Genius Moments #11 - Listening to the Soft, Quiet Voice Inside: The Art & Beauty of Intuitive Living

You contain, inside of you, a small, quiet voice that has the answers to everything that you could ever need to know. It knows what direction you need to move in moment to momoen, it knows what activity you need to explore. It knows what friendships you need to cultivate and which ones it is time to walk away from, what town you need to live in and even what you need to have for dinner. In this Bonus Episode I share a story of how my dedication to cultivating an ability to hear and be led by my own soft quiet voice, allowed me to experience a profound moment right smack dab in the middle of an ordinary day this past week. The story involves a dead bird, school children and a lot of love. 

How to move your hand when there's a pencil in it, and you're sitting in front of a blank piece of paper or, or your paintbrush at a canvas or. What words right next, if you're writing a a poem or a memoir novel. There is this intelligence that lives inside of us. Quietly wordlessly and never leaves our side. And yet. We have become very accustomed to the experience of sort of shoving it down or allowing this other part of ourselves to be louder. . And it's, you know, the relationship between the rational mind and this ineffable intelligence that is available to us. helping as many people as I can to have access to that soft, quiet voice is what's behind. All of my work with the creative genius podcast and. And creative genius studios. All the meditations and workshops Worksheets and every conversation that I have with somebody for the podcast, it all comes down to wanting to point to that in you. That intelligence in you, because it does exist in you. It exists in every single person. Who is breathing today?

When we don't have access to that part of ourselves, we do get glitchy. You know, we don't know how to make the right decision for ourselves when it comes to. You know what to have for dinner sometimes. To bigger decisions like.

Leaving a job or pursuing a dream.

And it's so important to have practices in our lives. Not just so that our lives run smoothly, but so that we can actually begin to access. A more magical realm that actually exists right here, hidden behind everything else. And I've dedicated so much of my life to cultivating a deep. relationship to this part of myself that I earnestly listened to and reverentially listened to. I'm constantly. Leaning in and trying to hear myself. And catch myself when I'm not doing that and not beat myself up and this week, I had a really powerful experience that I wanted to share with you. It was Wednesday afternoon and my kids get out of school early on Wednesday afternoons there's called early dismissal. I have no idea why. But every Wednesday, since they were in kindergarten, they get off at two o'clock. now they're older. My kids are 10 and eight and we only live. about. A block and half from the school. And what separates our house from the school is maybe two or three other houses and a little miniature forest. There's this really beautiful little wooded path that they walk through to get to school. even though there is an enormous bear in the area. I let my kids come and go, you know, they're at that age where they want to walk to school by themselves and they want to come home by themselves. So. I left them. I'm experimenting with letting go, right? Like letting them go.

But on Wednesday. Was about 10 to three. And I'd heard most of the other kids passed by the house as on their way home from school. And I still hadn't seen my kids. Come in yet. And at one point I, I grabbed my sweater and I put it on because it's a little bit of a. Uh, brisk fall day. And I start walking down towards the school. And as I approached the path at the, at the entrance to the little forest. I hear a lot of sort of frantic energy kind of chaotic. not scared, but there was an energy that I, that I wasn't, that's not part of my everyday. And so I rounded the corner. And there was this group of kids. My son included. Poking at something on the ground with sticks and shrieking about how it was dead and. Their energy was really, really high.

And so I walked over to see what, what was going on, what was dead? What was this? What was this thing that was happening? And it was a beautiful bird. I don't know the species of this bird. I'm sure we could look it up. I took a picture of it. It may have been a female Robyn. I'm not entirely sure. It had orange plumage and little speckles on it, and it was quite large. It was, you know, smaller than a Crow, but bigger than a chickadee. And it was very stiff. It was almost like, you know, those Christmas decorations that are, that are styrofoam and they're, they're very, they're like star from balls and they're just very stiff. This bird felt like it was stuffed. Like it was very, very, very stiff. When you, when the kids were poking it with their sticks, nothing was really moving. So it was really, it was dead. It wasn't just stunned because sometimes that happens right there. Just stunned.

They were kind of, they were big, pretty rough, the bird, they were rolling it over and they are. You know, pushing its feathers backwards with this stick and kind of poking at it and seeing if it's I would open and. And it was a little jarring actually for me, because I immediately felt like just this like sad, soft, like, oh my goodness. The poor thing, Energy towards it. I couldn't name it, And I didn't want to shame them. For, for their reaction to this. You know, it is, death is uncomfortable. Right. And it's, it is a little bit scary. And sometimes when we're scared, it comes out in weird ways, right? Like, Getting really hyper or. Being really loud or kind of being a little note. All these parts come out of us to sort of help us navigate. This uncomfortable new situation. So I didn't want to shame them for having that experience or that reaction to it. And this wasn't conscious. It wasn't like I sat there and I said, okay, what am I going to do? But something in me just began speaking to this bird. So I'm standing amongst all these really hyper children who are poking at this bird with sticks and rolling it over and seeing if its feathers will come out and. And I just began saying to it. How beautiful it is. And how, sorry I am, but it's never going to get to fly again. And how I hope it didn't suffer. Tears are coming to my eyes as I'm sharing the story, but I wasn't crying in that moment. Those words just came out of me spontaneously and.

