I’ve made the audio recordings available in 3 formats, to hopefully attune to your preferred listening application.

Spotify:

Youtube:

Native web:

I had to make these links public to accommodate listening preferences. I would appreciate it if you could refrain from sharing broadly outside of the cohort at this time.

Last week we talked about the difference between intuition and thoughts from the conditioned, survival mind. Hopefully, you had a chance to practice. This week’s lesson is intended to introduce and expand upon our first active intuition modality so you can more skillfully begin to explore this in your life.

Before we do this, I want to give you 3 examples of how intuition changed my life outside of the story I told last week about buying my first house.

Salesforce Acquisition - During the diligence process of selling our company Troops to Salesforce we had a roadblock that put the acquisition in jeopardy. We had to uncover some data that we thought was lost to overcome this standstill. Finding it was a critical linchpin to us closing the deal and no one thought the data we needed to show them existed.

After this roadblock came up, we were all feeling pretty deflated and trying to figure out what to do. I wrote down the question what are the next steps I can take here to overcome this situation? I got up from my desk and went for a walk. As I was leaving my house, randomly the idea popped into my head to look in an old admin tool I hadn’t been in for years. It wasn’t immediately obvious how this would be helpful, but I trusted the nudge. I went back to my desk and went to the tool and started searching user logs. Within 2 minutes, I uncovered the exact information I needed. We used this data to build the information case we needed and unblocked this scenario that seemed to jeopardize selling the company. I won’t get into more details here, but I am highly confident we would not have sold the company if it were not for recognizing this spontaneous insight and following through with it.

Writing A Book - my biggest project right now is writing a book. I never thought I would write a book and wasn’t even sure I had something to write about. Last year in the middle of the night I woke up and was told to sit up and meditate. This happens to me often and is apparently a phenomenon many traditions have talked about for ages calling it the mystical hour.

I received a transmission that I was meant to lead people in my context with my story. I wrote it down and wasn’t sure what that meant. The next day I went out to lunch with a friend and we had a deep discussion on a very personal issue. He told me that hearing my own story allowed him to open up for the first time to anyone about something he’d been hiding in shame for years. He then proceeded to let me know it was one of the most meaningful conversations he’s had in his life. I came home that day and in the shower, it popped into my awareness that I needed to bring my own stories and struggles of pursuing spirituality while living a Western life together in a book. Since then I’ve been continuously receiving guidance on what to write and am now working with an editor on the completion of the book. It’s been enriching and I know it will help a lot of people.

Teaching this course - last year in May I was in a deep state and started to let my mind wonder about my what I wanted to do with my life. Some information came to my awareness around teaching humans about an ability they didn’t know they had. At first, I wondered whether this was something supernatural like levitating or maybe energy healing related. I didn’t know what to make of it and continued on with my day. Weeks later I had another spontaneous insight come into my awareness around an app that guided people to the lost art of imagination. I noodled on it for a while, wrote it down in my startup ideas sheet, and let it be. I knew there was something there around the idea of helping people go beyond simply having a still mind and actually doing something with it that improved their life, but didn’t know what it was.

One day I was doing the direct inquiry practice that I’m about to teach you and it came to me that I should be teaching people this practice. I was intrigued and didn’t think a ton more about it. In the coming weeks, intuition and external signs came up again and again in my daily life. I kept intersecting with “intuition” articles, tweets, and conversations. Simultaneously, I also kept intersecting with cohort-based learning experiences. Because I was paying attention, it started to become clear how it could all come together and what I was supposed to create. After these realizations, when I quieted my mind and asked about it, I was instructed to prioritize creating this course prior to the baby I have coming. So here we are!

Hopefully these stories get you fired up before we get into the meat of today’s topic.

One obstacle I want to address head-on is beliefs.

If you think you can’t do this or think it will never work for you, I hate to say it, but you’re probably going to struggle a bit. If you are closed to the idea of this working and overly skeptical, you probably won’t get very far. I’m not asking you to become a fervent believer from day one. I’m just asking you to be open to the possibility!

Openness and changing beliefs are hard. It can take a long time. Here are some common beliefs that might be obstacles in rapidly cultivating your intuitive abilities:

If any of these feel like something you might indulge in, I encourage you to sit with that and be open to a new possibility. You may also use this awareness to reprogram yourself if you’d like using any one of the techniques described here.

Here are some upgraded belief systems you might want to explore:

If you know you want to believe these ideas but still struggle, one thing you can do is write out the beliefs you want to embody 5x each day for the duration of this program. See if that makes a difference in how you feel.

