Recently I re-read the book, Life’s Companion – Journal Writing as a Spiritual Quest by Christina Baldwin, as part of my morning read/meditation/journaling exercise.  The book has a copyright date of 1990, so I’m not sure if it is still available for sale – maybe on Amazon or a used book store; but, I highly recommend it whether or not you are a journal keeper.  I think it has lots of good stuff in it about the spiritual journey we are all on (even if we are not aware we’re on it).

I was especially intrigued by the chapter on intuition...our secret voice, which if we don’t ignore it, offers guidance.  Our intuition is not rational since conscious reasoning is not part of it – we just know.  For a person like me who likes to analyze everything that happens – what/why/when/where – it’s easy to reject my intuition.  How can that possibly be what action I should take…it came to me too easily, too quickly.  Instead, I usually have to mull over important decisions.

So, I’m working on trusting my instincts, my hunches – my intuition.

Ms. Baldwin relates a story in the book about how she studied with an Indian medicine man who helped her determine her totem animal was a fox.  She says the fox symbol comes to her often in dreams and meditations…representative of her intuition, her secret voice.  She suggests we can all create our own image of inner guidance – it could be an animal, an object of nature, a refrain of music, etc.  We just have to “ask” for a symbol and then notice and be open to receiving an answer.  It might come to us in a dream or a vision; or, read on for another potential source for discovering a representative symbol.

Throughout this book, the author provides examples/suggested exercises for journal writing and/or meditation to accompany the topics she writes about. One of the exercises she suggests in this intuition chapter is meant to help us recognize a personal intuition symbol.  She says to sit quietly and imagine the space behind your eyes and between your ears is an imaginary room – designed any way you want it to be.  Then, invite a messenger into this space, and notice what/who the messenger is.  I take that to mean whatever form the messenger takes is a  symbol of our intuition.

I just did this little exercise a few days ago and the image that came to me was the sun flooding my imaginary room with sunbeams, providing lots of bright light.  So, I’m thinking the sun or sunbeam is the symbol for my intuition.  I will be curious to see if that image pops up when my intuition is kicking in (and, if it does, will I pay attention to it?!).

If you’re like me and sometimes have trouble recognizing or listening to your secret voice, you might want to try the above exercise and see if you can come up with a symbol for it.  (If nothing else, it’s kind of fun!) That way, when you think of, or dream about the image in the future, you will know it is your intuition speaking to you and just maybe you should listen.