Intuitive Psychology Pt II: Be the Vessel
The biggest limitation in traditional therapies has always been the humanness of healers - their own traumas, egos, and limiting beliefs. Western models of care evolved to correct this by developing standardized theories that would ideally put this humanness aside in favor of objective and deliverable therapeutic medicines. The issue with this approach is that by attempting to standardize care in this fashion, we have denied the spiritual insight and vision that each person holds in their unique connection to the source energy of all things. There is much value in standardized practices and evidence-based research, but if relied upon too heavily, it obstructs the window into a unique inner wisdom that is able to guide a person to their own highest destiny, rather than simply the destiny of those that have come before them. There must be space for the intuitive wisdom of human beings that connects them to the spiritual realm of existence - a source of creation energy beyond the cortical structures and neuropathways of the brain. I believe all human beings are a vessel for a unique purpose, path, and contribution to humanity, and that the traumas we endure in this life time, and those we have carried in ancestrally, are there to serve us as medicine to expand into our highest vision and service to the world. No standardized methodology or attempts at simply managing or casting aside our “issues” can uncover that alone.
The trauma we carry must be acknowledged as medicine and as an invitation to grow, otherwise it remains a stuckness and a disservice to ourselves and others. Healers can only take sufferers as far as they are willing to go themselves and only truly if they are willing to be a vessel for the spiritual wisdom meant to come through. There is a source of wisdom beyond the brain in both healer and sufferer that I believe is inherent in the human experience and can be listened to if we clear the blockages in our way. The intuitive wisdom I speak of cannot only be learned from books but must come from a deeper practice of listening to our own truth unfolding within the self. Learning from others who have walked the path is immensely valuable, but all are required to journey on the inner path and all are invited to recognize their own vessel-nature. The practice of being a vessel is a practice of tapping into wisdom beyond not only the limitations of evidence-based study but also the limitations of our own stories and unconscious or conscious suffering. I am not saying that one’s personality cannot contribute to the style, tone, and messaging of medicine. In fact, it is our unique personalities that contribute to different levels of resonance for others. However, there is a form of medicine available to us that connects to the source material within us beyond the cheap and often unhelpful ways we define ourselves in society. Beyond the labels, diagnoses, unconscious belief systems, and emotional traumas, there lies a deeper truth to who and what we are. Once discovered, some may call it a connection to Spirit or God, some may call it creativity or simply energy. Regardless of what we name it, we can recognize that it is inherent in all of us because we are all children of the same essence. I call the process of connecting to this source: intuition, and in order to cultivate intuition, we must become the vessel for it to flow.
The process of becoming a vessel is not some alien endeavor, it is a natural state of alignment within us once we see beyond the conditioned brain and limiting beliefs pervading our view. Rather than becoming, it is more like remembering that we are, and always were, a vessel for a deeper truth that transcends the “mind.” Whether you consider yourself intuitive or not, you may have had uncanny experiences of dreams, visions, voices, or ways of knowing things that could not be explained away by a strictly evidence-based understanding or western psychology. You may have written this off as “de ja vu” or fantasy or going “crazy” at the time, or you may have received diagnoses or medications to manage the identified “disorder,” but I encourage you to see the value - the wisdom - in what has come through you. Your experience is not random nor are you crazy or disordered. Certainly, some have extremely disruptive mental processes that contribute to damaging behavior and who benefit from management and care, but that does not mean that they too have no wisdom to offer. In my opinion, all “disorder” represents a combination of your nervous system wiring, your conditioned beliefs, and your emotion energy blocking access to or fragmenting the various sources of information you are being guided by. Not all information is helpful and it is hard to know what to trust when your inner experience is in disarray, but that does not mean it has no meaning. A new landscape of integrative medicine is emerging in which healers are guided by different sources of knowing within the self. In Western psychiatry and psychology, practitioners have been conditioned to ignore this path and rely on models or theories evolved from a diagnostic framework and identified categories of thinking. At one point in time, the diagnostic categories and theories of treatment served a role in helping make sense of various symptomatology over time, but it was never the end all-be all. Intuitive guidance comes from an experiential kind of “training” and practice based on one’s own unique witnessing journey and the various modalities that have guided them to connect with a natural intelligence and wisdom within the self.
