intuition.

It was a gentle voice, perhaps a little shy, nevertheless it spoke with remarkable clarity and confidence; it was so sure of itself it was up neither for arguing neither for rationalising what it had said. It had just said, it just knew, and it had come through underneath all the thinking of your thinking brain.

And the thing is that when you receive a clear message like that, you cannot unhear it. You can pretend not to have heard it, but something will feel strangely off, a little like lying to yourself. You can act like you don’t care about what it said, but no matter how long it has been, you cannot completely forget the voice and its message. Quite the contrary, sometimes it comes back to you powerfully and throws you off balance.

The worst, though, is when that voice tells you something that goes against what almost all who you know say. Can you believe it, can you trust it, when it seems so opposed to everyone else’s opinions, and you have no idea where it comes from, and you are not sure if the voice is even a part of you? Does the voice know anything about the world? Does it see life as it is? Does it have an agenda? Why does it have to communicate exactly the opposite of all that you’ve been advised? Who to trust?

You’re confused for a while, not just because everyone is telling you one thing and a random voice out of nowhere tells you another; but also because that random voice, somehow, seems to have weight, importance – that it is worth listening to, even though it is not backed up by anyone or anything. It stands on its own, obviously not requiring anyone to agree with it. And at the same time, the voice does not come across as arrogant or forceful; rather it sounds like the friend you’ve always wanted to have.

So you decide to listen to that voice, and follow the guidance in its message. And there will be times when you doubt it and start wondering if the voice was right, if you imagined it, and whether it might not have been a lot easier doing what so many people had said to do. But the voice will come in a flash and say,

“I know what I am doing. Your only job is to trust – can you do that?”