Jan 14: Albert Schweitzer's Birthday
Intuition: How to discover the power of trusting your gut.
🙏🏼 I would greatly appreciate your help spreading the word about The Spiritual Almanac. Your support means everything to me!
Intuition is a spiritual faculty and does not explain, but simply points the way.
—Florence Scovel Shinn
Have you ever experienced a strange sensation that you should take an action but didn’t want to?
You might have felt fear, resisted, fought, and finally given in because “that voice” wouldn’t disappear.
It happened to me ten years ago.
One day, an inner voice told me to call my mother—someone I hadn’t spoken to for thirteen years. So, of course, I ignored it.
But the voice persisted until it became a shout. With shaking hands and fear coursing through my veins like a raging river, I finally picked up the phone.
We spoke briefly, exchanged pleasantries.
Two weeks later, I was standing next to her hospital bed.
Looking back, I can see the miracle of intuition. If it weren’t for the urgent voice demanding I call my mother, it’s doubtful I would have dropped everything, jumped on a plane, and been there for my sisters during a challenging time.
That experience taught me the importance of trusting my gut, even when it seems illogical or inconvenient.
Albert Schweitzer, the theologian, philosopher, and musician born 149 years ago today, also heard an inner voice.
In 1904, the 29-year-old theological seminary dean and renowned organist wrote to his parents that he “had resolved to be a jungle doctor.”
He had no medical degree, no training, no idea how to accomplish such a life-changing vocation. Family and friends thought he was crazy, begged him not to go.
But he enrolled in medical school and, eight years later, stood on the banks of the Ogooué River in French Equatorial Africa (now present-day Gabon).
Schweitzer spent the rest of his life dedicated to his African mission, even during war and conflict. He built a hospital and treated thousands of patients while advocating protection for the rainforest and its inhabitants.
Like Schweitzer, we all have a guiding inner voice if we listen. It may be subtle or persistent, but it is always there, nudging us toward our true purpose.
And it doesn’t have to be as dramatic as calling your estranged mother or moving to Africa. It can be as simple as brushing your teeth.
In 1986, Bryon Katie, a spiritual mentor and author, heard a voice telling her to brush her teeth while she was dealing with severe depression.
She didn’t want to brush her teeth—hadn’t brushed her teeth in weeks.
In her 2017 book, A Mind at Home with Itself, she writes:
I had thought revelation would be a great burning bush, and all it turned out to be was “Brush your teeth!” I had heard that before, and sometimes, in my depressed state, I wouldn’t brush them for weeks. I couldn’t brush them; dozens of reasons arose why not. And then on this day I heard “Brush your teeth!” without any interference, and I fell out of bed and crawled on my belly to the bathroom sink. It wasn’t about cavities; it was about doing the right thing, honoring the truth inside me.
That "truth inside you" is the inner wisdom that creates a domino effect of positive changes leading to a happier life. When we stop doing things our own way, thinking we know what's best, and instead listen to that voice within us, we can experience a transformation.
It can lead us out of depression, touch thousands of people through humanitarian work, or heal a broken relationship after years of pain and heartache.
When you surrender to intuition, the voice beyond our physical world, and follow what it says, you see how it’s your greatest ally.
Before long, you trust inner guidance like a hound dog on a hunt leading to buried treasure with your name on it. You just have to claim it.
Have you ever had an experience when you listened to your inner voice? Tell us your story.
🙏🏼 Intuition rules. My mom didn't listen to her gut when she married my dad (after I was conceived in the back of a 52 Ford, with horrible, traumatic consequences). So she taught us kids about this inner knowing. Grateful. Do you ever do a Mental Override — listen to 'reasons' why you should do something else?