Initiation to Intuition
Connecting to your Intuition is much different than much of the other feelings and sensations we experience in life. When we’re primarily living in “regular” society, we walk through life mostly through the lens of our egos. What’s good, what’s bad, who can we blame, what are we judging ourselves for next, and what will make us come across more favorable to other people? We’re conditioned to wear masks and fit into boxes, rather than to be authentic and free to exist outside the predictable roles we’re expected to fit into.
Your Intuition doesn’t feel like listening to and acting on your thoughts.
It also doesn’t feel like acting from fear-based belief systems so we can fit in and not rock the boat in our lives.
It feels like the thing we’ve always been searching for:
A relaxed, neutral nod to our Authentic Selves.
Saying, “if you just let go of your judgments, attachments, and deep need to live your life based on other people–who would you be? Well, you’d be yourself.”
This article is a story about how I went on a fast-track journey to understanding and connecting with my intuition, using the help of one of the most impactful substances in my life.
This story isn’t meant to prop up or convince you that you need substances to connect to your intuition–you don’t. They can be fantastic facilitators of consciousness-altered states–which can speed up that process by facilitating the dissolution of ego, but it’s not necessary.
In fact: the lessons I’ve gleaned from these experiences showed me the process of accessing intuition in all scenarios in life, not just when you’re in an altered state.
My hope for you in reading this is to activate you into the journey of connecting to your own intuition and inner wisdom, because we all deserve that connection to ourselves. The part of us that has always got our back, is our little internal life coach sending us signals in its own unique language.
The first time it happened, I had no clue what was going on. It was the middle of the night–perhaps 1 am in Mexico at the hotel we were sent to for protection against the impending hurricane on the night of our friends’ would-have-been-wedding. A weekend we lovingly refer to as “The Hurricane Wedding,” includes some of our fondest memories of spending time with 40+ friends in a hotel room, waiting out this hurricane, in a hotel two hours away from the original hotel where the wedding was supposed to be.
We decided, “what the hell–right?” Might as well make the most of it. So we took some MDMA, and had an epic night hanging out together waiting out the storm. But about mid-way into the evening, something started happening to my body.
Waves of what felt like energetic whiplash began coursing through my body. Yawning, stretching, fatigue, burping, and extreme muscular sensitivity began overtaking me. All I could really do was lay in bed, writhe around, rub my muscles, and allow my body to occupy the positions the energy was forcing me into. Sometimes it was cat-cow, others it was fetal position–but it was constant movement to give the energy the physical form it needed to pass through my body.
I had a sense that this energy was not mine–that it was everyone else’s energy, and my body was simply the physical channel it was moving through. I didn’t know what the energy was, exactly. It didn’t have a name, an emotion, or a person attached to it. It was pure energy.
Later that night when the substance wore off, I could barely move. My body had been weakened to the point of barely being able to walk to the shower. I took a shower sitting down. I crawled into it. I could barely hold an apple in my hands–my physical might and strength had dwindled lower than I’d ever felt in my life.
At first, I felt self-pity and vulnerability. It felt embarrassing and strange, and I didn’t know how to make any sense of it. It also didn’t happen to anyone else, and perhaps I just couldn’t handle the drug? (My mind was swirling with thoughts of being weak.)
Mirroring what I know to be a deeper subconscious pattern of mine (and what others would call the acts of service love language), I craved for someone to just take care of me. Fix it. Hold me. Get me whatever. Give me a massage. I could’ve just melted into a puddle of fatigue and shut down.
The next day, I couldn’t fully process what had happened. Fast forward to the following–oh, I don’t know—ten MDMA journeys over the course of two years where the same exact thing happened, I caught on to the pattern.
Initiation Into Intuition
MDMA is a heart-opening medicine, and the way it’s always felt in my body is like it’s pushing against all the physical, mental, and emotional edges in my body and energetic field. It’s kind of like trying to breathe deeply into your belly or diaphragm, only to realize the surrounding muscles are incredibly tight, and you can’t get a solid deep breath. But rather than you actively working to create more space in your body through breathing, the medicine did its thing and worked to create more space in my body just by coursing through it.
The first tool I discovered that helped was to surrender to whatever my body needed me to do. Firstly, this meant lowering my dosage and starting with far less, and go slow. Hello, sensitivity!
Second, this meant making sure I could find a bed or the floor, grab some blankets, and ride the waves of energy coursing through me. Rather than try fighting it or pretending its presence wasn’t prominent, I just began saying to myself and my friends “the thing is happening again, see you in a bit!” lol. Many people experience a bit of intensity during what’s called the “come up,” or onset of MDMA. Mine was just…a whole thing that required me to just be with the energy. They say, “it takes as long as it takes.” 🙂
Sitting In Surrendered Uncertainty
Consider a surfer riding a wave. The wave is gonna wave no matter what that puny human does. Surfers don’t try to control the wave–they know better than to think they can control or overpower the greatness of the ocean. Rather, they work to gain skill in riding the wave itself–becoming one with it.
This is the best metaphor I’ve found to understand what surrender is like. In our society, humans are taught to suppress their pain, weakness, emotions, or expression so as to be perceived as controlled or put together. “Leave your feelings at the door,” or “look professional,” or “don’t be too much” has collectively held us back from simply moaning when we’re in pain, or letting ourselves release the tears and sounds from our face when we need to cry. We’ve been conditioned to lead lives through our minds and intellect, rather than our body’s natural intelligence.
