EP 5: Encounter Your Intuition - Guided Meditation

It is recommended that you are sitting or lying down somewhere private to listen to this episode as I will take you through a guided meditation. 

Remember:

▲ Try to ask open ended questions...

▲ Be in a calm "green light" state before trying to encounter your intuition.. 

▲ Intuition doesn't always use words to communicate, if symbols come through to you then identify how you first interpreted it, before the rational mind got involved...what does it mean to you, not what you think it should mean… 

▲ write down what came through and create an reminder in your calendar three weeks from now to review…it usually makes more sense with time behind it…

▲ It’s normal to struggle with this your first few goes. It will be difficult for you to discern the cloud of thoughts that is your fears speaking and your own guidance system, but it’s yours for a reason, it can always be accessed with a bit of intention…

Transcript

I want to take you on a journey with yourself to meet your own intuition, your own internal guidance system, this compass that you are equipped with that will never lead you astray. Once you learn to listen to it, and not only to listen to it, but to action what it says to you. And the last part is probably the trickiest part of embodying this type of way of living, if you will, of being an intentional carer- creator. Because oftentimes, the direction that comes through from your intuition from this really phenomenal piece of technology that you possess is really irrational, it doesn't make sense. It's often so out there that the rational mind will easily sweep in and try to discount it, create fears, create doubts. And essentially, most people will end up talking themselves out of whatever intuitive action or insights came to them.

Now, of course, if we do this, it negates the entire point of being guided by this intuitive system. We can't just pick and choose what it is we want to follow. Because the moment that we decide to disregard whatever action or clarity or message came through from ourselves, what we're really telling ourselves in that moment is that we don't really believe that our intuition can guide us in that way. We believe that our conscious or subconscious beliefs are more valid, more credit. And the moment we make that discernment, the moment we get into a heap of trouble, this is where we manically start to fix the ego side of our identity, we fall into anxiety, frustration, overwhelm, depression.

And, uh, we can get really lost and really confused, feel like a victim, we feel like everyone's letting us down. We find all sorts of excuses and reasons and culprits of why we are a victim to the things that we are a victim for, because we simply don't want to admit that somewhere along the lines, we just didn't listen to ourselves. We didn't trust ourselves enough, and we let our rational mind step in and hold the reins. And now we are where we are in a place of suffering because we are not in step with the creative genius that is us. 

And each and every single one of us possesses this genius within us to lead us exactly to where it is we want and learning to dial into the communication of this genius, dial into the commands, if you will, of this genius. Genius (laughs) is essentially your intuition. So this is what I'm referring to when I use this word intution. And on today's episode, what I want to do is I want to take you down literally, a rabbit hole where you're going to meet what I like to call a spirit guide. I'll explain this in a moment as well. So that you can reconnect with your own intuition and begin to allow it to guide you both in your business as well as in your personal life. 

Welcome to another episode of The Flow Protocols. My name is Cat Howell, and I'm gonna be your host on today's definitely [warpee 00:04:17] journey. Today, we're going to be diving into a guided meditation. I'm gonna take you into an imaginary world in your mind. We're going to flex that imagination regardless if you believe in intuition if you believe in spirit guides. The very premise of flexing your exers- your imagination in the way that we are about to today is always going to benefit you greatly in life. Now, I'm using the word spirit guide here, which may throw some of you guys off because that's definitely a sort of new age woowoo type of lingo or word.

But really, it's just semantics, it's me keeping it simple. Really, all I'm referring to here is a spirit guide is going to be a visual representation that your imagination is going to create, which will represent your intuition. Basically, it represents your internal communication system. Now, a spirit guide can take many shapes and forms or sizes. For some people, it will show up as an angel. I've worked with some clients where they have seen it as Jesus, and they were not even religious, which was interesting. My spirit guide shows up often as a turtle with dreadlocks (laughs) so there's that. I've known people who see spirit guides as animals or balls of energy, or even shapes. 

