When Love Knows Intuition Is Not Always a Gift

I want to talk about something that I am not sure I have publicly talked about. My close friends, yes. Publicly, not really.

I have always been this way. I have always had these gifts, sensitivities, experiences, whatever word you want to use. There are many different terms people use to describe intuitive or spiritual experiences. Here are a few:

• Intuitive: Knowing or understanding something through feelings, instinct or perception without always knowing exactly how you know it.

• Sensitive: Often used for someone who easily picks up on the emotions, energy or atmosphere around them.

• Empath: A term often used for someone who feels other people’s emotions very deeply.

• Medium: Someone who believes they receive communication from spirits or those who have passed away.

• Clairvoyant: From the French for “clear seeing,” commonly used to describe receiving information through mental images or visions.

• Seer: An ancient term used in many traditions for someone believed to perceive things that are hidden or yet to come.

• Channeler: Someone who believes they receive or communicate messages from spiritual guides or other sources beyond themselves.

• Visionary: Someone who can imagine possibilities for the future and see a larger picture before others may see it.

• Oracle: Historically, a person or source believed to offer spiritual wisdom, guidance or prediction.

• Mystic: Someone who seeks a direct, personal experience with God, the divine or the spiritual world.

• Telepath: A term used to describe the idea of receiving or sending thoughts without ordinary communication.

• Medicine Woman: A term used in some Indigenous and traditional cultures for women who hold healing, spiritual, ceremonial or plant knowledge. Its meaning varies greatly by culture and tradition.

People hear “intuitive” and imagine spells, hexes, predictions and crystal balls. I hear it and think: years of trying to figure out why I know something before I know how I know it.

These things just come. I cannot control what I get or when I get it. I can ask for clarity and insight, but that does not always mean I will get it. I am not Psychic Cintra on demand. In fact, when I try to control it, the flow usually stops.

Intuition is not a spell. It does not automatically mean someone can read your mind. In fact, I couldn’t care less what is going on in your mind – I have enough trying to keep track of my own. It is not evil. It does not make someone love you, and it cannot control what another person does or does not do. It also does not automatically give you access to every secret someone has hidden throughout their life.

Now, I am not saying there are not people who use spiritual practices or influence in ways that are not good. Oh, I am sure there are. I have encountered a few myself. I leave them to their own karma with that.

I am not one of them. Evr.

You are in charge of your own life, your fears, your actions and your heart.

As am I.

I have experienced stronger spiritual or intuitive sensitivities for as long as I can remember. Dreams. Sometimes sensing something before it happened. Sometimes feeling when a situation in front of me was not authentic. Over the years, I have had experiences that could fit under many of the descriptions on that list, and some of them scared the living shit out of me.

I was never taught that these kinds of experiences could exist for some people. I never had an elder, teacher or medicine woman in my family to help me understand what was happening. I was left totally on my own to figure it out. In fact, I was taught that these things were wrong.

That did not make it easier for me to understand what was happening, how to navigate it or how to navigate life while experiencing it. It also did not help that, when I was younger, I sometimes thought there was something wrong with me because I experienced these things at all, but that did not stop them from coming.

Trying to shut the flow off has never really worked for me. I can try to ignore it, second-guess it or doubt what I am feeling, but there is usually still a sense underneath that something is not right.

Do these gifts affect others? Possibly in how I interact with them, but I have zero power to control another person. None. Not. One. Bit. I am responsible for how I use what I feel, sense or perceive. This is not like how it is seen in the movies which witches, supernatural beings and superhero’s.

Over the last 20 years or so, I have learned to navigate these experiences better, but make no mistake, when my heart gets involved, this has been much harder. See, I thought everyone wanted to work on being better people, uncovering your insides, and having a good heart.

Nope.

That is not always the case.

I learned that lesson the hard way, and it has been painful.

I also thought everyone wanted to know about seemingly magical universal things. Isn’t that what God is for many of us? Many people believe deeply in God without being able to physically see God, yet some of those same people are terrified of spiritual experiences they do not understand. That has never made much logical sense to me, I tend to get curious about what I don’t understand or am afraid of, I don’t run from it. Do I get scared and have fear when I have things come up or shown to me? Of course.

But I have learned something important for future. It is not up to me to decide what another person needs to know just because I think I may be sensing something. They get to ask. That inner boundary has been a long time coming.

For a long time, I had a pattern that said if God gave me something naturally, then I should always use it to love and give back. That usually did not turn out very well for me. Sometimes I was simply trying to understand what was happening myself, asking questions to get more clarity, and ended up scaring the shit out of people without ever meaning to.

I still believe in giving back and giving love, but now there are some much-needed boundaries around it. I hurt myself when I do not have those boundaries, and I am no longer willing to sacrifice myself out of some misguided vow to always be or show love. I deserve to be loved too, and sometimes self-love requires that not everyone gets to have access to you.

People can be afraid of things they do not understand. Sometimes we label something bad simply because our mind cannot make sense of it. Sometimes it is because that is what we were taught, not because we ever actually stopped and made the decision for ourselves.

But what if we got curious? What if we asked questions? What if we did our own research instead of talking about people, shutting them out or running from something we do not understand? What if, instead of immediately judging what we do not understand, we looked at the person’s heart? What if you realized that the universe has many moving parts that our small selves cannot know everything? Can we allow for not knowing everything and putting it in a tiny control box so that we feel better about ourselves?

Did you ever think that you might be hurting the very person you are judging, leaving or running away from? Maybe they have something important to show you just by being in your world?

Most of my life, I have hidden a lot of these experiences because of judgment from the outside world. Because I could not always articulate or understand them myself, it was easier not to speak. When I did speak, sometimes I was ridiculed. Sometimes I lost people I cared about because of fear, misunderstanding or because they made fun of me. Some took my wisdom, shamed me for it, and then used it for themselves to make themselves look better to others.

And that is probably one of the hardest parts for me to admit.

I am tired of feeling like I lose people I love because they are afraid of me or afraid of gifts I never chose to have.

I did not wake up one day and decide I wanted to experience these things. I have spent a huge part of my life trying to understand them, manage them, question them and sometimes shut them off completely.

I am never, ever trying to scare anyone. Sometimes I am trying to understand what is happening myself. But what we do not understand can scare us, and that has not made it easier for me to navigate some extremely difficult experiences while still trying to be human, fit in, love and belong, which is something we all want.

So my ask is this: if someone is vulnerable enough to show you who they are, have enough courage to stay. Maybe ask questions. Maybe listen. You do not have to understand everything, and you do not even have to believe everything exactly the way they do, but you can still care about the person standing in front of you.

They may need your support. They may need your help. They may simply need your love and understanding instead of your judgment. Maybe they just need an arm around them and to know that while you may not understand everything they are experiencing, you still love them and care that they are hurting.

Isn’t that what we all say we want? Love?

Maybe it is time we started acting like it…xo