Because MDMA specifically is a heart-opener (and in my experience, an energy opener) it creates not only more intensity in those energies to be required to move (through dancing, yawning, burping, crying, or simply just feeling a lot) but also helps to separate us from our egos and patterns that have us contort ourselves in the first place.
One particular evening, one of my now best friends walked me through a grounding practice she learned for herself, which was passed down from someone else. It included:
– Mindful breathing practices
– The mantras, “I am safe, I am grounded, I am in control of my experience.”
These simple yet impactful physical tools impacted my experience immensely. I was reminded to recognize the innate power I had within to shift my own state. I felt like I no longer needed to be a victim of this experience, but rather an empowered active participant in it. I didn’t fully understand it at the time, but I was learning how to do energy healing on myself.
Another evening, I found another tool which was simply the perspective and awareness that no one was coming to save me from this. No one was going to halt their entire experience and come help me–and until I found the will and might within myself to begin clearing and healing myself, I’d stay stuck swirling in the intensity of it all.
The moment I shifted from, “I feel shitty let me curl up in a ball,” to “I am in control of my experience and–even though I feel shitty and this is going to require a lot of energy–I am the only one who can shift my state.” So rather than letting the waves overpower me, I opened my body, did my breathing, used my hands, and worked to actively ride them.
Let Your Body Lead The Way
Funny enough, the moment I let go–I realized that there was a deep part of me that already had the intelligence to heal myself. My hands just knew where to go, and what to do. I allowed my body to guide me in returning to homeostasis. I became quiet and listened to its subtle whispers. A little light wind, cold water, fruit, breathing, humming, shaking–all things my body naturally called for and needed. My nervous system was simply showing me how to regulate.
This was a completely thoughtless experience, in that it had nothing to do with thinking and then acting. The mind was not in any way involved. Pure body-based presence.
And this level of presence, I realized, could only truly be accessed when I:
– Stopped judging my sensitivity as a weakness
– Learned to surrender and let go
– Develop trust within myself to actually feel safe letting go
– Learn to ride the waves through emotional regulation skills
Spiritual Gifts Activated
This journey with MDMA has been a truly beautiful spiritual journey that’s been purely inside of my own body. It’s quite literally initiated me into trusting my intuitive guidance, and learning how to really listen to my body–and build a relationship with the deepest parts of myself.
On an evening journey not too long ago, something happened. The whole come-up, wave-riding experience occurred per usual. I did my thing, regulated my system, and let go. At this point, I’ve built a really solid relationship with this experience–so I was just riding it pretty casually without making a big deal out of it.
Because of this deep sense of trust in fully surrendering, I began to notice the surrender go even deeper, this time. It felt like my physical form–the will to hold myself up, the strength in my muscles–slowly melted into a puddle. A few years ago in Mexico, that experience felt scary and confusing. Now, it felt like I was a pro at this–and trusted myself to know what to do in the space. As my physical form weakened, my third eye began to blast open.
I opened my eyes every few minutes from the fireworks inside of my inner world to take down notes on notes of my channeled downloads about life. I closed my eyes, went back inside, and came back out with more notes. Throughout the rest of the evening–for a solid eight hours–the downloads didn’t stop. I went around the room, requesting permission to share what was coming through for the people I received messages for. This was my claircognizance, the psychic gift of knowing without knowing how.
Your Existence Is The Gift
Of all the profound lessons I’ve gained from this journey, the main one has certainly been recognizing that the simple act of witnessing how I experienced the medicine, was the simple act of witnessing how I exist as a person.
Psychedelics tend to show you who you are in various ways. Some people see visuals, others feel feelings, and I experience energy in my body and have a sense of knowing through my physical form.
This showed me the simplicity of recognizing that my essence, my very existence, simply by BEING it…was my gift all along.
I unpacked the initial sense of self-judgment around what came so naturally to me.
I let go of the need to be put together, perfect, or knowing it all.
I allowed myself to exist naturally in this experience without trying to change it or make it wrong.
And what came from that was pure fucking magic.
And it showed me that I AM pure fucking magic.
We all are.
In developing spiritual gifts and deepening my embodiment in those teachings: I take it very seriously.
What I do know is what my own personal formula was for opening up to it. Which is something I will likely spend the rest of my life teaching.
Are you reading this dying to have an experience that’ll connect you to your own intuition?
After this experience, I deeply desired to create a safe, loving container for people to come have their own intuitively connecting experiences. Retreats and in-person immersive are one of the best ways to have that out-of-the-norm experience that will interrupt patterns in your life, drop you into a portal of transformation, and allow you to actually feel like a whole new person on the other side of it.
So, I designed a retreat to do exactly that called;
See Yourself: The Retreat
This is a 3-day Emotional Intelligence and Somatic Embodiment Retreat for people who are ready to see, connect to, and embody the person they’re meant to be.
I host these retreats twice per year.
The next retreat (as of Jan 12, 2023) is this upcoming weekend–January 19th – January 22nd in Palm Springs, California.
The next one will be around August 2023.