They come in all form, shapes and sizes, because really, they're just a fictional representation, a symbolic representation of this concept called intuition, this guttural instinct, this guttural compass system, this technology that you are in possession of. And if we liken this technology to a vehicle, it is the smoothest of engines and it purrs like a cat when it gets going. Because this engine is the most powerful way to guide your life. Now, as I mentioned at the beginning, it's one thing to say that you are going to allow yourself to be guided by your intuition, by this beautiful compass system. But actually, following through on what comes through, or what guidance comes through, is an entirely different matter on its own, and this is where most people trip up.

Because what often comes through when you connect with a spirit guide is going to be very difficult for your rational mind to swallow or to palate whole or to not dissect or think of all the reasons why it can't happen and the fears and the doubts. Today, we're not gonna be talking about the follow through, I'm simply going to be taking you through a simple guided meditation. It is one of the ways in which you can reconnect with a spirit guide, AKA your own intuition. The more that you practice these types of exercises, and I definitely encourage you to do this at least once a week, if you are just getting started out and you're trying to build this muscle of intuition.

And it is easier as you go along. The more you do this, the better you will be at simply accepting and receiving symbols and meanings from those c- conversations or encounters as they are instead of trying to overthink things, and instead of trying to rationalize what it could mean. The moment we begin to overthink things, the moment we begin to dissect or rationalize anything, it's all garbage from then on. That's just the, the mind the rational mind that has stepped in. The rational mind has no domain with the intuitive and so therefore, by default, the moment we start to overthink anything, it's not our intuition anymore. And so it should be discounted as such. 

So this is the tricky part of building an intuitive muscle, if you will, the relationship with yourself, is that initially what you will find is that you've probably never operated on a level where your mind hasn't constantly been across everything that you're doing, and over analyzing everything. So initially, what you may discover is that it feels difficult to interpret or to make anything of what is coming to you. This gets easier every time you practice this. Again, if we liken the exercises of deep focus of the mind, of creative imagination, all these are is like a splits. We're basically attempting a splits. Usually, if you try to do the splits in one go, in one hit, you're gonna rip some shit really badly. It's not recommended. 

You kinda got to stretch a bit today, a bit tomorrow, and you probably won't even notice a difference from stretch to stretch. But if you're consistent with it and you keep with it, what you'll notice is after 30 days, you've got a split going on. So there's a huge change from day one to day 30. This is the same thing with any mindset work, any deep focus exercises, anything where we are stretching our imagination. We have to acknowledge that there is going to be a period of stretching required. So don't get upset if you go through this exercise today and you don't have a ton of clarity or you haven't been able to fully tap into your intuition. Keep at it, be consistent, and you will find very quickly, you'll be able to actually tap into that ability and that skill very easily.

So what I'm going to be doing in a moment is I'm gonna be asking you to relax your body, and we're going to essentially abandon the physical body, we're gonna go deep into the subconscious. We're going to go into a landscape that you are gonna create. I'm going to take you through one of my landscapes that I used to often connect with my spirit guide, to help you in case you need help putting an environment together. But this can look any way that you want. What the spirit guide looks like, what the environment looks like, it actually is irrelevant, it doesn't matter. All of that is just a function that is there to allow you to interplay with yourself. 

We're going to set an intention of something that we would like clarity around in our lives. So if there's dysfunction happening in your business or in your life right now, maybe you want some clarity, some guidance, some answers. I want you to start thinking about what it is that you want to put forth in front of your spirit guide. Now, to avoid, to make sure that we're not pulling the ego into these conversations, because again, as soon as the ego is involved in any of this, it's all garbage. That that anything that we channel through in that moment is just gonna be rubbish. So to avoid that situation, we want to keep our questions open-ended. So don't ask yes or no questions or don't ask, "Is it Tom or is it Mike that I should marry?"

Ask open-ended questions. So usually, that's your five, fives. Like, how can I better serve this community? Or how can I show up more fully? Or how can I gain more presence? Th- that is an example of an open-ended question. And usually, these questions will keep the ego out of the picture. So start to think about what it is that you would like to put in front of your spirit guide, what clarity or purpose that you would like guidance around. When you meet your spirit guide, and you get direction or you get a communication cycle, whatever that is, whatever first comes through is your intuition. Anything after that, where you're dissecting or interpreting or trying to rationalize that, again, is gonna be your rational mind. 