The practice we’ll be learning this week is called direct inquiry. I want to give a very high-level overview now so you can understand what I am talking about in the stories and ideas leading up to guided instruction later in this week’s curriculum.

At the core direct inquiry is posing specific questions to the stillness and seeing what information emerges.

In order to practice direct inquiry effectively, there are a few conditions that need to be met:

We can work on all of these things simultaneously as we practice.

In addition to these conditions, there are some massive accelerants to this practice and intuition more generally.

Clearing suppressed emotions - the more you purify your subconscious and all the emotions that you have buried down there, the more clear your mind will be so that intuitive guidance can flow through. I don’t think doing years of trauma or emotional clearing work is a requisite for this to come online. I know countless people, including many famous ones, that don’t seem to be on the healing journey yet credit their intuition for their success.

For tactical advice on how to do this, check out this post or the work of Gabor Mate: When the Body Says No, The Myth of Normal. Once we face and acknowledge the imprints and release the energy behind them, that energy now becomes available for creativity and tapping into the broader field of information.

Stilling the mind - I don’t think you need to be a meditator to practice direct inquiry but it will certainly help. Meditation and other contemplative practices help still the mind. And it is in the stillness that information from Source can come through. So it is only going to help you. If you haven’t tried meditating, maybe connecting this practice to things that can impact external outcomes beyond being less stressed will be a motivating factor. If you still struggle, I encourage you to read this post.

Again, I think it’s best to work on all these things simultaneously!

To get into a calm alert state you can use your own preferred practice one of the meditations I have included the skill building section below. Most days I finish my meditation practices by practicing direct inquiry on anything that has come up from the day before or is in focus for my life at that time. Sometimes I treat direct inquiry as a completely separate practice that I’ll do when I have free time throughout the day as things come up. I encourage you to experiment until you find the modality that is most comfortable for you which can be adapted as your skill improves.

Last week, we started off with some very basic, low-risk questions to begin to get comfortable posing questions to the stillness. This week we’re going to get a bit more progressive in our exploration. This means coming to the table with questions you want guidance with.

If you don’t already have a long list of inquiries, I recommend taking 5-10 minutes to brainstorm questions you have about the various parts of your life. We can break these out into low-stakes questions and what I call the meaning of life questions.

Low-stakes questions are good ones to get started with because the downside isn’t that small. Some level low stakes things to get guidance on are:

Anytime there isn’t complete information is a wonderful time to use this practice.

I looked at my intuition log today and here are some decisions I made in the past 48 hours using this practice:

I guess I could have debated and logic’d my way through all of these. That’s what I used to do! Now I just quiet my mind, ask, and the information is clear.

Once you start to get comfortable, you’re going to want to start to ask the more juicy, meaning-of-life questions. There’s nothing stopping you from asking these at the onset, but you’ll be much better positioned to receive, interpret, and act on the information over time, especially after trust has been built.

Every so often I list out the major categories of things that are important to me and then jot down questions I’d love answers to in each:

Here are some more generic questions to spur more ideas for guidance questions:

And some questions you can just try yourself:

You can choose whatever categories are relevant to you! Again, I encourage you to start with basic questions in these areas of life, but as you get more comfortable you can start to integrate more expansive questions.

It can be hard to keep an open mind. Our conditioned survival mind likes to maintain the illusion of controlling things.

When things don’t map to the perceived preferences or rationale, it interprets this as a threat. This is why people can often get upset when others' opinions don’t match their own. It’s just someone interpreting something as a threat that’s really just a bunch of noises.

If we acknowledge the limitations of the conditioned, survival mind and how all these preferences are derivatives of our very limited exposure to all the information ever created, this should soften the resistance to guidance that doesn’t match our limited mental models. Instead of a sample size of 100 experiences and inputs, true Source intuition comes from a sample size of infinity and can see around corners we cannot.

If you still have resistance, consider a situation where something happened that you didn’t plan for or were disappointed in that actually turned out for the best. I remember when I got rejected from a job that I really wanted and then weeks later ended up working for a company that ended up being a much better fit for me. It also ended up being a much more successful company than the one that rejected me. At the moment, I couldn’t see how not getting that job was a good thing because I could not see the totality of how it would all unfold.

By invoking direct guidance, we are moving closer to an information source that can see the big picture. I like the metaphor of being a player on the field and having a coach up in a box at the top of the stadium in my ear. They can see the whole field and anticipate things in a way that’s hard from the ground level.

