Intuition vs. projection: How can you know the difference?

A client asked me a really powerful question this week that I felt needed to be explored more thoroughly here with you all. He was sharing about a spiritual experience he had and how he didn’t know if he was making it up, or if he was really receiving a message from the universe.

A bird had flown directly under his car when he was driving. He watched in the rearview mirror that it came out the other side with feathers flying. He had a feeling it was a message, and then thought maybe he shouldn’t be going where he was going, that Spirit didn’t want him to go there, and if he did, something bad would happen. But he decided to keep going, and nothing happened. Hence the question. “How can you tell what’s intuition and what’s made up?”

What is spiritual discernment?

There’s so many nuances to this question, but I want to explore one aspect of this that I feel isn’t talked about enough. And that’s spiritual discernment. With the boom in popularity of psychedelics, spiritual seeking, spiritual “awakening” happening right now, this is a big topic. What I’ve noticed is that oftentimes people are expanding spiritually, but not doing the deeper inner-work to root that expansion down and into the body, into the Earth. When this happens, spiritual distortion becomes common.

When we haven’t excavated the shadow, when we still have unhealed inner children running the show, when we still are operating inside of limiting belief systems that we’re not even aware of, our spiritual experiences can become projections of these unhealed aspects of ourselves. These parts of ourselves will grasp for confirmation about who we are, or how the world is. Or fear will rise up from a shadow part of you that believes you’re innately bad, and this voice will be disguised as “God” telling you not to do something.

Now this isn’t to say that you need to be pristinely and perfectly healed in order to access your intuition. That’s not at all true. Healing is never-ending and there’s no such thing as fully “healed” in my opinion. We’re constantly learning and growing and evolving into more and more of who we are. Read ​my 3-part series on Healing​ to learn more about what I believe.

How to discern where your intuition is coming from

When you know yourself, your emotional and psychological patterns, the way your trauma shows up, the way your body holds themselves, how the systems of oppression have informed what you believe about yourself in the world, you gain clarity. You understand the terrain.

This doesn’t mean you instantly break free from these patterns. It doesn’t mean your trauma disappears, that you never feel certain emotions again, that you’re not still impacted by Patriarchy.

But when you have awareness of yourself, you have discernment. It means that you can catch yourself, see your patterns, and learn to discern whether an insight is coming from an anxious inner child or from Red Cedar. From a story of shame or from Spirit not wanting you to do something. Huge difference.

You learn to feel the subtle, tell-tale signs, the body-cues, that will let you know the difference. You’ll start to be able to discern. And then you’ll start to trust yourself more and more. Which is what we need right now. We need more and more people honing their intuitive capacity and trusting in this non-linear, feminine power that we all have.

Why anchoring into your body is critical for your intuition

This is why anchoring into the Body and Earth is absolutely crucial for the spiritual journey. We have to be willing to go “down and in” as much as we expand outwards.

We have to solidify the root chakra and our connection to this embodied, material plane so we can understand how the spiritual experience lands in our body. We have to understand our relational patterning and how our energy moves through the system from the 2nd chakra, or we’ll have no idea what feels good for us, going along with other people’s desires. We have to have a solid sense of who we are and our inner will from the 3rd chakra before we dissolve into oneness or it can be really psychologically damaging.

The more we harmonize and balance the lower three “material” chakras, the more clear, discerning, and powerful of a spiritual vessel we become.

So if you’re someone who’s awakening more and more to the spiritual side of life, more and more to Earth Magic and plant spirit communion, this piece of the body is crucial.

Start to take steps to meet your felt experience more fully. Check in with how your body feels regularly. Listen to your emotions and let them express. Track your body-response to situations. And honor the incredible spiritual-altar that is your body.

Watch the replay of the Golden Stone Open House to hear me talk about this more.

Passcode: BodyEarthMagic26*

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Reclaiming our power from the forces of distortion is what we do in the Golden Stone Immersion. We excavate the outdated stories, reclaim specific types of power through each of the chakras, and reweave ourselves back into the Oceanic Power of the Earth. 

This re-harmonizes our inner terrain. We deepen our relationship with the Earth body again. And we become more fully ourselves. More fully alive, pulsing with The Magic of Life. 

Learn More about GSI