In episode 14 of Living Tarot, I discuss exactly why it’s so difficult for so many of us to tune into intuition. I truly believe that intuition is like a muscle and the more we use it and learn to tune into it, the stronger it will become.
- I speak about the institutions that keep us from tuning into ourselves and our own intuition and what we can do about it.
- I discuss ways to start to bring an embodied awareness to your intuition when it shows up for you and what that looks like.
- I explain which messages are more likely to come through even if you don’t consider yourself to be intuitive.
- Finally I discuss what steps can get you started in learning more about your intuition and how to access and strengthen our intuition in daily life.
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Transcript:
Sheila M 0:05
Welcome to Living Tarot. I’m your host Sheila Masterson. I’m a tarot reader and teacher, an energy healer and medium, and creator of Practical Tarot for Everyday Intuitives. Each week on this podcast, I’ll share my own experience of embracing and growing intuition and interview guests about how they heard the call of intuition, embraced the adventure and embodied the tarot along the way. Join us and learn how you can stop second guessing, empower yourself through intuition, and live intentionally with the tarot.
Welcome back to living Tarot. Welcome to October, I can’t even believe it. I’ve made it to the second month of this podcast. It has been such a joy to interview so many people to talk about these things that have been bouncing around my head for months for years, really. And I’m super happy to do it. And thank you to all of you who have left us five star reviews and given great feedback and asked questions and given me ideas for future episodes. I’m incredibly grateful for all of your support. And I’m I’m really excited to be doing this. And I have many, many more wonderful episodes, and wonderful guest episodes planned. So I’m very excited. So today, I wanted to get into October with a topic that is very near and dear to my heart, and a little bit witchy in line with this month. I’m kind of bringing the focus in the month of October into intuition. And I really love this topic, it was part of the main theme that I wanted to follow in terms of how I wanted this podcast to be formatted. What I wanted to talk about to people a lot because I do see how there are a lot of misconceptions in the world, about intuition. So in particular, today, we are going to talk about the idea that you can grow your intuition. I get a lot of questions about this in classes that I’ve done random DMS, on Instagram, other places, basically anywhere where I’ve spoken about intuition, I’ve received a flood of questions about Is it this? Is it that how do I know? How can I strengthen it? How can I increase it? And I just born this way, can I I can’t do what you can do. And if you’ve found yourself in that place where you are looking at somebody else, who identifies as intuitive and comparing yourself and thinking that you don’t have a talent, because you don’t see everything in the same way that they do, I’m really gonna encourage you to rethink that idea. Because there are so many different ways that we connect to our intuition. There’s absolutely not a one size fits all approach. That is not my approach at all, what I found from talking to countless friends who are in intuitive fields, and even those who are in business, corporate, entities, finance, all have some sort of connection to intuition. And the way that their intuition works is all a little bit different. And even myself the way that my gifts work is different than most of the other readers that I know. So when we talk about intuition, we’re really talking about that impulse. And I really define intuition. As you know, it is really just a conversation with your higher self. It’s signals that come from within you, that may or may not make logical sense based on the information you’re being presented with. I noticed that in our society, it can in the United States could sometimes be gendered a bit, which I don’t like like a woman’s intuition, which I think is really just fear of men, if I’m being honest. So I did want to talk about this a little bit today because it is not just for women. It’s not just for men. It’s not just for people who identify as binary Any, any gender at all can be intuitive. And I hate the idea of taking it away from one gender or all genders, because it’s just a, “woman’s” thing. That’s definitely not true. And there’s a couple of reasons why I think that has been strengthened over time.
And so it’s not really our fault that we don’t really grow up developing intuition. Most of us, that’s not true for all of us. But for most of us, and that is because in the Western world, you grow up, you go to school, maybe you go to church, and every single thing that you do from the time that you are young, until the time that you are an adult, is learn from outside of yourself. You go to school, and you learn math, and science and reading and literature and politics and all these different things. And then you maybe you go to church, and you learn about religion, and somebody tells you all these things, and this person, seemingly in power, so you’ve always got this teacher, passing their version of the message down to you, and you are taught from a very young age, to seek wisdom outside of yourself. And this is important.
