Intuition: The Sacred Gift and the Hidden Trap

Keen intuition is a sacred and deeply personal gift that can help us feel truth in the body, rather than merely intellectualising it. Sometimes the most profound, uncompromising insights can drop into our awareness without even making sense initially. Despite the data, evidence and deafeningly loud voices refuting them, we feel that something isn’t quite right — that not all is as it seems.

Yet, we often bow to consensus and silence that inner instrument because it feels safer in the moment. Life may have to teach us the hard way about what happens when we completely surrender our discernment to another.

Trust is beautiful; misplaced or overextended trust can be dangerous.

On the other hand, intuition itself has many grades and subtleties. It’s a faculty that we develop through our own inner work, meditation and heart opening. It’s best approached with the self-awareness that even highly refined intuitions can be coloured by personal opinions and the conditioning of our culture and era.

Intuition is rewarding when it’s used in service, first and foremost for our own growth, and then perhaps for the benefit of guiding others who seek it. But it’s when intuition turns outwards that we must become extra careful and acutely aware of our own motivations before stepping into someone else’s story.

This isn’t about charging money for honest work either; there’s a widely prevailing concept that money and spirituality cannot mix under any circumstances, and that the vehicle of enterprise pollutes the pristine river. This is a valuable discussion for another time, but for now suffice it to say that the topic deserves more nuance than it’s usually given.

When employing one’s intuitive gifts to help others, there’s a hidden risk of well-intentioned service becoming eclipsed by the ego’s subterfuge. The heart just wants to serve, but the ego may be hungry for more — and it will devise the most intricate tactics to achieve its goal.

If we are to approach others with our intuition, self-honesty and restraint matter. We might not speak to a most trusted, close family member the same way that we speak to a friend, acquaintance or a wider audience. The nature of the relationship does impact the degree to which we can share freely.

Kindness and care in delivery also matter. There are very fine lines between guidance and control, between suggestions and demands, between empowering and overpowering. Only the one wielding the sword knows whether they’re using it purely to cut away ignorance or weaponising it to cut others down.

Unfortunately, the ego has no trouble convincing us that we know best for someone else, never checking itself before lines get crossed. We might recognise this pattern in some of the most charismatic leaders who have an inexplicable ability to bend wills — maybe for the greater good, maybe to serve their own desires, or a mix of both.

Having said that, this isn’t an invitation to unfairly cast doubt on all sources of intuitive guidance. It’s just a reflection on how potent the gift of intuition can be, its real purpose in our journey, and how it can be used or misused. Pure intuition arrives without any self-serving agenda or desire, but even slightly lesser intuition can be remarkably effective, though the ego may need to be kept in check regularly.

The truth is it’s very hard to cleanly discern the inner workings of anyone else’s mind as long as we are involved and entrenched in our own stories. After all, the most profound intuitive wisdom tends not to reveal itself in the midst of emotional or mental turbulence.

It patiently waits for the calm after the storm, before reaching out to tap us gently on the shoulder. Whether we pay attention or ignore it, that’s our own choice.

Kiruthika Rajeswaran