Holding yourself close to your own truth

Recently I've been practising holding myself as close as possible to the fire of my own truth. Whenever I've been triggered by others, or in a challenging situation, rather than doing the usual judge, avoid or distract strategies, I've tried to hold myself as close as possible to the fire of the truth of what's really going on beneath the surface.

My way is to write, to get the words out of my head and heart and onto paper, and from there inevitably as I feel my feelings and acknowledge any frustration, my energy shifts, which then helps me drop beneath the stories into a deeper knowing about what's going on.

What comes then, if I'm patient enough, is a broader perspective of the issue, including others' roles in it, but most specifically my role and where I'm shirking responsibility. Where I'm attempting to project my fears, doubts and judgments onto others without owning I have anything to do with what's playing out. 

It always amazes me the wise guidance that comes out through writing when I am willing to slow down and let the truth reveal itself. I used to avoid going in this close, not sure I wanted to see too far beneath the surface. But I found myself repeating patterns that just weren't serving me or others. And so finally in frustration and boredom with the same old story more than anything, I decided to face my fears and go there. 

Doing this has not only helped me identify and shift some very old patterns, but has strengthened my intuition tenfold. 

We all have this kind of wisdom within us, without exception. We were born intuitive, but societally conditioned out of trusting our instincts and knowing. When we stopped listening to ourselves, we shifted our precious trust and belief to outer sources: parents, teachers, bosses, prime ministers... believing they knew what's best for us. Of course, some of them may have been very helpful at the time (and some less so), but there is no such thing as an all round expert on you that exists in any form outside of you.

My message to find, trust and use the wisdom within you may not have been needed if we had kept in touch with our own knowing whilst remaining discerning about who we placed trust in outside of ourselves. But sadly, most of us completely shut off any connection to our own wisdom in order to fit in, survive and play the game from late childhood onwards. We stopped listening within, which has led to major issues in many women's confidence and ability to:

• connect to their body's sense of a situation,
• listen to and trust themselves,
• value their intuition enough to act on it,
• set firm boundaries in relationships with others - owning their no!
• recognise their own needs and meet them, and
• identify what's true for themselves and express it.

Too many women and girls don't know about the incredible resource they have within their bodies. Most of our mothers and grandmothers didn't know either, and it wasn't their fault. It's also never been included in mainstream education but it remains extremely important to know. 

It's very clear these days that blindly trusting an outer authority whilst denying your inner authority does not make for a wise society. 

Each of us can learn to reconnect to our body's knowing if we are willing to listen. I now see that a big part of listening is being prepared to tell yourself the truth about how you feel, what you believe, what you think and sense. It also means you're willing to see the part you play in situations from a detached observer's perspective. And willing to feel all the feels that arise when you do this. 

It's challenging, because so often we have to take back the projections we placed on others, i.e. where we held someone responsible for doing the wrong thing by us, or blamed/judged them for their actions, and where we preferred not to see the role we played in the situation. This is rife in families, relationships, friendships and even boss / employee relationships.

Telling the truth means owning our part in the dysfunctional situations we find ourselves in. To be clear I don't mean taking responsibility for other people's poor behaviour or situations of harm/abuse, but seeing how you may have contributed to unfolding dramas. By recognising patterns playing out in different situations, our blind spots get mirrored to us, and we can then own them and extract the core learning from them.

There's nothing more challenging and liberating, not to mention intuition strengthening, than telling yourself the truth. Most of the time we live in a bubble of illusions, stories and rules that aren't anywhere near close to what's really unfolding in challenging situations, and within ourselves.

This is the highest form of intuition training in my view. Not tuning into the universe above or doing a vision board. You can absolutely tune into higher guidance, but know this first: within your body is the wisest knowing on you there is, a huge resource for navigating stressful, confusing and challenging times. Your body never lies.

To access this gold, we have to get more practised at bringing our awareness into the whole body, and sensing from that place, rather than living from our heads, ignoring anything beneath.