Rediscovering myself, you can do this too.
When I was a child, I could tell what someone meant, not through how they behaved or what they said, but how their energy read. My parents and other family didn’t like my insights, or my honesty. Perhaps they found me threatening. Being punished hard for ‘being rude’ was not much fun after all. I was gaslighted and ridiculed about this repeatedly so I closed it all down for my own self-protection. Or so I thought!
In 2008 I had a massive breakdown that took me out completely, hollowed me out, and gradually allowed me to piece myself back together without the trauma of early childhood. In many ways I am now exactly who I was when my second husband met me, but without the stranglehold of unrecognised trauma. It was a tough journey. I am so glad to have taken it though. It taught me a lot about compassion, about struggling with life and about trauma and mental health. My natural kindness is now far better informed too.
Recently I met up with someone within an organisation that meant a lot to me. I’d initially been drawn to but then realised their energy was not a good one so I’d distanced myself. I’d had a horrific experience of rejection a few years earlier by this organisation, based on a story this person had told them about me and how I supposedly had behaved towards them. The details are unimportant to the point of this account.
Never underestimate your own intuitive nature. Never close your true self down. It if feels wrong it almost certainly is wrong, for you — maybe not for someone else, but for you. If you feel better to keep your distance then do so.
I didn’t know any details — who had given this account of me or why I had been rejected, and no one would tell me, so I felt unsafe to go anywhere near this organisation for some years, though I kept in touch with them in other ways, with the few people I did feel safe with. None of them were allowed to explain to me what had been done and why though, just that I was not deemed acceptable. I asked for a chance to talk it through and it was denied to me by those involved. I didn’t know what I had done, to whom or anything. It totally re-traumatised me and took me back down into some very very dark places.
I ran into this person without knowing it was them and when they asked me for a hug to heal the relationship I felt a strong voice inside saying yes do this, even though I did not feel this towards this person. The hug told me everything. It told me it was them who had lied about me, that it was a lie and had vindictive intent, a punishment for having distanced myself from them. It also utterly liberated me from that residual trauma. It was one of the most healing hugs I have ever experienced, but not in ways that were intended once more by this person. They had no intention of telling me the truth. They wanted to emotionally blackmail me into reconnecting with them. It was a power game by them, their power being they knew what I could not know, or so they thought.
I was not and am not playing that game. I wrote and told them I knew the truth, the real story, and that I had and do have great compassion for them and where they are on their journey. They wrote a reply which then got deleted without me reading it. That is fine. Nothing since. If I run into this person I shall be kind and compassionate, because that is who I am, but keep my distance.
Why am I telling you this?
To please beg each of you reading this — never to doubt your intuitive feelings again. Mindfulness allowed me to reconnect with my deeper self through the breakdown. Mindfulness taught me the power of one’s own truth above all the gaslighting and false truths out there. Other people, society, education systems — so many influences that take a child’s intuitive nature away from them, but in doing so the child is disempowered. This might suit those in power of course, and is the basis for their attitude towards intuitive things, using derision and scorn to dismiss it.
Intuition is not witchcraft, neither is it imaginary, or woowoo nonsense. I have been told that for so much of my life and allowed it to influence me. But no more.
Intuition is a given human gift, stronger in some more than others but available to us all. To access it we must be honest with ourselves, face our own dark sides and learn to listen past our minds, allow our bodies to guide us as mine did in this instant. The hug that told me the story was not a hug I wanted but my body told me ‘ you must do this’. I did. It liberated me from the re-traumatising influences of the original lie, and all subsequent lies I have been told by individuals and society as a whole. I have compassion for them all. They have some very tough self-facing to do, but if they also take that journey they can only be liberated by it too. I would love for them to find the same inner peace I have found. This would make the world a better place.
Living intuitively, Trusting your Intuition, as my now out-of-print and out-of-date book was called, always was more on the periphery of my life than I wanted it to be, but now I place it fully central once more. It saved my life.
Mindfulness is not just about being peaceful and focussed in your mind, it is about digging deeply into yourself to find out who you really are. It is about removing the layers that build up over a life-time and saying you are not part of me. Sometimes it means losing the people who put the layers there too and that can be painful, but less painful that living inauthentically. It is a profound philosophy and psychology too. If you stick with only the first layer, you are effectively using it as a spiritual bypass to avoid facing your own deeper trauma and finding the true Buddha within. I have met many who do sit and exhibit perfect external meditation and equanimity. But until you can find that inside too, it is always going to be a sham. What Thich Nhat Hanh talks about in the diamond sutra as the form, not the thing itself, not from the deepest heart of you.
When it fell into place for me, my world suddenly felt quite complete in ways I had never been able to access before. I am grateful for that journey and for understanding that distinction.
I hope this story makes sense to you. Trust your intuition. Find your deepest truths. Do not be disallowed by those who would close you down.