“Don’t let the noise of other’s opinions drown out your own inner voice.
And most important, have the courage to follow your heart and your intuition.”
- - - Steve Jobs
The story goes that in Japan, two centuries ago, there lived a Buddhist nun named Khema. Her husband had died so in order to support herself, she worked as a potter, a poet and an artist. She gained instant fame from her beautiful artwork but she didn’t like the pressure of pleasing customers so she began to wander from one home to the next to sell her wares. Any money she made, she gave to the poor and one day, she offered her warm kimono to a street beggar. She saw herself as “a drifting cloud blown by a fierce wind.”
During a pilgrimage to a remote region, Khema hiked all day and when the sun began to set, she came upon a small settlement along a riverbank. She knocked on the door of an inn, hoping for a night’s lodging, but it was already full. As the village became cloaked in darkness and silence, Khema was tired but not discouraged. She found an orchard with lush soft grass and lay down under a cherry tree. She was dozing when she felt a warm bright light on her face. She opened her eyes to see a hazy, snowy moon in the skies above. Over her head, thousands of cherry blossoms had opened and each flower was lit up in its petal cup. She was grateful that the inn had turned her away so she got to see this beautiful sight. She wrote this poem:
Through their kindness in refusing me lodging,
I found myself beneath the beautiful blossoms
On the night of the misty moon.
I have to admit that I’m pretty addicted to my down comforter so I wouldn’t be appreciative like Khema was, to spend the night on the ground beneath a flowering tree, no matter how beautiful it was. But that isn’t the point. To me, the teaching is to avoid becoming discouraged or feel victimized when you don’t get your desired outcome. Sometimes we don’t know when we’re dodging a bullet.
Years ago, I was hired to write a memoir for a powerfully famous man. I was thrilled, but over the next week and a half, when my agent called his assistant to talk about the deal, she didn’t call back. I wondered if they were reneging but at the end of two weeks, we received a message that they were drawing up the contracts. My agent called again to go over the terms but she got an email that the assistant had been fired, no one was hired yet to take her place and the man in question was touring South America.
I have a work barometer that saves me a world of pain:
If I run into problems before I start working with the client, they’ll only get worse.
I followed my intuition and turned down the deal, but I doubted myself. Was I being hasty? Would I regret my decision? How could I pass up working with this famous man? Two months later, I was at a book conference when something serendipitous happened. I was randomly introduced to a writer who had been hired to write the very book that I had turned down. I asked her, “You’re working with him? Wow. That sounds exciting. How’s it going?”
“Terrible,” she said. “He’s always traveling. I’m chasing him all over the place and I can’t get him to sit down and do an interview. I can't even find his rep half the time.”
That bullet had missed me because I had trusted myself. It wasn’t about magic. I don't indulge in the woo woo kind of thinking that obliterates the truth and substitutes it with fantasy. I simply see intuition as our birthright, something we can access when we need direction. Buddhist philosophy describes it as a means of perceiving reality directly, not by means of logic or reasoning. We just have to learn to let go with as few regrets as possible and listen to ourselves. But trusting your intuition is not an easy thing to do. It takes practice, patience and discipline.
Albert Einstein said, “I believe in intuition and inspirations. I sometimes FEEL that I am right but I do not KNOW that I am right.” Even Einstein had trouble trusting himself.
An acquaintance called me recently to tell me about a psychic that she highly recommended. She was giving her the hard sell. Maybe she had invested in the woman financially. I listened until she said, “Can I sign you up?”
“Thanks for thinking of me,” I said, “but at this stage in my life, I keep my own counsel.”
We can't expect to trust life if we don’t trust ourselves. How many times have you thought, “I had a feeling that this would happen but I didn’t listen to myself.” I’m not suggesting that if you pay attention to your feelings, everything will have a happy ending because it won't. Life bounces us around but when we listen to ourselves, we can appreciate the cherry tree rather than bemoaning the fact that there’s no room at the inn. In the end, what we got, just might be as good or better than what we thought we wanted in the first place.
I agree that there are no mistakes. It’s all about investigation and learning.
10 1/2 years ago, in the midst of rebounding from the passing of my wife, I fancied a woman twenty years my junior, who had said kind words to me- and that was all it took. A few "woo-woo" months of fantasy later, she confronted me and set me straight. It was not a letdown; it was a relief. I was able to resume my path to emotional recovery and let grief run its intended course.
There are no mistakes in the path offered us by the Universe. I am happy, today, and recently met a woman whose companionship I treasure-and with whom I will feel blessed. No fantasy involved.