Because we’ve all been indoctrinated in this way to seek this wisdom from outside of ourselves. So nobody is teaching, you know, first graders, third graders, you know, connect with your feelings connect with your body. How do you feel right now? What what are you sensing? What do you see? What do you hear? What do you feel, that isn’t something that is in mainstream curriculum, and only in the past few years with starting to bring in some stress management activities into schools, like yoga and meditation and mindfulness practices, that we’ve really seen any kind of choice to give autonomy back to children and their education, and outside of your political views, and whether you think that that is the right thing or the wrong thing. What it does, when we’re putting all this power into the hands of a teacher, or a priest, or a rabbi, or a Sunday school teacher, is that it disempowers us and it takes away that ability that we all have that we’ve all have the ability to cultivate over time, and it gives it to someone else. And so we need to seek that wisdom from someone else. It can be problematic in other ways as well, especially if for those in communities that are traditionally marginalized, are not seeing something reflective of their own experience, because it’s not taught in mainstream curriculums.
Or there’s, there’s a lot of issues overall. But basically, what it really comes down to is that we are taught that wisdom comes from outside of ourselves. And so it is normal as we grow older, that we’re always looking for logic and reason and, and somebody outside of ourselves to confirm something for us. Because we haven’t been given that sense of empowerment, and agency to understand that we do have intuition. And we do have this voice underneath everything that is telling us what to do and what not to do. And what’s a good idea and what’s not such a good idea. So that said, it really starts with recognition. And if I asked most people, if they thought they were intuitive, they would probably say no, I make bad choices all the time, or Oh no, you should see the last four guys I’ve dated. I’m definitely not intuitive. But I would challenge them and say, how have you ever had the experience, you know, where you’re on a first date with someone and they are perfectly nice and sweet and thoughtful, and have been a perfectly wonderful date. And you just know, you just there’s no logical reason for you to not like them. They’re very attractive. you’re attracted to them. You seem to have chemistry, but you just know that it’s not the right thing. Or perhaps you’ve had the experience of meeting somebody, and feeling creeped out or on edge right away, what we normally pay more attention to and are more likely to notice are the fear, or know signals that we get from our intuition. And it’s very important to notice that because I’ve had so many people in my high priestess workshop where I teach about intuition, who have come come in and said, like, I really don’t feel like I have a connection at all. And when we start talking about this, they say, Oh, my gosh, this is the weirdest thing. I met this guy. He was really nice. Like, he was really charming. And then I just I had this feeling and I didn’t have any reason to feel that way. But he asked me out, and I said, No, and I just, you know, No, thank you. And, and then he ended up attacking one of my friends Later that year, or something like that. And there’s no, there’s no context for you to think that. But you just you could feel it in your body, or you just got that sense, or that gut feeling. So many people describe that that gut feeling. And so it really starts with, where you feel it in your body, and for so many of us because that no, or that scary thing is easier to identify. It’s easier to start there. And to say, okay, where do I feel that when I feel like no, like, what’s, what does that feel like in my body, what sensations are coming up, and this is why I talk so much about the importance of embodiment. Because as human beings and a human body, it is the first experience we have, and it is the one that we will bring most attention to the quickest. And so when we start to identify that feeling, we can also start to identify the opposite, which sometimes can get interfered with I know. I’m going to talk about intuition and anxiety, I think on the next episode or a future episode. And that’s a big one for people they think I can’t hear, I can’t even hear my intuition over my anxiety, my anxiety so bad. And I know exactly what you mean. Because we’ve all experienced it. And I think we’ve all experienced it to the max this year. But it really comes down to being able to start identifying the the know, and then being able to start identifying the guests, and then starting to mitigate some of the other things that come up.
So when we have that fear piece come up, you know, what’s going on in the body then too, because that’s also important. And the more that we can bring these signals into the body and recognize them, the more that we can start to actually have the experience of tuning in once we get that signal and say, Hey, what’s going on? I’m getting this weird signal and I don’t I don’t know what to do. And just pause because sometimes, it’s just in that second that we give ourselves to pause, that we we calm down enough that we can start to feel what’s actually going on, or we can start to hear or see something that we weren’t seeing before.
