YOUR INNER VOICE IS TALKING TO YOU
I have just watched, Avengers (Endgame). Great movie at so many levels but one part really got me thinking.
The now amiable Hulk has harmoniously coalesced with Dr Bruce Banner. They meet a Master Sorceress, who is the keeper of something Banner needs - a special stone.
Anyway, he tries to take it away from the bald sorceress and she gives him a swift martial art punch to the chest. So powerful and metaphysical is her blow, the Hulk’s physical form is slumped unconscious on a chair and Bruce Banner is shunted out Hulk’s body and becomes an ethereal entity.
My point? Well, it got me thinking.
In various religious and spiritual texts, it is suggested we possess a higher self. An entity inside, which knows what is best for us: it’s like having a hidden guru. In contemporary parlance, our higher self is reflected in our ‘intuition’ or more commonly expressed as, ‘our little voice’.
Why is it then, that we so often fail to listen to our hidden guru? Well, there are three reasons which tend to steer you away from responding to the whisperings of your higher self. Helpfully, they all start with the letter F.
Fear
Trusting your gut, sometimes needs you to exercise courage and fortitude. After all, it means pursuing a course of action which can cause you to do something unexpected. You might reverse long held plans, decisions and even monumental life choices like careers, relationships, and religious paths.
Recently, my daughter Emma, did this very thing after enrolling in a long-awaited academic course and then just ‘felt’ it wasn’t the right thing to do at that time. No empirical data was needed: merely a feeling it was the correct thing to do.
Fear has a way of raining on our intuition parade. If you learn to trust your higher self, you begin to gain in confidence because, in so doing, fear has no place to steer you away to a poorer choice.
Facts
Nobel prize winner Ronald Coase, once wrote, “If you torture the data long enough, it will confess to anything.” Equally, if you look sufficiently hard, you can find any amount of data to prove your point; and in the world of neuroscience, this is known as Confirmation Bias.
Because the mind seeks harmony, we trust data, facts and established empirical norms to help us take decisions. Consequently, the higher self is often seen as a poor man’s abacus.
I agree, facts are important. However, some of the best hunches, hiring decisions, love matches, and life choices have been based on nothing more than a gentle prod from the inner guru. Facts notwithstanding, if your got gut is telling you something; it is probably best to listen and act upon it.
Fellow man or Fellow woman
The expectation of others can occasionally cause us to shut our intuition down. These expectations span every aspect of life from family to work colleagues - and from society to culture. We can be driven from allowing the higher self to make a choice, by sometimes listening to the well-intended norms and fears of others.
However, the higher self is an independent soul by heart and nature, because it has our best interests at its core. By all means, consider the wisdom of others but to thine own self be true.
So, give your intuition, inner guru and higher self, a well-deserved pat on the back or a high five, according to your cultural persuasion.
Why?
Simply because, he or she, has been quietly looking out for you all your life and he or she, deserves it. After all, all we are required to do is listen and then act.
So, listen to your inner voice – he or she knows what’s best for you. And this is particularly true if you are feeling uneasy, unhappy, nervous or anxious. Trust the higher you, it knows the reason for your heartache, so go find someone who can help the inner you, find a voice.
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