – Trust Your Intuition
It sounds like an easy task, especially if you base that trust on results/ experiences.
Unfortunately we have grown up in a world that not only wants the result – they also want you to show each step of how you got that result. I think this is impossible to do when it comes to magical and spiritual results. We can explain theories behind the work, how we think it works, but in the end you are dealing with the unseen aspects of the world – energy – spirit. You will never be able to give the step by step, physically accepted science behind it. Thus, doubt is created within us, even though we personally experienced it and the results of it.
So if we can not explain it terms of scientific proof that our society demands – and that conditioning has been drilled into us our whole lives – it is no wonder so many have issues with trusting themselves, their experiences, their feelings.
I don’t think it helps that even in our magical and spiritual communities we have these unspoken limits or guidelines as to what is real and what is not. How does it compare to other people’s experiences? How does it compare to the books we have available to us? Even judging based on your own experiences, and if it does not resonate with that then it must not be real. Who came up with these unspoken guidelines and assumptions? The bigger question though – is Why do we, as a community, continue these practices that breed doubt?
Yes, I realize some people have some really tall tales that seem unreal. I know that Hollywood has influenced a lot of minds and imaginations. I know that with the rise of social media and this need to be “seen” or popular has also driven some seemingly exaggerated tales. I know some people just lie and have a variety of reasons for doing so. I know all these things, but the reality is, it is not for me to judge another person’s experience. Who is to say they did not really experience these things the way they say they did? We spend so much time judging – and that judgment bleeds into creating more doubt within a person. It doesn’t even have to be direct judgment, just the idea of how others will judge it can do this.
That doubt spreads in the mind. You start to question your own experience. Did it really happen? Did you really see or feel that? Then you start to analyze it from a science perspective. To understand the “how” it worked. Your mind starts talking you out of something you actually experienced.
Even when the results of it working are clear and undeniable – your mind is finding all types of ways to rationalize it away. Even if it is astronomical odds in the science world – you choose those astronomical odds of randomness over the clear proof that what you did worked. You have rationalized away any of the spiritual or magical aspects.
There is so much about the spirit realm, no matter what terms you use for it or how you see that world of energy, that we just can not explain with physical explanations. They are beyond it. I feel we have to get away from the need to know “how it works” and focus more on the results – “that it worked”. This isn’t easy and I struggle with this at times too.
When I do a reading for someone it is not just me and the cards – there is a channeled energy involved. Something that flows through me and that I experience. The cards give me a physical focus and a focus for each aspect of the message, but the message itself is something outside of all of that and spoken to me. They tell me the story, I write it or speak it, and then deliver it. When it is all over I have a moment of wonderment at the process and what it has created – then my brain shifts to the “How does this work?”. The results are clearly there. The people who receive the messages feel it and say it’s 100% spot on. Yet, after all of that passes and I am once again firmly in this world, my mind starts to question the experience. It’s not all the time and has gotten better over the years, but it still creeps up from time to time.
Magical practice is very similar. I’ll use the work with my Ancestors for this one. They will give me a spell. Telling me the aspects of the spell, specific components, and the instructions. Most times I can see the magical foundations behind it, but sometimes I can not. I do the spell because they have never steered me wrong and experience has taught me there is a reason why I am being told to do it. I get very clear results from the spell showing me undeniably, to myself, that it worked – yet I can prove why it worked. There are aspects of spirit in there that I can explain, and I am sure some that I can’t even comprehend. Does it make the result any less? Nope.
At some point there has to become a blending. Where we are being critical of our work to separate fantasy from real experience, but also trusting in ourselves, our own experiences, our own skills and power.
At some point we have to stop creating a place of judgment and create a place of possibilities. Where we know we can not explain it, but it is real none the less.
Trust is not easy. Our world teaches us all the time the trust is a very fragile thing – but what if it isn’t? What if Trust can become just as strong as love, faith, or belief? We don’t try to justify those things away because they are rooted in our own experiences and feelings. Things we can not prove to others in a scientific way, but no less real.
Trust in ourselves. It has been built by our experiences, shown by our results, and it is 100% real to us. It is only when other people get involved, outside things, that doubt starts to creep in. So we are essentially letting an outside force alter our own personal knowledge – and for what? What do we achieve by this? Why are we allowing the opinions of others change our own perspective of our own experience? And yes, this is a choice and what we are allowing to happen.
All of this breeds “impostor syndrome”. Something frequently spoken about within the magical community, and something that seems to be getting worse. I think that is because we are getting more judgmental and it is coming from places we choose to view as “authorities”. Voices that are being held above all others. I’m not going to go into all of that today, as I have talked about it before, but something to note in all of this.
So what if we, as people, were just honest in what we share?
What if we, as a community, were just supportive instead of judging?
What if we, as individuals, just stopped trying to rationalize away our experiences, and just held onto the awe of them?
What if we stopped looking for validation from others and just owned our own experiences as valid?
Trusting yourself is easy – as long as you stop caring what others think.