Intuition & Healing

The term “Intuition” sounds terribly outlandish, unorthodox, and potentially “out of control”.

Intuitive Counseling is challenging to write and speak of in a dignified and professional manner.  Should you feel so inclined, and do a “Google Search”, it would be only a matter of moments before you stumbled upon such characters as “Mother Jackson’s Intuitive Crystal Healing”, or “Flowing Water Sanctuary Retreat for Couples” and understood my reference.

When I utilize to the term “Intuitive Counseling”, I am speaking of something that is an inherent part of an appropriate, professional, Counseling, Psychotherapy, Social Work, Case-Management, Advocacy, or other “recognized” professional healing relationship.

There is the saying in the field that “Therapists are born and not made.”  Exquisitely attuned to the slightest changed in the human being with whom he or she sits, these are practitioners who are born with innate gifts.  The very fabric of his or her practice is intuitive rather than structured, or ritualistic in nature.  The term Intuitive Counseling refers to a Practice that is Nontraditional.  Hierarchical structures, Lineages and Political Machines have no place in the tender ministrations of this healer.  Working within a heavily hierarchical/politicized agency is a  “soul-wounding” experience for this worker, that bites deeply into his or her ability to do healing work.

Some Healers refer to themselves as “Natural” or “Intuitive”.  Our Naturals and Intuitives assist in describing the broad spectrum of talents practitioners of The Wilding have been born with.  The many “Natural” practitioners, with whom I have spoken, describe a life in which she or he was going about his or her business, when magickal ability presented itself.  At times, this was during childhood; sometimes during adulthood.  At the very best it was generally received by those around our Wild friends as a “silly stage”, and at worst a “psychiatric dysfunction”. 

Without exception, there was great suffering and confusion attached to the gifts of our “Natural” friends.  They felt drawn to particular paths of helping or service and did not know why.  Often it was against the wishes of their entire larger family that they acted.  At some point (through a book, a spiritual leader, an acquaintance or a meditation, which turned into a powerful trance journey), these “Naturals” were awakened to the nature of their journey, themselves, and their place on the ‘Great Path’.

As with any group of individual, this resulted in a variety of outcomes.  Some practitioners felt called to other spiritual paths, via which they would accomplish their good works.  Others felt called to Traditional Coven work, to be close to others while accomplishing spiritual tasks.  Most simply carried on, Solitary Practitioners, with new found inspiration and ease in their hearts.

When properly attuned to the greater “Is” there is no feeling, from the Intuition to any other Witch or Pagan, of superiority or inferiority.  Respect toward others is characteristic of an individual who is continuously tapped in to the greater “Is”.  Status, supremacy and dominance are simply non-issues.  Some Practitioners or groups will advance the notion that coven work, traditional practice, and measuring status via Lineage, levels, rituals, and testing is the only way to “be” or “exist” as a Witch.  This is contrary to the truth of the Wild Path.   For the Intuition, there is gently and elegantly, no argument to be had. 

Above I used the term “continuously tapped into the greater Is”.  I offer the following clarification/vignette from my experience:

At some point during childhood, I became aware that of symbolic “images” of certain people, their history, what was “in their head” at the moment, and most vividly their “hurts”.  This perceptual experience provided me with a “push” toward my Path and profession. 

I was provided by the “Powers that Be”, with a solid understanding that I must absorb and attend to the images provided to me.  Failing to do so was hurtful, or possibly dangerous.  There were many times when I wanted to befriend the “red-flag” person.  I wanted to trust, when the information provided to me said, “Danger lies here.”  I made mistakes, as people will.  I ignored those precise perceptions.

Every time I ignored the protection offered me, I came to harm.  A woman I’d thought a dear friend, viciously gossiped about me.  A man I had tender feelings for turned into the “put out or get out” creep, ten miles from nowhere. 

I was completely unprepared for the flood of “Spiritual” information.  I spent a good part of my young life rejecting it, attempting to make logical sense of my experiential world.

I obtained my Master’s Degree and was working on a Community Mental Health Crisis Team.  I was screening those at risk of harm to themselves or others for hospitalization.  I screened easily twenty people in a day.  I was exhausted.  I had seen too many clients. 

 I walked into a room where a young man I had yet to diagnose waited.  He suffered with schizophrenia.  As I walked into the room with him, I was “hit in the chest” violently, with wave after wave of all of the suffering that the illness is.  The young man I was meeting at that moment was a well-groomed college student on the edge of his first psychotic episode. 

This experience triggered a realization.  Schizophrenia “felt” a particular way.  It did not take long to know that I had the same sensitivity for the various forms of suffering: Bi-polar Disorder, PTSD, a bad acid trip or whatever the intrapsychic dilemma was.  As I examined my life-long empathic reactions to people, I understood that this “being struck” by the suffering of others had been happening for as long as I could remember.  And for just as long, I had been actively forgetting it.

One can refuse Immersion in the “Is”, or one can simply Surrender. 

This author is not suggesting that one walk around in a perpetual state of deep trance, wherein any “psychic rider” could attach itself.  Those journeys are indeed reserved for sacred spaces and intentional moments.  It is that for the Intuition, the “door” by virtue of her sensitivities, and the way she is made, does not fully close.

In The Wilding, magickal beings are ‘Merry Met’ along the way, without deification.  All are part of a great energy in the “Is”. 

The Intuition is a usually solitary Practitioner.  Spontaneity, in response to the Ethers, is the very definition of a Intuition.  Involving a partner, or several partners in her practice is often terribly restrictive in terms of ability to move in concert with those spontaneous connections with the “Is”.  

A Intuition does not put aside her practice, set aside her personal magick, nor close her awareness of the ever present universal magicks.  She does not necessarily wait for special times to “work” her craft, although some privacy is certainly preferred.

Healing Paths reveal themselves to the Intuition.    Her senses are open to magicks as she moves through her mundane world: work, family, recreation.  In this way the Intuition maintains an awareness of the moment that she might respond, gently and immediately.  Small healings and gracious smoothing of ruffled feathers take place through out the life of the Intuition.  This vigilance, for the well-being of her fellow human, creature, and planet is inherent.

Are you an Intuitive?  If so, it is necessary to familiarize yourself with your own abilities.  To live in comfortable co-existence with them, it is necessary to practice and work your skills.  Otherwise, as described above, they surely will work you. 

I keep in mind an edict that Healers have been abiding by for hundreds of years.  It hangs above my desk: “First, do no Harm”.

Live your magickal life in joy.  Your abilities were given to you by the Gods and Goddess (or Powers the Be who you call upon) to use for good purpose.  You are truly blessed.