So this is going to be an exercise as well in practicing how we discern from intuition, which is what comes to us right away, versus when we're just digging through things, and the rational analytical mind is now in the picture running the show. Oftentimes, what comes through may not make a lot of sense to you. It might seem really cryptic, and this is super normal. So what we're gonna do, right after I bring you back into your body, is you're going to write down exactly everything that came through in that encounter. And you're going to set a timer on your calendar an, a reminder in your calendar from three weeks from t- from now, where you're going to read back to yourself what it was that you wrote during that encounter. 

And usually, it'll make a lot more sense with a bit of time behind you. So oftentimes, what comes through during a spirit guide encounter is really irrational, it's really out there, it doesn't make much sense. It's very ahe- it gro- ... Your soul is expanding faster than your rational mind can keep up. So some of the communications that are coming through may not fit in with your life right this moment. But you're gonna set an alarm on your phone, and in three weeks' time, you'll read back what you wrote today. And usually, it's pretty eerily accurate by then or it makes a lot more sense. And this is where it gets really fun when you touch base with yourself three weeks later, and connect again with that communication that came through. 

Again, when the communication comes through just whatever first lands, that's the intuition. That's the piece that we need to note, okay? So what we're gonna do in the beginning part of this guided meditation is I'm going to be asking you to settle yourself into what I call a green light emotional state. A green light emotional state is just a state that doesn't have tension attached to it. We either feel good or we don't feel good, right? Aside from indifference, that kind sits in the, the middle there, you know if you feel good, you know if you feel, feel bad. If we try to tap into intuitive messages while we are in red light emotional states, there's a reason they're called red light. Red light, stop. Stop. Anything that comes through is garbage. It's your rational mind, it's your ego. It's never your intuition when you are in a red light, emotional state.

Green light, go (laughs). So the first part of the meditation, we're just going to be doing some breath work for a few minutes, the aim is going to be to totally relax the nervous system, to relieve the tension, to relieve the stress in the body so we can place ourselves in a green light emotional state. This could just be calmness, it could even be easy, secure. It could be playful, it could be curious, anything like that is fine. I'm not asking you to be super joyful or anything like that but we just want to let go of any tension if you're in a really bad stressed out anxious place right now. And as you go through the meditation, you cannot seem to shake that, I invite you to just stop the meditation or keep doing the meditation for another purpose.

You can still meet your spirit guide, but I just wouldn't necessarily take everything that comes through during that encounter, uh, verbatim because when you're in a red light state, red light, we don't really listen to the intui- ... We're not connected with our intui- intuitive powers when we are in a red light emotional state. It doesn't happen, not possible. So we want to make sure that we, we disconnect and get back into a gree- green light before we try to really decipher messages from our own internal guidance system. So with that being said, I invite you now to get comfortable in your chair or wherever you are right now. You can do this sitting upright, you can find a place to lie down. 

I often love to meditate lying down even though it goes against all recommendations for meditation. I do mine in the morning so that I don't fall asleep. Otherwise, I do fall asleep if it's during the day. But find a comfortable position where you can let go of the tension in your body. And I want you to close your eyes. I want you to picture your body lying down on a beach, on warm soft sand. And there's a tide coming up to meet your body, waves lapping softly. I want you to hear them. Place yourself on that beach. Know that you are so safe on this beach. There's nothing that can harm you. The water is also warm as it comes up to touch your thighs and your toes and your hips and your fingertips. 

And just relax. Imagine as you're relaxing your body, the sand is taking the pressure from all those sore heavy points of your body, the back of your neck, your shoulder blades, the nape of your back, your calves, softly folding into the sand as the waves come up and gently touch you. And I want you to take a deep breath and imagine that you're taking a breath from the bottom of your lungs and then almost as if you're breathing through a straw sucking the air up through the top of your lungs, filling your belly with air all the way through to the top of your lungs, and hold the breath at the top. Hold that breath. Imagine this energy circulating around in your lungs. This energy of air that is so abundant everywhere that you are always serving you always looking after you. Always accessible for you in every single breath. 

