Trusting your intuition

The fangs of Covid have changed us all in some way – either mentally, emotionally, physically or spiritually. And my sanity continues to be tortured by the thunderous cacophony of facts, false facts, out of context news, psychological trickery, rumour and propaganda. All which posture and masquerade as the truth. The noise has almost destroyed me. At times I come dangerously close to abandoning two areas in my life that serve me so well and have done so for 66 years – my immune system and my intuition.

I am not, in any way, a gambler with my health. My health and the health of those I love is important to me. I am also NOT an anti-vaxxer, nor am I, as a rule, vaccine hesitant. Still, I am hesitant about the Covid-19 Pfizer vaccine for my body, so I remain unvaccinated. I have no wish to be the one who experiences the supposedly rare and irreversible vaccine side effects. And no one can reassure me this will not happen. But what I do know with certainty is this; I know without knowing, this course of treatment is not suitable for my body. Just as I know, without knowing, there is something about the Covid-19 global pandemic story that simply does not make sense. And today, I want to focus on this ‘knowing’.

How often do you trust your intuitive self when making decisions about your life? Have you ever had a hunch, or a niggle, about someone you met and then found out your feeling was right? When you watch events or situations play out, do you think, ‘Somethings off here’ or ‘I have a bad feeling about this,’ or ‘I knew that would happen.’ These feelings are your intuition or gut instinct at work. And they are trying to tell you something – the truth!

Do you remember pre-lockdown, late 2019? Our TV screens and newspapers paraded images of army trucks transporting piled-up coffins out of the Italian town of Bergamo, ambulances with sirens blaring across Europe, and the white covid hazmat suited personnel of Wuhan? I remember watching this with my family and saying, “I don’t know what it is, but there’s something about this that just does not make sense. I don’t trust this story.” Here we are, three years later, and I still feel the same – even more so.

Emily DeSanctis says gut instinct or intuition arises instantly as a feeling within your body that only you experience.

‘Because the feeling is so personal, no one else can weigh in to tell you if you’re in touch with your gut instinct or not. You alone must make the call. Because of this, trusting your intuition is the ultimate act of trusting yourself.’

And that’s my dilemma. I never quite know whether to use the term ‘fortunately’ or ‘unfortunately’, but the yearning, or longing for truth and wisdom, seems to be the road I travel. For most of my adult years, I have been exploring what it means to self-trust. Since trusting my intuition is the same as trusting myself, do I now abandon the wisdom and insights learned during my lifetime? Do I go against my better judgement and allow myself to be appeased and talked into something that just does not feel right for me? To be honest, it would be easier to do so. The obnoxious jibber-jabber is loud. The unvaccinated, or those without a vaccine pass, have become the modern-day leper. The hate and vitriol are real and the psychological trickery and gas-lighting, used by those elected to care for us, is an insidious form of abuse.

My husband tells the story of when he raced home from school to proudly tell his Mum and Dad he had placed second in his class. Naturally, the young parents were incredibly proud of their first-born son and the surprising news of his academic prowess. They rewarded him with treats and extra pocket money. His parents even discussed removing their son from his current school and into a school for gifted students. They would take advice from their son’s current teacher when they attended parent interviews the following week, which they duly did. To their embarrassment and horror, they find that, yes, their son was indeed second in class, but second from bottom, not from the top. My husband said he received a ‘thrashing’ for his deception, but by that time, he had enjoyed a week of treats and spent his pocket money, so, for a young boy, he says, the deceit was well worth it.

The truth, but not quite the truth. Facts but also omitted facts. Manipulation and lies. The distortion of language. Sound familiar? As plausible as the story was, checking in with the intuitive self might have eliminated the embarrassing situation the parents found themselves in. Yes, intuition can be a valuable fact-checker in this information ravaged society because so much information invades our lives. Whenever I feel bombarded by the plethora of ever-changing covid details, I include intuition in my toolbox of fact-checking.

‘The intuitive mind is a sacred gift, and the rational mind is a faithful servant. We have created a society that honours the servant and has forgotten the gift,’ [Albert Einstein].

I do not make my Covid decisions lightly. Nor do I trust my intuition flippantly or carelessly. I have a favourite fact-checking question I repeatedly use to examine my intuition. It goes like this; What if everything I perceive my truth to be is a lie? What if they are right – that the vaccine is safe and effective. Maybe the covid data regarding deaths, transmissions and hospitalisations is as honest as they say. What say the hiring and firing, lockdowns, the mandates, the cancel culture of brilliant minds because they questioned, were as reasonable and appropriate as they say. The list goes on. I love this question – it’s a beautiful never-ending question we can use as we traverse life.

Wasn’t it also Einstein who said, “The important thing is not to stop questioning? Curiosity has its own reason for existing?”

Thankfully, my immune system and intuition have served me well thus far, but luck or chance has nothing to do with it. Both take work, to work. It takes just as much effort to create a healthy lifestyle for myself and my family as it does to hone my intuition. Trusting my gut instinct is cultivated from life experience – learning to trust and feel, to pay attention to what is around me, connections and relationships, listening, questioning, letting go, and most importantly, I make a time for silence and stillness. It sounds so easy when I write this, but to be honest with you, there have been times over the past two years where I have found myself clinging by my fingertips to honour this ‘knowing’ and not bow to the noise.

Yes, paying attention to intuition is one of those valuable life lessons. Some people call it the ‘whisper of the Soul’. So, if something deep inside of you feels something is not right about a person or situation, trust it, because you’re probably right!