How to Use Your Intuition (The Inner Voice)
Hello there.
Some of us,
we can hear our inner voice speaking loud and clear.
We use it to make decisions.
And we can do it quickly.
For the rest of us,
this really isn't the case.
We can't hear our inner voice.
So we don't know what we want, we don't know what we need,
we don't know what we think, we don't know how we feel.
So for those of us who feel that way,
it's critical for us to learn
how to listen deeply within ourselves
for that inner voice,
so that the whisper of our inner voice
can become a scream.
So how is it that this voice within us became silenced?
It became silenced because other people didn't listen to it.
When we came into this life,
they disregarded our inner voice.
They made us not listen to it but listen to them instead.
So as a result,
this voice got fainter and fainter
and fainter and suppressed more and more,
until we could no longer hear it.
It was replaced by other people's voices.
The inner voice comes to us primarily through sensation,
through emotion and through thought.
It doesn't often come to us audibly
even though it can take that form.
You hear the inner voice a lot.
It's the you that talks to you inside your own head
or inside your own heart or inside your own body.
You just don't realize that this is in fact, your inner voice.
This inner voice is our self, our soul,
what some people call 'our true self',
talking to us about ourselves
and about the world all day every day.
Some people call the inner voice, intuition
because it is an inner knowing,
an inner seeing, an inner believing.
Not listening to the inner voice
leads the body to try to communicate in other ways.
Through things like stomach aches and headaches
and illnesses and even disease.
Not to mention that the universe will magnify the inner voice
through your external reality,
so you can no longer run from your own inner truth.
Which is less than comfortable.
I don't want you to think that the inner voice is always pure.
Because it is in fact distorted.
It is distorted by our shadows,
the things that we're unconscious of.
It's distorted by our beliefs, our experiences.
It is also made up of the aspect of us that is eternal,
that is untouched, that is completely clear.
The aspect of us that we associate with pure intuition.
Our inner voice will reflect
exactly what is real about us at this moment.
Both in a state of purity and a state of impurity.
It will reflect the fact that we are both shadow and light.
So, I'm not really concerned
with you discerning between the two,
because both are real.
Obviously, the more conscious, the more aware,
the more shadow work you do,
your inner voice will become purer and purer and purer
as a more accurate representation of who you really are.
Now, here's something really important:
Most people in the field of wellness and spirituality
are gonna tell you that it's important to ignore
the inner voice that judges, that criticizes,
that's constantly making a commentary and a negative one, usually,
on the external life,
and to only pay attention
to the inner voice that has good things to say.
But I completely disagree.
Because both aspects of your inner voice
represent what is real about you in the current moment.
And if you ignore the inner voice in you
that is constantly making a negative commentary
of everything in your life,
the rest of your inner voice will be suppressed as well,
because it is part of the very same thing.
Whether it's saying something negative or saying something positive,
it is your inner voice that is talking.
When you hear this aspect of your inner voice,
the one that's constantly making a negative commentary,
that's an indication that your inner voice
is trying to pull your attention towards an aspect of you
that desperately needs attention.
Because the quality of your attention,
is pure unfiltered consciousness
which is the thing that heals.
So it's like drawing your attention to a wound.
When you focus on these unhealed or unconscious aspects of yourself
that the inner voice is trying to draw your attention to,
only then,
when you work through those things
and give those things attention,
can the aspect of your inner voice
that operates from a space of complete clarity and empowerment,
actually speak to you.
So I am going to boldly tell you,
that even if you were to do
absolutely no shadow work whatsoever,
it would still be critical
for you to listen to your internal voice,
no matter what it says.
Because it still represents
what's real about you right here and now.
Now, I'm not telling you
to believe that what your inner voice says is true.
I'm just asking you not to disbelieve it either.
I'm asking you instead,
to see whatever the inner voice says
as valid and as important.
Something can be valid even if it isn't necessarily true.
Something can be important even if it isn't necessarily true.
When we are not connected to the inner voice,
we are in a state of unconsciousness.
Effectively we're in self-denial.
Our inner voice could be screaming: "I hate that person.",
but on the surface we might say: "Oh I really like him."
Or our inner voice could be saying: "I wanna be a singer,"
but on the surface we may say:
"I wanna do whatever makes sense to me,
you know, like it's really important for me to just,
you know, be secure I guess in life.
And so I'm gonna go take that job in accounting."
We go against our intuition,
sometimes the disastrous ends.
Our inner self is always communicating with us about its truth.