As a healer or a sufferer, textbooks will only take you so far. You must seek to learn from your own suffering and come to understand that there is a message coming through, guiding you into alignment with the life path meant for you. To water the fertile soil of intuition within you, you may seek guidance from a lineage of healers who recognize this wisdom. Those who call themselves shamans, clairvoyants, mediums, intuitives, energy healers, and so on choose to embrace a different way of knowing. Though these practices are certainly susceptible to coercion, trauma, subjectivity, and falsehood due to their lack of standardization, it does not negate the truth of their wisdom when delivered properly. The weaknesses of this medicine are no different than the trauma and subjectivity of those in the clinical world who attempt to disavow and scrub every medicine clean with research. Both require training and experience, and both require a seat at the table. And with integration and synergy of these perspectives, the sky’s the limit. Once you begin to seek guidance in the intuitive realm for your own suffering, not just from one healer or modality but several, you begin to collect bits and pieces along the way that build your connection to a deeper knowing and guidance within you. If you choose not to acknowledge the spiritual lessons emerging from your own story, otherwise known as your trauma or conditioning, you may become dependent on standardized systems of authority outside your self for answers. This is not to say that a new paradigm of healing must eschew all systems of authority, but it is to say that truly guided healing is unique to the healer’s own journey and must flow through them rather than rely only on manualized forms of care or understanding. We all must dance between the wisdom within and the wisdom without, and never can the integration of such wisdom be standardized. Personally, I dance between intuitive wisdom and the wisdom of my clinical training because that is what guided my own healing path. Therefore, I am a vessel for this integrative paradigm. I practice unfolding this paradigm without attempting to take credit or “get” anything as a result, but simply to allow it to flow through me knowing it is my service to the world and my journey to be a bridge for others to do the same.
When we choose to see our trauma and life experience as a valuable medicine, we open a doorway to the unique strengths and gifts we were meant to offer to the world. Anyone that ever created a new framework for healing allowed that framework to emerge from their own witnessing experience and creativity. One example is the creator of Dialectical Behavior Therapy (DBT), Marsha Linehan, who struggled openly with her own traumatized personality and birthed a new form of medicine for those with similar struggles. Linehan allowed herself to be a vessel for this medicine and delivered it with profound wisdom and compassion. However, once this modality became standardized as a system of training, the vessel-nature of this medicine became diluted. Each person is required to experience their own journey, as Marsha did, in order to acknowledge the brand of medicine they were meant to bring to the world. There is no “free lunch” so to speak in learning the wisdom meant to serve yourself and others. When you try to adopt someone else’s medicine, it loses potency and authenticity, and you lose connection with your own intuitive guidance. This is not to say that no one should allow others to learn the medicine they have to give, but it must be done with respect for the intuitive guidance and witnessing journey of the individual. No healer is the same nor meant to be a vessel for the exact same medicine. Likewise, no sufferer is the same nor meant to receive the exact same medicine. When healers spend all of their training on getting things “right” in accordance with certain standardized principles of care, they lose out on tapping into their own creative wisdom and gifts. They lose out on listening directly to the spiritual guidance of their own unfolding experience.
I have been referring to Western forms of healing as “traditional,” but intuitive guidance is as traditional as it gets, having been used for centuries before certain forms of research became the gold standard for evidence-based care. All original thought emerged first from a creative source within the person influenced by their own lineage of trauma, experience, and intuition. To reduce original ideas to a combination of one’s training and critical thinking would be to ignore the collective wisdom within all humanity. You may not like the word “spiritual” or “spirit,” but you may still acknowledge that originality does not simply emerge from the brain’s conditioning. In fact, the majority of the brain’s conditioning is based on evolutionary programming of fear and survival. There is a universal force that has led to the expansion of all living things and it did not start nor will it end with the human brain. Creativity is not simply make-believe or fantasy; all things that exist have been created, including life itself. With all of scientific evidence at your disposal, you cannot prove how the universe came into being, but it did! Similarly, you cannot prove how original therapies come into being before they are brought under the microscope. Just as the universe expands, our vision for healing humanity expands with it, not only from “evidence-based” studies but also from the original source of guidance within us all. Herein lies the delicate balance and harmony of intuitive psychology. Not all may identify as intuitive or necessarily be meant to use this wisdom to heal others, but all are intuitive beings. It is innate in the human experience and in life itself, look no further than the trees that grow naturally toward the light. We are here to grow and expand, and if we get our big computer brains out of the way once in a while, we might just allow it to happen.
In the next unfolding of this paradigm, I will explore the specific tools and practices that allow you to practice being the vessel for your intuitive wisdom and your natural state of energetic flow. The tools contribute first and foremost to bringing safety to the nervous system, releasing trauma, and transforming your fear-based conditioning. The toolkit for becoming a vessel is a toolkit for healing trauma, rewiring your brain, and aligning with the highest vision and flow for your life’s expansion.