Invisible Acts Of Power

There is a deep-seated misconception that being intuitive is a gift. It’s not. There is no such thing as a gift for intuition. I have finally realized that courage is the true gift, and intuition is sharpened as a result. Either you develop the ability to respond physically to what you are hearing, feeling, and sensing on the inside—or you don’t. Responding to others takes guts. What determines whether or not you have those guts is self-esteem. It is a strong sense of self. It is a willingness and ability to take charge of yourself.

You don’t need a lot of self-esteem. A little bit goes a long way; suddenly you are generous enough to give up the need to control other people. You don’t need to become 100% empowered. A 51% to 49% ratio will do the trick. Just get to the point where you’re conscious enough to hold yourself accountable for your own feelings. Just admit that you’re jealous, or embarrassed, or that you could betray a friend. Just get a little bit honest with your shadow. The moment you arrive there, you can really start dealing with your life.

You can’t live your life if all you focus on is how other people’s shadows have hurt you, you poor thing. You’ve got to get to the point where you look at the weapon that you’ve hidden in your own dark space. When you get to that point you can start looking at the healing of your self-esteem. As soon as that self-esteem is in place in a little bit of a way, you don’t pretend you don’t see that homeless person. You acknowledge that, “I see that person and I’m choosing to ignore that person.” You don’t turn away and engage in conversation with a friend, in order to convince the friend that you didn’t see the homeless person. You don’t worry that if you didn’t do this, your friend might think you’re a terrible person because you’re walking by; you’re hoping that they think, “She didn’t see the homeless person because she’s talking to me.” At the same time you’re hoping the homeless person doesn’t say anything to the two of you, and become impossible to ignore, because you don’t want to part with a dollar. That’s a lot of psychic drama, all because you don’t want to admit that, intuitively, you feel the energy of that homeless person; you go to all this trouble to avoid taking action on your intuitive hit. You’ve just received an intuitive hit, and not acted on it. That’s low self-esteem. If your intuition gave you the perfect instructions for your own physical healing, are you then going to say, “I can’t do it. What will the neighbors think?”

You might be worried about the state of the world, at the twenty thousand children dying each day in poor countries. Yet think of the problems of our own culture: People lying twenty thousand times a month. Which is the greater tragedy? In our culture, our poverty of spirit is horrible. Most of us are far more focused on managing other people’s dishonesty than in developing our own wisdom.

In 1975 I attended my very first lecture on consciousness. I was in my early twenties, and it was the first time I’d seen someone from the East. The teacher said, “The best gift you can give anyone in this life is to become a fully congruent human being.” The first thought I had in response was, “In a world that’s starving, what kind of self-centered, selfish idea is that?’ But today, I can’t imagine a more compassionate thing. The finest force you can be is a fully congruent soul.

When you have healthy self-esteem, you stop worrying what anyone else will say or think about what you’re doing. You glide with life, going where you’re called. Your intuition leads you effortlessly into acts of service. You channel grace. Even just closing your eyes and thinking about a problem, you channel grace.