We might sometimes wonder why we chose to be incarnated on Earth during the “interesting times” such as we’re currently in. We do choose our incarnation – when and where, and also the major crossroads and milestones that we will come to along the way. And so why this one and why now?
There is a famous passage in Tolkien’s The Hobbit:
Frodo says: “I wish none of this had happened.”
Gandalf replies: “So do all who live to see such times, but that is not for them to decide. All we have to decide is what to do with the time that is given to us.”
To me, it is all about initiation – the process that catalyses the alchemical growth of our soul. As much as we try to meditate, pray and be kind to others, we cannot spur our own spiritual growth any more than we can pull ourselves up with our bootlaces. This is why we need initiation, which erupts into our reality to put our subconscious shadows under pressure, and then we either sink or swim.
To my way of seeing, the whole of humanity is currently going through such an initiation, with each individual being tested for their intelligence and compassion. But by ‘humanity’, I don’t mean that it’s a collective experience. Initiation is an I-word; it is for the individual, and everyone will experience and respond differently to this initiation according to their strengths and weakness.
Initiation doesn’t take any prisoners; it is as inexorable and as inescapable as a stream of volcanic lava. But at the same time, never think that no-one is listening or that nobody cares what happens to us. All of this is being recorded in the Akashic Records on the astral planes and the data it provides will help each of us, when the time comes, to choose our next incarnation…to choose where will go next to grow our souls.
The Importance of Story
Story is such an integral part of how we learn and how we grow that is almost as important to us as the air we breathe. It is so essential to us, to have a narrative about our lives to follow, that we cannot even get out of bed in the morning without one, and that’s why the major world religions have been so successful.
However, the current initiation we’re going through involves the tearing up of all our storybooks, and so it’s mentally and emotionally traumatic to watch movies set in an Elizabethan London peopled with black characters, with white men presented as weak or evil and Superman now a gay hero.
Make no mistake, this is an extremely harsh psychological trial being presented during this great initiation on Earth. It is a deliberate challenge to our sanity because all of us survive in this strange, dark forest by following the pathways of the story we have been told.
That’s why I believe that the only safe breadcrumb trail out of the forest is to follow not his-story but our-story, our own personal story of our destiny and destination, which we can discover by going through the portal and meeting our spirit guides who hold our-story in their trust.
The Importance of Intuition
Intuition – our inner tuition – is the most powerful arrow in our cognitive quiver, especially when we’re standing at a crossroads in the dark forest and there are no signposts to show us the way to go.
Intuition is our supersonic highway to our inner tutors – the gods if you like, or the spirit guides – and its pure, unfiltered guidance arrives as if from the wing-footed messenger in a mercurial flash that lights up the whole landscape around.
Speaking personally, I cannot think of a time when my intuition has been wrong, and yet it has taken me more than half-a-dozen decades on Earth to learn to listen to it and to trust it.
I believe it has taken me such a long time to develop this trust because we live in a world in which, ever since the woefully-misnamed Age of Enlightenment, we’ve been instructed to only “follow the science” instead of what our inner knowingness tells us. That would be fine and I’m not against science, logic and reason per se. But I’ve come to realise that the work of the most prominent scientists cannot be relied upon. It has been co-opted to serve a certain agenda. They are often paid to start with a required solution that will be commercially-beneficial to a chosen few, and then they back engineer the steps of the method of the experiment to reach that result and conclusion.
So what is intuition or inner tuition? Where does it come from? And who are these inner tutors? Well nobody knows for sure and if a scientist does manage to come up with an answer, my intuition – like Jiminy Cricket – would guide me to be very wary of it! I just know that it works, rather like I know the lights will come on if I click the electric switch, even though I have very little understanding about how electricity works.
Are the inner tutors the gods and angels in the heavens, or the shaman’s spirit guides in the upper and lower worlds? Or does the flash of intuition come as a result of all the data we have collected and stored in our subconscious minds over many lifetimes? Or are we hearing the voices of our ancestors, calling to us from our DNA – the rivers of blood – that we have inherited from them?
It could be any or all of the above. But we all experience it like a flash of wisdom, inspiration or creative expression that comes from either the outer universe or the inner universe – or both. And it brings a kind of knowingness, gnosticism, that is as real as falling in love, which might be why the Jewish myths in the Bible refer to sex as ‘knowing’.
Listening to and being guided by our inner tutors is certainly as easy and natural as having sex. When we’re in the throes with a partner, we don’t feel any need to follow the science. We don’t – or shouldn’t – need a manual to tell us which leg to place where and when. In that way, perhaps intuition could be compared to acquiring wisdom that comes from making love with the whole universe. We just have to learn to let go to it.
By the way, here’s a tip that works for me: I often receive great flashes of intuition when my hands are under running water.
This 18th century painting by Giovanni Battista Tiepolo is of Mercury appearing to Aeneas, telling him that he should leave Carthage.
The featured image in the headline of this article is by Carl Jung and is from his Red Book.
Annie Dieu-Le-Veut 