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So on a personal level, I grew up very intuitive. And I had very strong what we would call Claireaudience, so clear hearing. And I would hear things, which is like, it’s a strange sensation to describe because I’m not physically hearing something, it’s more like it comes into my brain as if I’m hearing something. And so I would hear the way, or like the vibration, I guess that was around people. So I would lay in bed at night and say that I was listening to the air to hear who was going to come upstairs next in my house. And I wasn’t listening for sounds or footprints or smells, or anything like that, I was listening to that vibration that the air made, when they were near, which is what it’s like to recognize an auric field. So, you know, you might have that experience where you walk into, you know, the house that you grew up in, and you can tell that somebody else is there or somebody visiting, maybe you had that experience as a kid. And I would also have the experience of something that happens, I won’t say frequently, but happens quite a bit is that I will have people come up to me and say, like, Oh, I didn’t want to be around you because like, I was upset and like I didn’t, I didn’t want you to read me. And I first of all, I will say, I will never read you. I have really strong boundaries and ethics around reading people who haven’t asked for a reading. But more importantly, most people are genuine. And so when they come up to me, and they say, Hi, Sheila, how are you, it’s so good to see you. They mean it. And so I won’t really notice anything, because there’s no dissonance between how they are feeling truly, and the message that they are sending across to me. So their energy and their words match up with each other, so I won’t notice. But if they come up to me and say, Hi, Sheila, how are you, it’s so good to see you. And their energy is saying I don’t want to see you at all, I think you’re a bitch, then that’s a completely different story. And right away, I would notice that something was off because again, it’s it’s that like negative signal. And so I would pick up on that dissonance between the facade that’s being presented, and the true vibration of of that person’s energy. So I realized that’s like, a lot. And we’re getting a little bit off on a tangent, but I did want to talk about that, because that’s what my experience has been like, and I have a lot of times where I will have that sensation of hearing something or feeling something off of somebody, I don’t see auras, or I don’t usually see things around people in a traditional, you know, visual way. But I do get a sense of that from from hearing and from, from feeling a little bit.
And so your experience might be completely different. For some people, they get like a physical feeling. So they might sit next to somebody who’s having a terrible headache, and start getting a terrible headache, and then walk away and feel fine, you know, or they might, they might smell get it get a smell that like reminds them of something. Or they might just kind of have a sense that something is there that they can’t quite describe just kind of a knowing, which can be the hardest one to trust, at least in my experience, because that’s like really surrendering over to, to your intuition in a very full way. So, like I said, it really starts with that sense of embodiment and bringing it into your body, noticing that gut feeling noticing the “Nos”, and then starting to notice the yes are starting to notice that dissonance that you might pick up on around people.
And also, it is worth mentioning here that one of the best things to do and I’m sure you’re not going to want to hear it because for years I did not want to hear it is meditation is extremely helpful if you are trying to develop intuition. And I don’t just mean sitting quietly by yourself in total silence with a timer. That’s not what I mean. I mean, giving yourself whatever it is that helps You to kind of switch into your brain’s background mode to try to like clear things up. So for some people, it might be qui Gong, or yoga, or even running sometimes, or a lot of people like a walking meditation, just walking in nature, but allowing that time where you’re not distracted. So where you’re not looking at your phone, or you’re not writing down your grocery list, or you’re not shifting around and talking to a friend, where you’re truly silent and listening deeply to what’s coming up, I, I can’t remember where I read it. But in a book earlier this year, and I’m a Sagittarius rising. So I read like three books at a time. So I can’t remember exactly what book it was. But the author said that if prayer is asking for something, meditation is the listening for the answer. And I thought that was so beautiful, because you really do need both, you need to have some sort of intention, it doesn’t need to be a traditional prayer, but some sort of intention that you kind of put out, and you can just sit and listen. Sure, that’s wonderful. But for a lot of people, it can be really helpful to feel like they’re actually starting to get some sort of intuitive feedback, if they do set some sort of intention.
And it doesn’t mean that you will sit down, and suddenly you will get the answer to the universe of all the things that you were trying to figure out. But sometimes these little, you know, these little like lightning bolts of intuition will come in in just a quick little flash, and offer you some insight that you didn’t have before. And it doesn’t have to be, you know, I’m not talking about like 40 minute sessions, or hour long sessions or twice a day or anything like that, it might be the seven minutes that you have before your kids wake up. Or it might be, you know, the 10 minutes before your next conference call, just allowing that stuff to kind of flow through and notice what comes up. And I really do encourage this, especially for people who are feeling like they’re blocked creative people, especially, who maybe are like sitting down to write something or paint something, or sculpt something and just feeling a little stuck. It’s almost like letting all those thoughts run their course. And then sitting and seeing what comes after that is like resetting everything you’re hitting like the reset button on your brain. And when you do that, you can slowly over time, start to hone it and start to recognize when those answers are coming in.