Let the breath go. Imagine as you let it go, a wave going back into the ocean. And as you breathe it out, tension being breathed out into the air and released into the waves, into the oceans, swept away by nature. Take another deep breath in. Fill the bottom of your lungs with air all the way to the top and hold that breath. Imagine energy that you are pulling from the top of your head and the bottom of your feet connected to Earth. Grounded, able to tap into a source beyond yourself. Release the breath, and as you do, release the tension in your body, imagine it being swept away by the waves. Imagine yourself getting softer in the sand. 

Let the tension go from your eyes, from your jaw from your fingers, your hands. Feel yourself easing into the sand, calm your nervous system. You are safe. Take another deep breath in, and hold it at the top. Hold it, and let it go. And imagine the wave taking away your tensions. Now, I want you to imagine going inside of your body now, inside the cavern of your body, and that there is a door in front of you. I want you to go through the door and you're going to enter into a new landscape on the other side. We're leaving your physical body behind as if it's a machine. We're stepping out of the machine for a moment as we walk through the door. Know that your body is safe, it is looked after, and it is waiting for you. There's nothing to worry about.

Step through that door. What do you see? Where are you? Look around. This is a world that your mind, your imagination has made up for you. It is the world where you feel safe. It is a world of bounded mysteries and magic, what's happening around you. Imagine that you s- hear the sound of running water, a stream or a river not far off. Start to walk through it. Now, as you do, you start to walk through some trees almost like a jungle under bush. As you push the leaves aside, move towards the water. The air is warm, and there's almost something shimmering in the air in the patterns of light, something ethereal about this world, something not of this world. 

You see a big palm tree ahead of you and you push its ferns out of the way, and on the other side you see a clearing, it's a river bank or stream. It's the bank of a stream, grassy, mossy bank, dappled in sunlight, warm. Go sit on the edge of the bank and place your toes in the water. Notice how the water feels comfortable on your skin, feels refreshing. What color is the water? How clear is it? Place your attention on the stream, on your surroundings. I want you to slip into the water knowing that there's nothing in there that can harm you whatsoever, and float on your back. Let yourself go downstream. You're looking up at the sky, at the belly of the sky, what do you see? The canopy of trees. What do you see in the sky?

Imagine yourself relaxing back into that water, being taking along by the flow of the current, trusting in this current, surrendering to this current. Not resisting or fighting it, it envelopes you. Take some deep breaths. And again, relax into the stream, surrender. Before long, the stream takes you into the opening of a cave. Start to swim into the cave, and as you do, the sky disappears. It's darker in here. But again, you still feel very safe. It's quieter in here. Maybe you can hear the sound, the little echoes of the ripples that you're causing in the water. You look up and you see millions and millions of dotted sparkling points like stars in the night on the cave ceiling. It feels like you've entered another world.

There's a presence with you in this cave, and it's your spirit guide. I want you to step into some stones on a ledge on the cave, out of the water where you are greeted by your spirit guide. What does it look like? Don't fight it. Don't resist it. Don't overthink it. What comes to you immediately? Your spirit guide tells you they've been waiting for you. They've been expecting you. What is it that you want to ask? We're gonna take some deep breaths. And as we do, place your intention and your focus on the question that you have. Breathe in and breathe out. And as you breathe in and breathe out, imagine your spirit guide working with a source of energy that builds in power, that builds and intensity. It's working with your intention. It's working with your question. 

Take another deep breath in, and out, and ask your question. Now, imagine your spirit guide working with this energy in front of it, brewing it. Maybe it's an a ball. Maybe the energy is in an air, it doesn't matter. Picture this energy with your intentions with the clarity that you require from your guide. And imagine your guide pouring this energy into a cup or touching you on the forehead and transferring the guidance that you need. What comes through? What is being said to you? Immediately what comes through, don't overthink it. Don't rationalize it, what has been the message that has come through. Sometimes there's no message. That's okay, don't get frustrated.