There was sort of a, uh, a calm that fell over the kids that were there as they began to hear me say these words to this bird. And one at a time and pretty soon all of them. Started to go around the forest and collect really beautiful little. Objects my daughter found some beautiful pink flowers that were growing on the forest floor. One of the other little girls found a gorgeous Fern frond, and another one found it. Giant yellow maple leaf. . They all started decorating the ground around this bird And asking if we could do a funeral for it. And so we did, we. went through my son's lunch bag.

And found the fork that I had given him for lunch that day. And we dug a hole in the earth. That was deep enough for the bird and we laid it down on its beautiful giant maple leaf. And everybody. Put their offerings inside decorated this bird with the flowers and the little leaves and Fern fronds. And for sprigs that we found. And everybody went around in a little, very informal circle. Just saying something nice to the bird. And everybody said the thing and we, we covered it with dirt and then we decorated the graveside. We marked it with a little stone and everybody was off on, on their way. And for me, the whole thing was a really profound experience, as I reflected on it later that day and into the next day. Because.

I think there's a version of me in the past that may have. Muscled in there. And. Maybe even shamed everybody for, Hey, stop poking at that bird. And that's not very nice. And we don't do that or imagine, you know, like somehow shaming them for their reaction, which is very natural, right? Their reaction was very natural and in some ways, very wise, right. To have this protective defensive kind of, this is what happens when I get scared of something unknown. Right. There is a past version of me that may have shamed them for that. And spontaneously. I was able to access another part of me. A much wiser part of me that knew. Too. Just be in the truth. Beat in the love of the situation. And that, that was the part that started speaking to the bird.

Me speaking to that bird in that way, transformed their behavior far more than anything I could have ever said to try to correct them. From my rational mind. this is a very powerful example of why it's so important to cultivate our intuition. Because it's that soft, quiet part of ourselves that knows how to be. And when I was able to embody that,

There was a transmission that happened from me to them just by the way I was being that reminded them of what they already knew about how to Revere this. This bird and life itself. Like they knew already. I didn't tell them, go get flowers and go get, like, they knew. That was in them. And I just felt like it was such an important reminder of why we need to work really hard to cultivate this part of ourselves because it's, you know, I've been working on it for years and I. I can remember a time when I, when I wasn't working on this and how my reactions were and how I was in the world. And it's just night and day. From now, when I do make a priority of the listening to this voice of distinguishing between my rational mind and the soft, quiet intelligence that lives inside of me. I wrote a little bit more about this. Uh it's on Instagram, you can see a picture of the bird and there'll be a blog post in the coming days on Kate Sheppard, creative.com with some more pictures and a little bit more

but I wanted to bring it to you because I have been offering these intuition workshops. And it's not just like a fun thing that you can do. This is something that can transform your entire life and the lives of the people

around

you.

The things that I'm teaching in this workshop are the reason that I'm able to catch myself and. That I'm able to have this really deep connection with my inner voice, even when I'm not quote unquote doing well in life. Right? Like even during the hard times, I can hear that part and I can be led by that part. And that wasn't always the case from that took time that took a lot of practice. And that's why I want to offer this workshop to as many people as possible, because it has been profoundly life-changing for me to have access to that. Inner knowing that wisdom, that intelligence, that compassion and love and knowing it's just like, When the answers come, it's like, you know, like there's no. There's nobody in the world that could debate you out of knowing that that was the answer. That you needed, which is not what happens when you get answers from the rational mind. Like rational mind is very black and white and, you can access an ultimate truth about yourself. and about how to navigate your reality when you practice this.

If this part of yourself is something that you are curious about and want to learn more about and want to actually spend a little bit of time. Strengthening. Head over to Kate Sheppard, creative.com and read about my activating intuition and creativity online workshop. It's a once a month workshop It's included in the colorful community tier , if you're a creative genius patron. along with all of the other amazing content that I put into that every month. I continue to be amazed and odd. By how powerfully our lives can transform when we invest in. Strengthening a relationship with this intuitive side of ourselves, this soft, quiet, inner voice. that is the home and breeding ground. And birthplace. Of creativity.