So one of the things that has come up for me is that when I hear that, you know, reply, if you want to call it that, and it often sounds like my own voice. But it there’s a different quality about it. Or it might use words that I don’t typically use or a an intonation or a pattern of speaking, that I don’t normally use. And so I’ll start to notice it because I feel it, you know, first I get that that signal that I need to tune in and listen. And then I listen. And as I’m listening, I wait for that sensation that I feel when something is coming through. And once I feel that I really hone in on what what message is coming through and what information is coming in. But when we come and talk about meditation and intuition, it’s really about patience and waiting, and waiting for that message to come through. Because it’s not going to happen every time. You might sit down over and over and ask about the same thing and not feel like you’re getting a reply for quite a while. It’s not our job to know everything. But when we use this, we start to notice how it can help us outside of that practice as well. Because when you start practicing intuition is like a muscle. And so the more that you practice, the more that you train, the stronger that muscle gets. And very quickly, you will be able to drop into that part of your body where you feel that message coming through where you feel that intuitive impulse and pay attention just for a second, you might be in the middle of your day and just get like a quick little nudge from your from your stomach or from your chest or wherever it is. And just pause for a second and and listen and see what’s coming up. Because it’s in those moments where I’ve had the most profound answers or these kind of insights that were really powerful. really needed and sometimes that I didn’t know that I needed. And it’s also important to mention that your intuition will give you the answers and the insights that you need. But that doesn’t mean that they will be the ones that you want. And so to not consider it a failure, if you’re not getting exactly what you want to start out with, it does take time, but you can hone it, and some of us will have a really strong ability to read character. So maybe you you just know people and you just get it, maybe your intuition is creative. And you can just kind of see the painting, I think they said Michelangelo could just like see the sculpture inside of the stone. And, and, and that requires a great amount of of creativity and intuition to to just kind of step forward and start carving that out. And, and you don’t have to be, you know, the greatest in your field to do that. But it will come up in your life in different ways. Maybe you have a job offer. Or you could stay in your current role. Or maybe there’s like a promotion and a lateral move, and you can’t quite figure out which one is actually better. And you just kind of tune into your gut for a second. And you’re like, I know, if I go work for that other guy, I’m going to be frustrated. So I’m going to take, you know, I’m going to take the lateral move instead of the promotion, because I just know our personalities won’t go. But it helps you to get out of just doing things, because the world expects you to or because you have to be logical. I know and you truly can grow it over time. There are so many amazing ways to start to do this. I’ve just given you a few today. But there are, I mean, countless countless ways to get in touch with your intuition. And it can be an extremely powerful force in your life. In whatever you do. You don’t have to be a spiritual or witchy person to get a huge benefit out of tuning into your intuition. Because it will also keep you safe. It will keep you living the most authentic version of your life, instead of doing things to please other people. It gives you a great sense of understanding of yourself, and what motivates you.
So I hope that this helped you a little bit today, get some ideas about how to start to grow your intuition. I will be working on something over the next couple months. I’m not sure exactly when it will be coming out. But I am in the process of creating something around intuition, because I do get a lot of questions and a lot of requests about it. And I do work with people one on one on intuition development. So if you are interested, you can reach out to me personally. And yeah, I I’m excited to continue to share some of these episodes with you to break up some of the fact and fiction about intuition that’s out there. And I would love your feedback. You know, if there’s anything that you would like me to cover that I haven’t covered yet, if there are any, if there’s anything you would hope I would cover in the future or talk about a little bit more. Or if you heard something on this episode that you wish that I would talk about in depth, please don’t hesitate to reach out to me and let me know. I am interested in whatever you are interested in. And this podcast, as much as it is a joy for me is really to help you feel more connected and less alone in your own intuitive journey. So that’s all I have for you this week. I will see you back here next week.
Thank you so much for listening to Living Tarot. If you loved today’s episode, please leave us a review and subscribe so that you never miss an episode. This helps us reach even more budding intuitives. Feel free to share on Instagram and tag me @StarSageSpirit and let me know what you learned what surprised you and what you’d like to hear even more of. As always, if you want to hear more about my courses, or book a reading with me, or for full episode show notes, you can head over to starsagespirit.com