Inevitably, there might be some discrepancies between the intuitive information you get and your conditioned mind's logic and preferences. Over time we will learn how to develop trust and begin to soften our allegiance to logic once we start getting results. If you find yourself getting nervous about the information you get, there are a few things you can do:

Ultimately getting clear information in your consciousness is part 1 of unlocking your intuitive power! Trusting it and putting it into the world is a whole other enchilada!

About a year ago, I was feeling in a pretty good groove differentiating between the intuitive voice and my conditioned survival mind and I got some advice I was pretty surprised about:

At this point, I was a very devoted spiritual aspirant that was meditating daily. It was one of the reasons I felt like I had discovered this intuitive ability in the first place! I understood why I was advised not to do certain things, but this one I had a tough time wrapping my head around. I thought meditation was good for me. Where was this coming from?

I let it sit for a few days, continuing my meditation practice. Each day I would check in only to get the same answer. I finally decided to give in and stop meditating. That morning something amazing happened.

The first day I stopped meditating, I felt an ecstatic bliss wash over my body. It was more blissful than any day that I had meditated for as long as I remembered. This bliss persisted and gradually waned over the course of two weeks. In some unsuspecting way, it seemed as though I was being rewarded for following the inner guidance despite it going against what seemed like benevolent preferences.

It dawned on me that in my spiritual ambition, I had become attached to my meditation practice. The resistance I felt had made that clear to me and helped me understand that this too needed to be relinquished if I wanted to truly be free.

Hopefully, this story shows you that there can be unforeseen purposes with guidance that seems opposed to conventional wisdom. When this happens, it’s always good to use discernment. With not meditating, the stakes were pretty low so I felt quite comfortable moving forward.

Relying on your intuition vs. the logical mind is something that can be quite scary at first.

After all, 99% of the decisions you made to date are likely emanating from logic. It’s what we’ve been told is the smart way to make decisions. Well maybe it’s the logical way, but I’ve found much more success and aliveness with the wise way of making decisions which is following my inner guidance.

It’s unlikely that you’re going to build unshakeable trust overnight. I like to think of the process of learning to trust your intuition like dating. You don’t get married after the first date. It takes time and reps to build comfort with another person which can compound into something beautiful. Learning to trust your intuition is exactly the same!

In order to trust something, you’ll need to see results. This is where experimentation and tracking the guidance that you’ve been given, your actions, and how life plays out comes into play.

To get started, I recommend keeping a log somewhere of all the intuitive questions you have and guidance that comes through. This could be as simple as a note on your phone, google doc, or whatever note app you use. I like Roam Research.

I have a whole deep dive section on more advanced techniques for you on creating an intuition log in week 5. For now, we should just get started with something basic that you will use.

As I alluded to earlier, some of the things that come through might look more like reassurance or encouragement. Other times it will be a direct prescription of what to do. I mostly record both, but you can keep it to things with application if you prefer. For me, the value of recording reassurance is helpful in two ways:

I know what some of you might be thinking…do I really want to write something down if it doesn’t match my preferences!?! That sounds terrible. And what if I am mistakenly manifesting it by writing it down!?! 😳

You don’t have to immediately take action on something by just writing it down on a log. And you don’t have to write it down on the log if you are not satisfied with the answer!

I actually only write things down that satisfy me. Satisfaction has more to do with clarity and knowing it's coming through clearly from Source vs. it meeting my preferences. It doesn’t mean that I agree or can make sense of everything I get. But if I sense the maniacal ego coming through, I find it pretty easy to identify with the texture and don’t really consider it worth noting down.

Once you have your log and begin following the guidance with your actions, you can periodically review what happened to evaluate how things turned out. At first, I was doing this every few weeks, but TBH I don’t even really do this anymore. I’ve had so many good, unexpected things happen over time that I feel like it’s foolish to make a decision without consulting Source. This trust was built over time (at least 3-6 months) so I imagine it might be a while before you get to the state I’m describing.

To build trust in a safe way, again I would start with low risk situations while you build your skill to differentiate between what is truly from Source vs. the conditioned, survival mind. As you apply these small, low risk guidance into actions, you’ll begin to get more confident.

As a refresher, some low risk ideas are things like:

Over time you will start to see results and get progressively bold as evidence builds that it is safe to trust your inner guidance. In fact, you will come to see it is the safest thing you do!

It was the end of 2020 and I had begun practicing everything we’ve been talking about. One day I asked about my business and got guidance that I should let someone on my senior leadership go. They had been underperforming, but we had just let go of their counterpart and I was hesitant to be completely rudderless in that part of the business.

