I just finished re-reading the 25th anniversary copy of "Living in the Light" by Shakti Gawain. Years before Louise Hay taught us the power of our thoughts, Gawain was already a pioneer in the field of personal development and conscious living. One of the chapters that I always find myself drawn back to is the one on the subject of intuition.
Each of us has a knowingness that lives deep inside us. We call it intuition. It is a place that we can access when we need inner guidance. Gawain believes that our intuition is how we contact the higher power of the Universe in order to tap into its wisdom. The better we get at learning how to tap into, and follow, this inner wisdom, the more we find out that most of our problems are actually caused by not following what we know to be true.
I was giving this idea some thought the other day when we had what I call a" hint of spring" kind of day. The air was warm, the breeze was refreshing instead of bitter, and the birds were singing their hearts out. My usual practice on days like this is to check out the little tree that stands on the neighbors' front lawn to see if there is even a hint of a bud poking it's head out of the bare branches. One part of me longs to see the buds appear, and the other worries that, as it is still only mid-February, if they come out now, they will most likely not survive the cold and snow that March always brings to these parts as its last hoorah before surrendering to the next season. I began to wonder: "How does the tree know when it's safe to start blooming? How does it know the difference between a "hint of spring" and the real thing? Could it possibly be that nature, too, has intuition?"
Well, of course, nature has access to intuition, too. We are, after all, a part of nature, a fact we tend to forget. If I remember correctly, nature came first when the world was created. We came a long, long time after the trees, the mountains, the rivers, etc. If nature didn't have intuition, how would it know to bloom in the spring and summer, let go of what it no longer needs in the autumn, and rest in the winter? I don't think the tree came up with this all on it's own. So it stands to reason that if all of nature has been tapping into its intuition to grow and thrive since the beginning of time, and doing a mighty fine job of it, I might add, how come we humans have such a hard time believing in ours?
In the course of human evolution we somehow let our rational mind take over. We were taught that our "inner knowing" is something we need to keep a tight rein on, and we constructed authoritative rules about behavior that dictated what was appropriate and what wasn't. When we lost our connection to our intuition, we lost our connection to the wisdom of the world. Lucky for us, nature didn't suffer the same fate. She kept her connection open and clear - why fix what isn't broken? If nature has been able to survive for a few billion years, she must be doing something right. Maybe we should pay less attention to what the "experts" tell us, and more attention to what our intuition tells us. If it works for Mother Nature, who are we to disagree?
Shortly after our "hint of spring" day last week, the overnight temperatures dropped sharply and there was snow on the ground by morning. This week they are predicting temps into the 60's ... followed by an icy mix by the weekend. I'm pretty sure that at this stage, nature may be the only one who really knows what's going on. I'm betting her intuition will once again prove to be more accurate than ours, so I'm not putting those boots away any time soon!
And so it is.
