Everyone has the ability to tune in to their intuition. However it’s easy for the voice of your intuition to be drowned out by the competing voices in your daily life, such as your family and friends, your daily responsibilities and the voice of your ego.
What is the ego?
Psychology defines the ego as the part of the mind that is responsible for analyzing your reality and affirming your sense of personal identity. The ego’s primary function is to ensure your basic survival needs are met: having food to eat, securing shelter and assessing your environment to assure you’re not in danger.
The ego analyzes the future and pushes you to plan for something that hasn’t happened yet. It revisits memories from the past to determine if you could have done something differently in attempt to improve your future.
The ego and its survival instincts were perfect for our caveman ancestors whose everyday life consisted of fight or flight responses. Today we live a much more safe and organized life. However in our modern world, the ego continues to have full control for most people. This often leads to stress, anxiety and depression.
What is intuition?
Your intuition originates from your soul. Your soul is the energetic part of you that is temporarily residing in your body and it’s connected to a higher intelligence. Your soul only knows how to experience love and wants to see you grow and enjoy your life. It sends you messages to assist you on your path and gently guides you toward your greatest good. It can be experienced as a gut feeling, a gentle nudge, a tingling sensation, an inner knowing or an audible voice that you hear speaking.
Through practice, you can recognize the differences between the voice of the ego and the voice of your intuition. Here are five ways to open your awareness to your intuition and expand your intuitive power.
Time of reaction
The voice of your intuition will speak to you immediately after an event has occurred or a question is asked. The ego arrives a few moments later–second guessing your decision, over-analyzing the circumstance and causing you to question the appropriate response.
For example, if you were to ask yourself, “Should I devote more time to my passion project?”, your intuition would respond immediately with a “yes” and a few moments later the ego would come in and list all the reasons why it’s not a good idea.
Tone
The tone of your intuition is gentle and loving. It will always be based on your best intentions and centered around love. The tone of the ego is loud, anxious and overbearing. Using the example above, your intuition would respond with a quiet and gentle loving yes. Your ego would loudly and anxiously start listing the reasons why it’s not a good idea.
Content
Your intuition speaks to you about information that is always encouraging you towards living your best life and experiencing more love. The ego only speaks of information that is judgmental, analytical, and lacking.
Again using the example above, your intuition would respond favorably if your passion project is part of your highest path and will lead you to learn and grow and love yourself more. Your ego would respond in a judgmental manner, listing examples why it’s not reasonable to be devoting your time to a passion project.
Location in the body
Your intuition emanates from your heart center located in the center of the chest, just behind your breast bone. Have you noticed when you are doing something you love or are spending time with someone you love, you experience a warm sensation in your heart center?
This is the same area of the body where the voice of your intuition originates from. The ego originates from your brain, specifically the prefrontal cortex, located just behind the forehead. The prefrontal cortex is responsible for decision making, planning and moderating behavior.
Motivation
Your intuition’s only motivation is for you to thrive and enjoy yourself in this lifetime. It wants you to experience joy and to see the love in all things. It is always gently nudging you towards living your best life and finding what brings you the most happiness and contentment. The ego is your survival instinct on overdrive and its primary motivation is for you to protect yourself from all possible threats, real or imagined.
If you’ve never tuned in to your intuition before, you can start any time. Your intuition has been patiently waiting for you to receive the loving guidance it has been sending you. Why not start listening right now? Ask yourself “what do I need to know for today?” and take a few quiet moments to receive your answer.