Despite this guidance, I rationalized keeping them. It seemed better to have someone, than to have no one at all in a major part of our business. Shortly after this, we got into an M&A process to sell the company. I had no idea how long this would take and I didn’t want to do anything disruptive. I then further rationalized why we couldn't fire this person and they continued to underperform. I was afraid firing someone this senior would be a bad signal to any potential buyer about the health of our business. The M&A process ended up taking over a year and we kept this person on the entire time. Immense friction was built because this person was not doing a good job and everyone knew it. They wondered why we weren’t firing them and it was demotivating to everyone else. Paradoxically, this person wasn’t happy either. All of this could have been avoided if I had just listened to my inner guidance in the first place.

I’ve had a few instances like this where I didn’t heed guidance early on and it came back to bite me in the ass. Some of these lessons learned were painful, but I am thankful for them. They pushed me further towards where I am today which is deep allegiance to Source guidance.

I came across this idea from Tiago Forte who teaches a second brain course called C.O.D.E. I thought it was a cool framework that could be applied to intuitive guidance.

Here’s how it can be applied to the intuition context:

Pretty simple stuff.

This week’s practice is going to occur in a quiet, alert state whether you’re just sitting down for a few minutes or tacking on to an existing meditation practice. I wouldn’t recommend doing this when you’ve just slammed a coffee or for whatever reason feel hyperactive.

This next step is completely optional, but something I built into my practice. One thing I found annoying is that I would be getting all this information in the middle of my direct inquiry session and I would often forget some of it afterward. I was faced with staying still and potentially forgetting things or interrupting my meditation sessions to write things down. Both were less than ideal.

One solution I’ve found helpful for this challenge is to use a voice recording app ideally with transcription while you meditate or do the practice. There are many out there, but the easiest, most affordable one that I’ve found is Otter.ai which has a free plan you can test to get started.

The thing I like about Otter is that you can still play music or even guided audio while recording. The sound quality gets a little worse, but the upside of capturing the insights and guidance is worth it to me.

I find the transcription to be incredibly helpful since I can email myself or log in and just see the guidance in word form vs. having to listen to the whole thing. Usually when I am done with a session, I email myself a copy of the transcription so I remember to come back to it and add it to my intuition log (more on that in week 5).

Here’s a quick video of the workflow with Otter:

You don’t have to use voice transcription especially when you’re just getting started. Sometimes when I just want quick guidance on something I’ll just drop in and then jot down whatever came through on a phone note or notepad. It’s really up to you.

The important thing though is to capture the guidance somewhere…which takes us to our next point and final section before this week’s exercise.

So for this week, we are going to focus on practicing direct inquiry with more pointed questions in our lives and then recording it in our log.

If you feel called to act on the guidance, I think that’s awesome. But it’s also totally okay if you just want to capture it and let it breathe. It can be helpful to contemplate things before deciding whether it's something that you feel comfortable doing in the beginning.

I also encourage you to start small with the gravity of your questions. If you really feel called to it, you can ask bold questions. Perhaps in terms of following through, you can start with things where the stakes are lower.

I would set a goal this week to practice direct inquiry 5 times! This can be once a day or you can practice multiple times in one day. The goal is to get reps so that you can begin to build this incredibly valuable skill.

Below you’ll find 3 different versions of the direct inquiry meditation.

Spotify:

Youtube:

Native web:

Spotify:

Youtube:

Native web:

Spotify:

Youtube:

Native web:

If you have specific questions, you can drop them in the chat in the “Help chat” and I will do my best to answer them within 24 hours.

I encourage you to go back and compare the characteristics between the thinking mind and emergent intuition. One particular thing to pay attention to as you go through this process is whether you took a mental “leap” to answer the question or were able to keep your mind still until you become aware of something emergent.

You may be noticing the battle between emergent intuition trying to peak through and then your awareness being hijacked by the thinking mind that is focused on self-preservation. This happens a lot when you are getting started. I often find there to be lots of truth to the first immediate impulse that arises. Sometimes before I even mentally pose the question, I sense a directive. I have come to know that this is almost always the one to be trusted. Source guidance doesn’t even need to wait for you to finish the question, simply conceptualizing it will often yield a preemptive immediate response. You need to learn how to tune into this and more acutely identify it.

Sometimes the waters can get muddy in these back and forths. Remember, you don’t need to act on the information and you can take your time in contemplation. One thing I will do is often reset my calmness and pose the inquiry 2-3 times again looking for consistency and the texture of a clear, neutral, insight. If I’m still not sure, I’ll bring it to my stillness practice the following day and sometimes even multiple days until I am satisfied with how the information presents itself.

If you really aren’t sure and are nervous about the information you received, another quick test you could apply is simply checking: “Is this the kind of answer that my Creator/Source would give me?” If it’s not loving, encouraging, and contains a strong emotional charge, the answer is unlikely.

