3. Necessary Suffering FTW
Hey y’all,
How does your intuition make itself known to you? How do you find clarity?
These questions are never far from my mind as I wrangle with discovering my authenticity and embodying it in the world.
I’ve had two experiences recently that felt very much like my intuition screaming in my face. It had to scream, because I was ignoring all of the more subtle messages, stubborn girl that I am.
In one instance, I needed to make a decision about applying for an academic job, which is something you want to be sure about when you start because it takes a shit-ton of energy.
When I had almost decided to not do it, I ran into three different colleagues in the same day and had very different conversations with each of them about it.
The one that got me, though, the one where my intuition was loud and clear, was when I spoke with someone I mostly disagreed with. One of his comments was so infuriating I decided instantaneously I to apply. It was like my energy had to rise to counter his kind of back-asswards ideas, shit-ton of work or not.
My intuition often speaks to me in spite of something, or in opposition to something. It always has. It’s kind of like when someone asks where you should eat, and you say you don’t care, and then they say let’s go for Japanese, and then you’re like “when have I ever in the history of the world wanted to get Japanese?”
Yep. That’s me. What I don’t want is often more clear than what I do, and I need the mirror of the negative to find the affirmative in myself.
Sometimes, though, my intuition comes from interior affirmation.
There has been a little alarm ringing in my depths for a while now.
That vibration is intuition, and I kept hitting snooze, because tl;dr, and potato chips, and sleep.
But then I scrolled past an inspirational quote on IG about moving into the “discomfort zone,” and the ringing burst into a cacophony I could not ignore. I got up instantly, put my phone beyond arm’s reach, and sat down to write.
I am super-duper not ready to enter the discomfort zone. I don’t want to steep myself in its waters, to grow from it, and journey through it.
I don’t. You probably don’t either.
And yet.
As if to emphasize the intuition alarm, the next day, when reading Richard Rohr, I came across his concept of “necessary suffering,” and promptly emailed those two words to myself.
Except, there was a glitch in the app I use to send myself messages, and I received three emails in which “necessary suffering” was repeated six times.
Six times.
Hint taken.
Message received.
In fact, I posted a new poem in the discomfort zone on the blog, just to show you I’m putting my money where my mouth is, or more accurately, my intuition where my ego is.
This week, I'll have my coffee in hand, my toes in the discomfort zone. How about you?
Your partly cloudy—sure-to-suffer-in-ways-she-hasn’t-yet-explored-in-her-vast-dystopian-imagination—band leader,
Cherri
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