We need to begin to listen,
otherwise we have nothing real to work with.
For example,
there's nothing that we can actually do shadow work on
if we're not willing to admit that something like that exists.
All of you have experienced this.
When you walk up to somebody when they're triggered,
and they say:
"No I'm fine. I don't know what you're talking about."
Even though they're obviously upset.
Until we listen to the inner voice and say:
"Yeah, you're right, I actually feel upset",
there's nothing we can do about it, we're dead in the water.
So how do we go about listening to the internal voice?
Step #1.
We take all of our attention off of the external world,
and we place it instead, entirely in the internal world.
I want you to imagine that your skin
separates an inner universe from this outer universe.
Pretend they are two separate universes.
You are going to take all of your attention
and place it on the internal universe.
If you need to close your eyes to do this, feel free.
Step #2.
You're going to pay attention to the sensations
that are happening in the internal universe.
You're gonna be completely unconditionally present with them.
You're going to observe them like they're a unique sensory experience.
Step #3.
You're going to make your interaction with this sensation,
much more real and tangible.
Especially for your mind,
so your mind can comprehend it.
For example,
if the sensation that I'm experiencing in my body was a color,
what would it be?
If it was a texture, what would that texture be?
Is it moving or is it still?
If it was a shape, what would it be?
Then take it further.
If this sensation where an image,
what would the image be?
Step #4.
You're going to mentally engage with this image
which is a translation of the sensation taking place
within the internal world,
as if the sensation itself is a separate being or thing
that can talk to you about itself.
Which is really talking to you about you.
Step #5.
You're gonna begin to ask it questions.
Any question you feel like asking,
is a good question to ask.
Ask it questions about itself
and about its perspective about you.
Questions like:
What are you?
What do you represent?
Why are you here right now?
What do you want me to know?
What do you want me to do?
What is the truth that I don't want to admit to and express right now?
If I were to tell the absolute truth in this situation
and weren't afraid to do so, what would the truth be?
Step #6.
You're going to listen to the answers
that come as a result of those questions.
It doesn't matter whether you get the answers audibly
or whether you just get them in terms of a sense of knowing.
Or whether you see the answers.
However those answers come to you,
you're going to engage with,
you're intuitively going to take this process
wherever you feel like it needs to go.
No matter what answers you receive or how you receive them,
this is the inner voice communicating with you.
This is you hearing the inner voice.
Step #7.
Have a conversation with yourself
now that you've asked this aspect of yourself,
this inner voice, these questions.
I don't need to teach you how to have a conversation.
You will intuitively know exactly how to do that.
How to respond to the image that has come to you
that is representing this internal truth.
You will know what to ask as a result of the answers
that you get from the inner voice.
And you can let the process naturally unfold from there.
Talking to yourself internally
is you having a conversation with your inner voice.
There is no right or wrong way to do this.
When you are feeling a strong emotion
such as when you're triggered or feel inspired,
the inner voice is calling for you to listen.
Don't ever think that if you don't know the reason
why you feel the way you do, that there isn't a reason.
But even if the inner voice isn't actively calling for your attention
and calling for you to listen,
it's really important for us to listen anyway.
What we do with our own inner voice,
is the same as we would do with a romantic partner.
If we had a partner,
it doesn't matter whether they were triggered or feeling super super happy,
we wouldn't wait for that circumstance to come up,
we would go check in with them.
We would take time to essentially,
during the day say:
"Hey how are you? How's it going?
How do you feel today? What do you want today?"
If you're not sure what your inner voice is saying,
I want you to be really, really patient with it.
Delay making decisions.
I want you to be able to give it time
to completely fully express itself to you.
So that when you take actions
as a result of listening to your inner voice,
all of you can be in alignment with that movement.
If you try this process
and the inner voice doesn't talk to you
or isn't communicating to you,
you're getting no impressions from your internal world,
I also need you to be patient.
What's happening is that you've suppressed your inner voice
and ignored your inner reality for so long,
that that aspect of you
that's wounded by the fact that you've done that,
is testing you.
It's basically saying:
"Why the hell should I believe that you're gonna do this now?
I don't want to talk to you, you haven't listened to me for so long
what's to say you're not just gonna go back to ignoring me again?"
So if you got this type of inner voice,
it's essential for you to be even more present.
Continue coming back and continue coming back,
no matter how long it takes,
no matter how many times you have to do it,
until it begins to trust you enough to talk to you.
Chances are if this is how your own inner voice is interacting with you,
it doesn't trust you because you have an abusive pattern
with responding to yourself.