Imagine this energy that is now a part of you coursing through your veins, through the back of your throat, the back of your eyes, down your shoulders, and to your fingertips and your thighs. This wisdom buzzling, bubbling through your body. Your spirit guide wants you to know that it is always there for you. It is always accessible to you. It will always guide you to exactly what you desire, and it will never abandon or lead you astray. I want you to step back into the river, and again, allow yourself to go with the current saying farewell to your guide. You will meet them again. Thank them, give gratitude, and go back into the current of the river of the stream. 

Now, in possession of this new wisdom, go back to the bank or find another bank to exit the stream, to step out of the river. And in front of you is another door, the door back into your body. We're going to step through this door now, and go back into the sense of reality. If you need to take another look around, do so now. This is your place, this is safe. This is a place you can always come back to whenever you want. Whenever you have questions or you need guidance, or you need to reconnect with your creative powers, this place is your home. And when you're ready, step through that door back into your body. Start to wiggle your toes and your fingers, maybe your shoulders, and ease yourself back into this world, into the space and time. Once you have, open your eyes and write down what came through to you.

So this was one example of an intuitive spirit guide encounter meditation. I know it pretty, probably sounds really crazy and out there, especially if you have a Western schooling background. But I promise you there's nothing woowoo about this. We're simply spending time to intentionally place our focus on a part of ourselves that is very, very wise beyond ourselves, our creative genius. We are spending time to intentionally connect with this genius within us, which we all possess. And we are using spirit guides as a symbolic representation to assist us to communicate and create that dialogue between ourselves. 

Again, it's not really woowoo, it's just us using a powerful tool called our imagination to help us connect with ourselves, which is healthy any way you slice it, any way you connect with them. So the key here is that if there was action that came through to you from your guide, so if you were compelled or if there was a message to do something, specifically, you must act this out, you must do this. When we do not do this, the moment we do not do this, is the moment we tell ourselves, our belief systems are more viable and trustworthy than our internal genius. And the moment we disconnect from our internal genius, whoo, the moment we slip down those red light emotions very, very quickly, we become confused, we lose our way we become anxious. 

And then we're looking at all sorts of excuses and reasons why we are where we are, not recognizing fully that it was us all along who created that discord. So it's very important, I cannot stress this enough, very, very important that you follow through on whatever came through during that communication cycle with yourself, your spirit guide. If nothing came through, that's okay. Nothing is something. And oftentimes, the, it's not uncommon that the first few times you roll through this, it's a little bit rusty, your imagination is a little bit rusty. You probably haven't been using it a lot for creatively challenging ways. That's okay. 

The more you practice this, the easier it will become, the more you'll be able to easily slip into this world that you create and tune into these intuitive powers. I will roll through some more guided meditations using specific examples of my own worlds that I have created, which are really out there but just so fun. And I just love going into them anytime I'm really stressed or in a lot of fear. I take myself there kind of like a kid would for a tree house or their favorite place to hang out. And it has done wonders in my business and in my personal life in guiding me and keeping me sane, really, for lack of a better word. 

So thank you so much for joining me on this somewhat different episode of The Flow Protocols. This was a sample of an intuitive spirit guide meditation session. If you would like to go deeper with some of these concepts and ideas, join me inside of the free Facebook group, The Flow Protocols. You can also find me on Instagram, @theflowprotocols, and on YouTube. And I hope ... By the way, don't forget to read up on whatever came through. Leave some feedback if it feels aligned to you. I really, really appreciate it. And also, if you feel like somebody would benefit from hearing this episode, make sure you share and let me know how you get on with your own spirit guide.

What came through? What did you see? What did you hear? What was the message? Share, share, share as accountability. I love hearing this stuff. It's crazy how life unfolds and unpacks all of her best abundance and mysteries and synchronicities and opportunities when you begin to live your life intuitively and to be guided by this compass, this genius within yourself. Not many people will do this because it requires intentional overriding of the rational mind, which is a tricky thing to do. But for those who dare embark on this journey, ah, the treasures are endless, endlessly abundant. So thank you so much for tuning in for another episode. I'll see you guys on the next one.