Some of the most common questions about inner guidance usually sound something like this: "Can we REALLY let go and simply trust our spontaneity and inner guidance? Won't everything fall apart if we don't monitor and control all the details in our lives? And why is this "simple" step so difficult?"

Many times when we have to put overt effort into maintaining some sort of life style or level of appearance, it is as if we're trying to run away from feeling or experiencing our fears or beliefs. For instance, perhaps you are in a relationship with an extremely tidy person and you are not especially tidy yourself. Because you fear your partner will judge you or leave you because of your habits, you put a lot of energy into maintaining a facade of tidiness, despite your more casual leanings.

This is often why some people stay in jobs they don't like, although since the belief that you have to "earn a living" is so common in our culture we often see it as "just the way things are." The belief that we aren't innately supported by the universe, coupled with the belief in separation from the Source, brings up feelings of fear and lack.

What does this have to do with being spontaneous and trusting our impulses? When we decide that we can no longer work at maintaining a situation that holds no joy for us, such as the job we hate or the facade of being someone we're not, one of the first things that happens is that we come face to face with FEAR. Intuitively we know this will happen when we cease our effortful behavior, when we allow the walls we've built inside to crumble. Once the walls start to dissolve, our unfelt emotions of fear are RIGHT THERE. The fears tell us that we must do or be something extra in order to have what we want...that we must clean our house everyday in order to keep our partner or work that job in order to pay the bills. And the fear FEELS quite real.

On the other hand, our impulses will tell us to quit that job or let go and trust and leave the dirty dishes in the sink for a day, and all we will lose is the illusion of placing our trust and the power of creation outside our reach. And this is where we have to summon our courage in order to bring that trust and easefulness into practice in our reality.

Here's a simple example that illustrates taking at least a tiny leap of faith despite the fears involved. Quite a few years ago when I was still a full-time technical writer I decided to stop wearing a watch so that I could learn to trust myself and my internal guidance more directly. At first, I was rather fearful and uncertain about being late for or missing project meetings without my watch to tell me what time it was. Many times what goes on in the first ten minutes of a meeting is the most important, and it was difficult enough to get three or four programmers to meet at the same time without me missing out on it!

So, with a deep breath, I had decided that simply holding the intention would be sufficient and that my inner self would nudge me at exactly the right moment. In the beginning I had a few bouts of sudden panic, thinking I'd worked right through a software demonstration or other meeting. But sure enough, I wasn't really late even ONCE. For instance, in the middle of writing a chapter I would suddenly get the urge to get up and KNOW it was time for the meeting, or I'd be on my way to the drink machine and run into the person I was scheduled to meet. And once when I actually worked THROUGH the time a meeting had been scheduled, the meeting itself had been cancelled at the last minute!

At first it took a little getting used to trusting myself in this way, trusting that it really could be this easy and wasn't something to worry about. In this case, as I let go of effort and struggle, and the belief that I had to "be on guard" by checking my watch all the time, I gradually got used to letting my inner self take care of the reminders.

In my example, the fear that came up was that I'd be late or forget an appointment and negatively impact my productivity or writing career. Somehow these stakes, although they seemed serious enough to me at the time, can seem much LESS serious than the risk of losing a love or of not being able to pay your bills. The important thing to remember here though is that there is fundamentally no difference in these situations - each drama is about releasing our fears, turning our focus on what we WANT, and trusting our creative, spontaneous Selves to get us there in the easiest way possible.

In many cases our inner guidance has access to details about the current circumstances that we weren't even consciously aware of and guides us accordingly - it's a sort of cosmic efficiency. For instance, when I had "missed" the meeting that was cancelled, the inner self just let me keep working on my writing, without interrupting me to gather my materials and travel to the meeting room in the other part of the building. My intention had been to go to the meeting, but my inner guidance knew it wasn't necessary.

Of course, when it comes to trusting our inner selves and releasing our fears, our intuition helps us accomplish this only when we are ready or "strong enough," although that will mean different things to different people. And although the methods that our inner guidance uses may be a little "unfamiliar" to our habitual patterns of control and effort and predictability, we learn that we CAN trust our impulses.

"It seems a great risk to release the beliefs of fear, which seem to have kept you safe all through life. Yet your heart is calling you to say yes to Love. Do not let fear weave tall tales of what Love really is. Fear does not know. This very moment choose Love. See what happens.

©1998, Kristen Fox. Printed in the August 1998 Issue of the online Conscious Creation Journal. (Feel free to duplicate this column for personal use - please include this copyright notice.)
http://www.consciouscreation.com/