So what I want you to do to understand the steps
for how to address your own emotions
is to watch my video titled:
"The Emotional Wake Up Call"
The tonality that I use in that exercise
is the way I want you interacting with your own inner voice.
Practice connecting with your heart.
Your inner voice speaks loudest through your heart.
To understand how to do this,
I want you to watch my YouTube video titled:
"How To Connect With Your Heart"
But what's important to know
is that your inner voice can speak through any aspect of you
your inner voice can speak through your mind,
it can speak through your heart,
it can speak through your fingernails,
it can speak for your pancreas,
it can speak on behalf of any aspect of you.
Why can it do this?
Because your inner voice represents the real you.
With enough practice,
you're not gonna have to shut off your senses
to go find your inner voice.
It's not gonna be a whisper,
it's gonna to be a yell.
So instead of going to find it,
to listen so deeply to it,
it's gonna come up to meet you.
In fact, it's gonna become unavoidable.
As you're engaging with the external world
you will literally, hear your internal voice all the time.
And then, you can be an expression
of that truth and reality within yourself.
It's not gonna be a mystery, what you think
and how you feel and what you want and what you don't want.
That being said,
expression is a really really critical way
to get the inner voice to go from quiet to loud.
It became quiet because we suppressed it.
We essentially sent it the message that, guess what?
"My parents or my caregivers or my school teachers
or my peers are right about me."
"My voice doesn't matter."
That's essentially you saying to yourself:
"You don't matter voice."
So the voice shrinks.
We didn't allow it to express itself.
So, what's the opposite of that suppression?
Expression!
For this reason,
I want you to learn how to express yourself,
and to make an active practice of it.
To understand how to express yourself,
you can watch my YouTube video titled:
"How To Express Your Emotions"
Our inner voice is always talking to us
about the things we experience in our life
and the people that we meet.
In the beginning,
when we are first starting to listen to our inner voice
we need to stop and reflect.
We need to trace back over what was said and what happened,
what we thought about it, how we felt about what we thought.
When we do this the inner voice honors the pathway
by which we arrived at our intuitive reaction
in any given situation.
It makes our intuition much more acute.
It enables us to identify the concrete reasons why,
for example, we hesitated to make a decision,
that on the surface seemed like a good one.
The more often you're able to recognize why
you have the instinctual reactions you do,
the more comfortable you'll be with your intuition.
You'll come to learn that your inner voice can be trusted.
Here's another tip:
I want you to be really really conscious
about surrounding yourself with people in your life
who actually care about your inner voice.
People who are gonna help you to make it louder,
instead of to tell it that it doesn't matter.
Now, most of us
who have an inner voice that doesn't speak,
we're surrounded by people
who make our inner voice not matter.
It's not gonna work very much
for you to be doing all this work on really expressing yourself
and really listening to your voice
with an entire orchestra outside you saying:
"Screw that! What you think and want and don't want doesn't matter."
So, if you're serious about making this inner voice speak,
surround yourself or spend time with, selectively,
the people who are gonna make you aware
of what the inner voice is saying.
I want you to involve people in your spiritual practice.
That means, if you're in the development of the inner voice,
I want you to go to your friends, the ones who you trust,
the ones you know will actively participate in this process, and say:
"Hey guys here's the issue:
I have a real problem when it comes to understanding
what my inner voice is saying to me."
"I can't hear it."
"And when we all as a group decide to do something,
I don't even know if I wanna do that thing or not."
"Sometimes I just feel resistance but I don't know why."
"So what I need your help, friends, to do,
is to feel into when you think that my inner voice
may be saying something that I'm not listening to,
and direct me back towards it so that I can listen to it,
figure out what it's saying
and then enable me to take actions
in accordance with what my inner voice is saying."
Sooner or later if you ignore and suppress your inner voice,
the universe isn't gonna let you do it anymore.
Your life is gonna become quite literally so uncomfortable
that everything will drag you back to it.
Until you can't ignore it anymore.
And then you're gonna have to shift everything.
And it's not a comfortable process.
I'm not gonna make an enemy of that process
if it's the road that you take,
but I'd rather you just start living your life according
to your inner voice from the get-go,
so life doesn't have to become so painful for you.
Live your life according to what is real about you.
Admit to what's real
and listen to your inner voice
and never let your inner voice
be drowned out by the voice of others.
Have a good week.
Subtitles by: David Soh + Bodhi Shin + Tanya Duarte