This may happen. Sometimes the information we get is asking us to make a change that deep down we know that we need to make. Perhaps we haven’t had the courage to explore this and have been putting it off to protect ourselves.

As you get comfortable, I encourage you to be open to exploring these possibilities. Just because you’ve been given guidance doesn’t mean you need to act on it immediately or even ever. You always have free will to choose.

If you find yourself in this situation and are really struggling with it, focus on low-stakes questions and parts of your life until you build more conviction.

Intuition can express itself in many forms. These are often called “The Clairs.”

Most people experience clairvoyance, clairaudience, or claircognizance. For this exercise, listening means listening to all parts of your experience. However information shows up for you, you can verbally express it to later be recorded in your log.

Imagination is a lost art that we forget as adults. It can also show up as the language of intuition. You may find certain images popping into your awareness and begin to follow them. This is a bit different than actively directing the mind to visualize something in that it’s emergent vs. active. I encourage you to follow these. I’ve had some amazing insights when I follow the wandering path my awareness wants to take me.

When you start to open up to this information, you may begin to encounter hunches not just for yourself, but also for people around you. I handle these with immense reverence and sensitivity. Everyone is having their own experience and it is not my place to plant seeds in someone that could derail them. I usually never say anything and if I do, I never get into specifics and might just say I have a sense that something positive is coming their way:

If I encounter something scary like the intuition that someone is sick, I might ask them how they are feeling. If they aren’t well, I might suggest they consider seeing a Dr. I never tell them that I had some inner guidance that they were sick.

It’s my experience with intuition and the broader expansion of consciousness, that information comes to us when we are ready. At first, this might feel frustrating. I know we all want all life’s answers to our problems now!

I think a more empowering stance is to trust that this timing is in your best interest.

A powerful example in my life happened about 8 months ago. I was in a deep state and saw some imagery of someone in my life doing something very harmful to me as a child. I immediately started to put the puzzle pieces together and realized that this traumatic event had happened. I couldn’t believe that this all went down and somehow my protective ego had filed it away into the obscurity of my subconscious. With this realization, there was a small amount of anger about how this had impacted my life, quietly controlling my impulses for so long.

Pretty quickly though I was able to forgive this person. I realized they were merely imitating something that happened to them. This also came to me as part of the intuitive download.

I realized I have received this information at a point when my heart was at a level of openness and maturity where I could face this experience skillfully with love. I knew that the reason it had come to me now vs. earlier was that I was finally ready to see it.

This experience continues to happen throughout our entire healing journey. The more we heal, the more intuition can come through, and the more gradually layer after layer begins to reveal itself of why we are the way we are. It’s all beautiful and I’ve found it best to trust it’s all unfolding in perfect timing. I know this may not be what you want to hear, but the more you learn to trust the divine timeline vs. the timeline of your conditioned preferences, the happier you will be.

There is clearly some overlap here in that both practices involve quieting the mind. I consider the practice of direct inquiry as an extension of meditation or a next step of what we can do once we learn to quiet the mind.

Another key difference is that early forms of meditation often involve some form of active ‘doing’ whether it’s repeating a mantra or following the breath. Direct inquiry involves some doing in posing a question, but then LISTENING which is more a passive, witness experience.

In my personal morning practice, I incorporate these together and almost see all of these things as different tools I can mix and match based on what I feel like doing that day.

I was listening to a conversation on intuition with professor John Vervakke and Tim Ferriss. This question came up which I interpret as misperceiving thoughts derived from ego and our unconscious as source guidance. I think me and John disagree a bit in that he perceives intuitive insights as pattern matching. I think we are connected to a much deeper Source of information than that.

One thing John suggested is asking other people around you what they think of the guidance to get confirmation or invalidate it. This is certainly one tact you can take, however, you must realize these people are just going to respond based on their own programming. This is quite different from getting your information from a Source that can see the totality of things.

This was a concept I struggled with for a long time and it is a natural part of spiritual progression. My belief now is that you are a vessel for the divine Source to act through you. When you ask for guidance and see what arises, you are effectively surrendering to that Source. And then when you follow this advice, you fulfill the act of Source working through you. This may in fact be the most divine thing you can do.

In reality, it’s when you hold on to the preferences of the conditioned mind and resist the loving guidance that you are receiving that you are turning your shoulder on your spiritual evolution.

Next week we’ll be diving into the following topics:

Spotify:

Youtube:

Native web:

Spotify:

Youtube:

Native web:

Spotify:

Youtube:

Native web: